By Kim Munch Michelsen.
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We have in our day a highly developed science, but it is not yet Christianised. We talk a great deal about our civilisation and culture, but no one sees any occasion to Christianise the natural science upon which they are founded. It must, however, be Christianised; otherwise we shall be deprived of all that we stand in need of from the Cosmos. We shall lose it utterly. ~Rudolf Steiner The Threefold Sun and the Risen Christ |
From Rudolf Steiner: Becoming Fully Human, April 10, 1922. GA 82.
Just as a reasonable person who recognizes the soul of the human being does not negate the body — its outer form, its physiognomy — the reasonable anthroposophist does not negate outer science. On the contrary, we want to stand fully within it.
We only want, for the further development of humanity, science itself to have a soul just as the total human being carries the soul within the physical body. Yes, we claim that it needs soul.
Thus anthroposophy does not want to be an opponent of the present scientific spirit but wants to become the soul of this scientific enterprise in the future.
Technology and science is a boon for the world, but we need to direct it so it doesn't lead us into a dystopia, and this we can do when we find the Christ principle, when we form our future out of love and through wisdom create beauty.
It is important that work becomes individual instead of large corporations that produce without conscience, only an individual can create out of the soul. The technology of today have made it possible to create micro productions like microbreweries and micro dairies that can be distributed out over the country in small local communities following the device, think globally act locally.
Small companies are competitive compared with large companies as long as the large companies are not subsidized through lower taxes, as the large companies produce less per employer, as the employer is not allowed to use its expertise or common sense.
From The Karma of Vocation, lecture IX
“Of course, no one should suppose that what I have just said indicates that steam engines should be done away with. In that case one would have also go do away with a good deal more because they are by no means the most demoniacal.
Whenever electricity is used – and much else besides – there is far more of demon magic because this operates with entirely different forces having an entirely different significance for the cosmos. … demon magic signifies progress, and the earth will continue to make more and more progress.
Developments in the world soon will make it possible to produce immense effects ranging outward into the universe. Doing away with these things or condemning them is not what we are after because they are obviously justified.
But what must be borne in mind is that since they must appear on the one side in the course of human progress, counter forces must be created on the other to re-establish a balance.
Counter forces must be created. They must bring about a balance that can be created only if humanity again comes to understand the Christ principle, if humanity finds the way to Christ. …
Just as we work all the way to the physical stars and into the cosmos by means of the demons of the machines, so must we find the way spiritually into the worlds in which human beings live between death and a new birth where the beings of the higher hierarchies are to be found. …
Well, it is entirely superfluous to argue over whether or not Christ drove out demons. It is more important that we learn to reproduce His miracles and thereby cast the demons out now where we can.
We still have little power to cast out demons in the higher sense as antiquity knew how to do through its atavism. That is the destiny, the karma, of our epoch. But we can begin to drive out these demons of whom I spoke yesterday; they are there and it is negative superstition to suppose that they are not.
How do we drive them out? Humanity will be convinced that they are being driven out when what is unholy service today becomes holy; that is, permeated with the Christ consciousness.
In other words, this means that we must change to a sacramentalism in which man’s deeds are imbued by the consciousness that the Christ stands behind him everywhere. Thus, he ought to do nothing in the world except that in which the Christ can help him. If he does something else, the Christ must also help him but He is thus crucified again and again in human deeds.
The crucifixion is not merely a single deed; it is a continuing deed. So long as we do not drive out the demons through what lives in our souls by changing external mechanical actions into holy actions, we will continue to crucify Christ. …
What was symbolically practiced in the ancient cults of Christianity and was once performed only on the altar but take hold of the entire world.
Humanity … should learn not to construct machines in an indifferent way but to fulfill a divine service and bring sacramentalism into everything that is produced. …
Most of all, human beings can begin to develop sacramentalism in two areas. The first is that of educating and teaching children. We will begin to spiritualize what the religions call ‘baptism’ when we look upon every human being who enters the world through birth as bringing his/her Christ forces with him/herself. Thus we will have the right reverence before the growing human being and can then direct the entire education and especially the teaching of the child in this spirit so that we bring in this teaching a sacramentalism to fruition. …
Finally, when we endeavor to bring what we call our knowledge into our consciousness in such a way that, as our souls are filled with ideas of the spiritual world, we are aware that the spiritual world is entering into us and that we are being united with the spiritual; when we look upon that as a ‘communion’; when we can realize true knowledge in a sentence you find expressed before 1887: ‘Thinking is the true communion of humanity,’ when the symbolic sacrament of the altar will become the universal sacramental experience of knowledge. It is in this direction that the Christianizing of man must move forward.”
