The Mystery of Macro and Micro Evil

and the relationship of the Shadow

(the double-complex) to the American Soul

[under construction]

I recently had a discussion with a leading anthroposophical doctor, who was also many years a leader in the Society as well, and who on the question of the Shadow said to me that it was his view that I could not speak of such things, without first discovering and mastering everything Rudolf Steiner said about the Double and about (I believe) Lucifer and Ahriman. 

I found this to be a most incredible statement, for it seemed to assume that if one was to take up any subject Rudolf Steiner spoke about, the first path to knowledge of the matter had to go through him.  Since Steiner himself had urged us again and again to not make him into any kind of authority, I wondered just what was being said to me by this doctor who has been seen for many years to be a deep anthroposophist.  I found this all the more peculiar in an anthroposophical doctor, for at the end of the lecture cycle Spiritual Science and Medicine, Steiner was asked by a doctor/student what should one do with Paracelsus, whom Steiner had recommended be studied, Steiner replied that one should think out things for themselves first, and then go to Paracelsus for confirmation.  My view has been that this is a good approach to Steiner as well.

This doctor's attitude was also not something new to my experience, for I had run into similar views many times during my 25 plus years as an anthroposophist.  Basically this view was that all that we could think, had to be tested against what Steiner had said.

This is, of course, logically impossible.  If taken to the extreme of what it implies, it would suggest that no one can have a thought about anything since Steiner incarnated.  Further, it represents a view that imagines thinking to be incapable of having its own direct spiritual connection, independent of Rudolf Steiner, while at the same time assuming that Steiner never made an error, never could make an error and ought not ever to be questioned. (At a recent Branch meeting, a Christian Community Priest said: we are never to doubt Rudolf Steiner)

Given the logical absurdity of the doctor's statement to me, what was in fact living in this point of view?  I would say that it was in fact the Shadow itself speaking to me, trying mightily to rise out of the doctor's soul on streams of anxiety and doubt and thus to keep its nature hidden.  The Shadow cannot not bear the light of reasoned examination, or the true heart-warmth of genuine humor, and will trick us at every turn whenever we let ourselves sleep inwardly.  But this is getting ahead of ourselves.

Where did the doctor's unconscious anxiety come from?  It came from the fact that he did not know me, and even though he had read some of my writings, had no basis in his experience to have confidence in me.  But he was asleep as to this lack of confidence, otherwise that is what he would have said.  He would have said, that if I was to write of the Shadow, I needed to explain how it was that I felt qualified to speak, for people (such as himself) would need to be able to have some trust right from the beginning, otherwise they will believe that all that is said is theory and Steiner-said - everything but something actually grounded in direct experience.

This then is where I will begin - with my experience.

I have practiced introspection for over 35 years now, ever since at age 31 when I underwent a remarkable, unexpected and spontaneous change of personality.  From one evening on going to sleep to the next morning on awakening, a light - a new small flame of self-awareness - awoke in my soul that had not been there before, such that I began to see inwardly (into my own inwardness) where previously all had been enfolded in the normal darkness of ordinary consciousness.  Lest one think this was a godsend, let me set the record straight, for it separated me from my fellows and has since lead to all kinds of troubles and challenges.  To be awake where others are sleep is not always a good thing.

Fortunately, the personality that I was before the change was grounded in a kind of simple faith, and so in the beginning I turned to the Gospels in order to understand the meaning of what I began to observe in my inner life as a consequence of this spontaneous inner and brighter self awareness.

Seven years later, I met Rudolf Steiner's writings, and became attracted almost at once to his works on the science of objective introspection (A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity).  Already naturally introspective (inwardly awake to the processes of my soul), I now found the way to make this very alone journey with the aid of scientific thinking.  The main trouble that followed (these things never take a straightforward course), was that among other anthroposophists, I found almost no one that was as inwardly awake and as carefully studying their soul life out of the impulse of an introspection following the methods of natural science.

Oh, people did read the books on epistemology, but mostly they absorbed the concepts from the books, such that they thought about the content of their souls through the lens of the indications of Steiner, and did not in fact actually look to their own souls as a book itself that can be studied. Slowly over time I found myself again at odds with what I had assumed were my fellow students in Anthroposophy, because we were not actually studying the same material.  I was studying my soul and they were reading books.

About ten years ago, I ran into a wall in these studies.  I knew a great deal in practice and had written about it in my essay pragmatic moral psychology (see my website), but I had not yet met the double (in any kind of obvious way such that I felt any confidence in describing it as experience that had become knowledge in my soul).  I had read much about the double, and had all kinds of concepts, but no adequate experience.  I even stopped completely writing a book I was writing at that time because I did not know what clearly was the next thing to know.  I wasn't even sure that introspection, for all that I had learned there, could provide this experience, which seemed to require actual clairvoyant perception.

In this I was wrong.   The fact is that my experience was full of evidence of the double, but this had eluded me because I had made certain assumptions about what I was to experience as an aspect of introspection, such that a matter that was the most intimate aspect of my inner life - the introspective experience of the Shadow, I had assumed to have one quality, when it in fact possessed another entirely.

This quality was hidden in the process we call our inner voice, or sub-vocalization, or which others call discursive thinking (the  spirit speaks, the soul hears).  The plain fact was that unless I was consciously directing this inner speaking (the throat chakra), the unconscious (in part the double-complex) was using it.  To experiment here, simply count inwardly to yourself up to 23, and then stop and go on to some other activity, possibly involving movement.  While you are doing this other activity, this inner speaking (the mental chatter we mostly conceive of as thinking) will continue on its own.   There is a kind of endless commentary about everything that is going on, and unless we are consciously directing this inner speaking, it is speaking out of itself, or more precisely out of the presently hidden sub-conscious and super-conscious elements of soul life.

For someone to whom this is a new idea, and has little experience with introspection, let me add this concept.  We all know how it is that we can place iron filings on a piece of paper, underneath which is a magnet.  The filings will form patterns on the paper to line up with the influence of the magnet's magnetic field.  In a like way the double-complex and other aspects of the soul, both sub-conscious and super-conscious, make patterns in soul phenomena - patterns that can be observed.  When we think about these patterns, after a time it is thinking itself which sees (recognizes) the meaning of the various phenomena as described in this essay.

Now this unconscious soul life is not just the double-complex (the sub-conscious), for the conscience (the super-conscious) speaks here as well.  In addition, what the John Gospel calls the wind (the Holy Spirit) also speaks into our thinking (recall above the essay: In Joyous Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship).  The whole thing is in fact a kind of inner mystery, and requires that we pay attention to it (be scientific about our introspective experiences), otherwise we will miss a great deal that can be observed in the soul.  As another example, just notice the next time someone seems to have made you angry.  Up in intensity goes this inner chatter, which then tends to take the character of all kinds of thoughts which are unkind and destructive.  If we act out of these thoughts, we will usually make a mess of things.

If we think it through, we will now recognize why Steiner so frequently spoke to us about learning control of thoughts.  Our will needs to awake in this realm, so that the unconscious influences become more conscious, the access to our I by the Shadow is reduced, and our ability to consciously co-participate with the Holy Spirit (the wind) is able to emerge out of the general background noise in the soul, because thought is no longer allowed to be driven out of the hidden depths (instead becoming a conscious act of the own I).   This then is a basic and essential task in achieving the Living Thinking or what is sometimes called heart thinking: control of thoughts.

Some will have good instincts about holding back this endless mental chatter (which the Tibetans call