Materialism is a viable system that could have become the unquestioned system of all the earth if the spiritual movements from the start of the century hadn't promoted reincarnation and karma. This gave humanity an alternative to the mechanistic worldview of materialism. This gave hope, and the movements grew exponentially through the century so everybody have heard about the spiritual if they believe or not! This growth has been inspired by Michael who has been the driving force, and the etheric Christ has worked through the I AM into the body, to awaken the sleeping body.
From: Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic News Sheet Jan 22nd, 1940 No. 3-4.
The materialistic world-conception does not need to be true, nevertheless it has an inner truth. Of this inner truth we may say: What the materialistic world-conception describes in connection with man, would become true if the materialistic world-conception were allowed to triumph.
It is incumbent upon us to prevent the triumph of materialism, through another world-conception. Matters are not so easy that we can simply say: The materialistic world-conception is wrong — but it lies in our own power to overcome it with deeds, not with lame objections.
The greater the number of those who open their eyes to the spiritual, the greater will be the number of those who see that the realisation of materialism can be checked, and the greater will be the possibility of keeping materialism in check.
Another attitude will arise, which will induce people to say: “An etheric Being has appeared to me at a certain moment and it has told me this or that. I am the instrument through which that spiritual Being can exercise an influence at the present time!” The spiritual world must more and more become a reality. Undoubtedly the spiritual world exists, but in spite of this, we may turn away from it. The materialistic world-conception may be designated as the great conspiracy against the spirit.
The materialistic world-conception is not only an error, but it is a conspiracy, the conspiracy against the spirit.
At the end of the nineteenth-century humanity was in an absolute low materialistically seen, the Ahrimanic totally permeated society, there was very little individual thinking. When Michael cast the Luciferic powers down to earth in 1879 it started the fight between the chaos of Lucifer and the extreme order of Ahriman, it was the fight between the bolshevism of Lucifer and capitalism of Ahriman. This dualism formed most of the twentieth century.
The nineteenth century will one day be described as the materialistic century in the history of humankind.
The people of the twentieth century cannot really imagine how deeply the nineteenth century was entangled in materialism. Only later when people have again become spiritual will that be possible.
Everything, even the religious life, was permeated by materialism. Anyone who can look upon human evolution from higher planes knows that in the forties of the nineteenth century there was an extreme low point in the spiritual life. Science, philosophy, and religion were in the grip of materialism. ~Rudolf Steiner – Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse, lecture 3.
The electrical currents were part of this, they isolated the human body from the soul, but through the development of the consciousness soul up through the twentieth century we created a new path for the soul.
Today [1923] you can travel far and wide, but you can never get so far away that these electric cables do not follow you. They are continuously inducing currents in you. Goethe was not exposed to such currents. All this robs human beings of their physical body; it brings the physical body into a condition in which the soul simply cannot enter into it. We must be quite clear about this: in the days when there were no electric currents, when there were no electric wires buzzing in the air, it was easier to be human. ~Rudolf Steiner - GA 224, July 11, 1923 Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, Anthro-Tech News 16 (Autumn 2014)/German original, page 109.
Our etheric body still have problems with electrical currents through especially the noise from unshielded electrical components. These generate an enormous amount of electrical noise, and they may also come from a mouse or keyboard. A mouse can be felt as a tingling in the inner of the hand if we are in a sensitive state. A thin copper plate around the mouse may stop the radiation.
Iron and steel bracelets, like in wristwatches, may influence the etheric energy flow. When we begin living a spiritual life with less meat and more vegetables it's a good idea to skip iron and steel from the body.
Some people advocates Transhumanism where electrical components are placed in the body, also called Cyborgs. This will hinder the initiation, it will block for the purification of the etheric body, and for the flow of the etheric energy.
From The Wrong and Right Use of Esoteric Knowledge, lecture 3
".....In the future there will be a great battle. Human science will stretch out to the cosmic, but will try to get there by different paths. [And we are part in the fight!]
It will be the task of good, healing science to find certain cosmic forces which can reach the earth through the co-operation of two cosmic streams, those of Pisces [Michael] and Virgo [Sophia].
The great secret to be discovered will be how the influence which works from the direction of Pisces as a power of the sun unites itself with the influence working from the direction of Virgo. It will make for good when it is learnt how the morning and evening forces from the two sides of the cosmos can be brought into the service of humanity. (See diagram.)
Virgo and Pisces attract each other under the resistance from Gemini and Saggitarius. This attraction makes the physical and spiritual worlds permeate each other, as shown through the two rectangles that overlap each other. This is what the Return of Christ is about, the Earth becoming spiritualized.
These forces, however, will be left aside by those who try to achieve their whole purpose through the polaric duality of positive and negative forces. The forces which enable the spiritual to stream down to earth with the aid of positive and negative magnetism come from Gemini; they are the midday forces.
In ancient times it was known that cosmic influences were involved in this, and to-day even exoteric scientists are aware that in some or other way positive and negative magnetism lie behind Gemini in the Zodiac.
The aim will be to paralyse all that could be gained through a revelation of the true duality in the cosmos — to paralyse it in a materialistic, egotistic way by means of the forces which stream in particularly from Gemini and can be placed entirely at the service of the human “Double.”
Other brotherhoods, concerned above all to divert attention from the Mystery of Golgotha, will try to make use of the duality in human nature — the duality which in our epoch embraces man as a unity, but includes within him his lower animal nature.
A human being is really a centaur in a certain sense: his humanity rests on his lower animal nature in its astral form. This working together of the duality in man gives rise to a duality of forces.
This duality of forces will be utilised particularly by certain egotistic brotherhoods, chiefly from the side of India and the East, in order to mislead eastern Europe, whose task it is to prepare for the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. And this will be done with the aid of the forces which work in from Sagittarius.
Saggitarius and Gemini repel each other, as shown through the rectangles without overlap. Sagitarius longs for the spiritual whereas Gemini is attracted to the physical. For different reasons, they work together to resist the Return of Christ.
Beinsa Douno have also written about the axis of Virgo and Pisces in Loaves and Fishes:
Each religion is founded on two constellations – the opposite signs in the circle of Zodiac. It is said that the Christian religion was founded on the signs of Pisces and Virgo, so the axis Pisces – Virgo is the Christian axis. …
We find the symbols of Pisces and Virgo everywhere in the New Testament, but we also find them in all other religions, because the symbol of Virgo exists since time immemorial.
In all religions we find the symbol of the virgin: Isis in Egypt, Devinata, who gave birth to Krishna in India, she bore a lotus in the water. This is an eternal image in Nature. The Virgin represents pure nature, untouched and holy, which produces, which creates the eternal Son of humanity, the higher Self, or – as we call Him – Christ. The symbol of Pisces is found also in all religions.
Jesus always used symbols, for instance: “If you ask your father to give you a bread, will he give you a stone, or if you want fish, will he give you a snake?” These words are not accidental. The symbols fish – bread represent the axis Pisces – Virgo, because Virgo is always represented as a young girl, bearing spike of wheat, which gives bread.
Christ always worked, spoke, thought and healed with this axis. Then we will see how many miracles could be done with the help of this axis if man builds his life on it. The Pisces are mentioned everywhere in the Testament, as well as the bread. In the story about the five wise and the five foolish virgins we hear about oil and lamps. They are again the same symbols. The fishes and the bread were the two things, with which the disciples of Jesus Christ worked, because He taught them the secrets hidden in the bread and the fishes. …
So, Pisces is related to Jupiter and Virgo to Mercury. Virgo symbolizes purity and Pisces mercy, benevolence, love and generosity. You must know that the Christian epoch, represented by both signs attempted to develop in the souls of the people the virtues of the Virgo-Pisces axis which means of both principles – the masculine as Mercury and the feminine – Pisces. That is why both principles are blended in the Christian religion: mercy, benevolence, goodness, purity and chastity.
Jesus Christ represents the axis between sixth and twelfth houses of the horoscope. Jesus Christ, who represented this axis was born from a Virgin and is revealed as Pisces JHTIS (fish in Greek). Every letter of the Greek word JHTIS is the first letter of the following sentence: Jsus Christos Teos Ios Sotiris, which means Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour. So, Christ was born from a Virgin and represented all the qualities of the Pisces, so it was His axis.
If you look at the Zodiac, you will see that every year at the beginning of winter the constellation of Virgo rises on the horizon on 24th or 25th of December. On the opposite side are the Pisces, in the height of the sky could be seen the Twins and opposite them there is the Sagittarius. The Virgo is on the east point, and the Pisces are on the west and this is not accidental.
From The Wrong and Right Use of Esoteric Knowledge, lecture 3
Whether to conquer the cosmic for mankind in a wrong, twofold way, or rightly in a one-fold way — that is the question facing mankind.
From this will come a true renewal of astrology, which in its old form is atavistic and cannot survive.
The wise Beings of the cosmos will enter into the struggle; one side will use the morning and evening processes in the way I have indicated; the West will prefer the midday processes, shutting out the morning and evening ones; and the East will prefer the midnight ones.
Men will no longer manufacture substances on the basis merely of chemical attraction and repulsion; they will know that different substances arise according to whether they are made with morning and evening processes, or with midday and midnight ones.
It will be known that such substances act in a quite different way on the triad, God, virtue and immortality — gold, health and prolongation of life.
When the forces of Pisces and Virgo act in co-operation, nothing wrongful can be brought into being. Men will achieve something through which the mechanism of life will be detached, in a certain sense, from man himself, but will not give any one group power and rulership over another.
The cosmic forces drawn from this direction will create remarkable machines, but only those that will relieve man of work, because they will carry a certain power of intelligence within themselves.
And a Spiritual Science which itself reaches out towards the cosmic will have to see to it that all the great temptations which come from these machine-animals, created by man himself, are not allowed to exercise any harmful influence upon him...."
From The Wrong and Right Use of Esoteric Knowledge, lecture 3
The central difference behind the two streams is that the Virgo-Pisces axis bases technology on etheric energy, whereas the Gemini-Sagittarius axis is based on electromagnetic forces.
Now I will turn again to the fact that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch humanity will have to find ways of dealing with great life-problems which in a certain sense were veiled by the wisdom of the past. I have already called your attention to them.
One of these great problems will be concerned with finding out how to place the spiritual etheric forces at the service of practical life.
I have told you that in this epoch we have to solve the problem of how the radiations from human states of mind are carried over into machines; of how human beings are to be brought into relation with an environment which must become increasingly mechanised.
A week ago I pointed out how superficially this mechanisation is treated in a certain part of the world. I gave you the example of how an American way of thinking tries to extend the realm of the machine over human life itself. …
Where this kind of thing goes on, the wish to yoke up human strength with the strength of machines is always involved. It would be quite mistaken merely to oppose these things. They are not going to fade away; they are on the march.
The only question is whether in the course of world-history they are going to be brought on to the scene
♍-♓ by men who are unselfishly aware of the great aims of earth-evolution and wish to shape these developments for the healing of mankind, [Virgo-Pisces]
♐, ♊ or by groups of men who want to use them for their own or the group's selfish ends. [Gemini, Sagittarius]
That is the issue. The point is not what is going to happen, for it certainly will happen, but how it happens — how these things are handled. The welding together of human beings with machines will be a great and important problem for the rest of the earth-evolution. [Do we connect to the machines through etheric energy or do we connect to the machines through the electromagnetic forces?]
I have often pointed out, even in public lectures, that human consciousness depends on destructive forces. During public lectures in Basle I twice said that in our nerve-system we are always in process of dying. These forces of death will become stronger and stronger, and we shall find that they are related to the forces of electricity and magnetism, and to those at work in machines.
A man will be able in a certain sense to guide his intentions and his thoughts into the forces of the machines.
Forces in human nature that are still unknown will be discovered — forces which will act upon external electricity and magnetism. [The initiates of the future can channel etheric energy to power the machines.]
That is one problem: the bringing together of human beings with machines, and this is something which will exert ever-increasing influence on the future.
In materialism thinking is bound by the thinking of the past, what's needed is intuitive thinking that spiritualizes society.
From GA 152
“Why do we not recognize that we live in the age of the consciousness soul? On the one hand, we are weighted down by an inner paralysis and a preference for the explanations and ideas generated by the past; and on the other hand, we are unwilling to work with new ideas and to immerse ourselves in understandings that open the way to a healthy future.”
From The Etherization of the Blood (GA 130), lecture IX
We have the physical world, the astral world, the lower devachan and the higher devachan. If the body is thrust down lower even than the physical world, one comes into the subphysical world, the lower astral world, the lower or evil lower devachan and the lower or evil higher devachan.
The evil astral world is the province of Lucifer, the evil lower devachan the province of Ahriman, and the evil higher devachan the province of the Asuras.
When chemical action is driven down beneath the physical plane – into the evil devachanic world – magnetism arises. When light is thrust down into the submaterial – that is to say a stage lower than the material world – electricity arises. If what lives in the harmony of the spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the Asuras, an even more terrible force – which it will not be possible to keep hidden very much longer – is generated.
This symbol is the Earth symbol but is also called a solar wheel symbolizing the solar and thunder gods within many religious traditions. it’s also connected to Atlantis, the city with the four streams. See The History of Michael and Sophia It’s also connects to the Zodiac, in the start there was only four star signs, Man, Ox, Lion and Eagle, what is also symbolized with the wheel.
See also The Holy Grail.
From The Mysteries of Light, of Space, and of the EarthThis is the way the man of the Middle Ages conceived his ideal cathedral. If east is here and west here (see drawing), then we should have north and south here. And then in the north, south, and west there would be three doors, and here in the east would be a sort of lateral high altar, and a kind of altar at each pillar; but-here, where the beams of the cross intersect, would have to stand the temple of the temple, the cathedral of the cathedral — a sort of epitome of the whole, a representation in miniature of the whole. We should say in modern speech, which has become abstract: here would stand a little tabernacle, but in the form of the whole.
What I have drawn for you here you should imagine in a style of architecture which only approximates the real Gothic, which still includes all sorts of Romanesque forms, but which has throughout the orientation I have indicated. In this I have drawn for you at the same time the sketch of the Grail-temple, as conceived by the man of the Middle Ages, that Grail-temple which was, so to speak, the ideal of construction toward the end of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, — a cathedral in which the longings of all humanity orientated to Christ flowed together — just as in the single cathedral the longings of the members of the congregation flowed together; and just as in the Greek temple the people felt them-selves united even when they were not in it — for the Greek temple demands only that the god or goddess be in it, not the people — in other words, as the Greek people of a certain territory felt that they were united through their temple with their god or goddess. If we wish to speak in accordance with the facts, we can say: When the Greek de-scribed his relation to the temple, he did it in somewhat the following way: When he said in speaking of any person — say Pericles — “Pericles dwells in this house,” this was not intended to mean that the man him-self who uttered it had a relation of ownership or any other relation to the house; but he simply realized the fact of his union with Pericles when he said: “Pericles dwells in this house.” With exactly the same shade of feeling the Greek would also have expressed his relation to what was to be deciphered in the style of architecture, thus: “Athene dwells in this house,” — it is the abode of the goddess — or, “Apollo dwells in this house!”
The congregation of the Middle Ages could not say that with regard to their cathedral, because it was not the house in which the divine-spiritual being dwelt; it was the house which expressed in every single form the gathering-place where the people attuned their souls to the mysteriously divine. Therefore, in what I might call the prototype-temple, at the end of the fourth post-Atlantean period, there stood in the center the temple of the temple, the cathedral of the cathedral; and of the whole one might say: “If anyone enters here, he will be able herein to lift himself to the mysteries of the universe.” It was necessary to enter the cathedral. Of the Greek temple it was only necessary to say: “That is the house of Apollo; that is the house of Pallas.” And at the central point in that prototype-temple, where the beams of the cross intersect — at the central point the Holy Grail was enshrined, there it was preserved.
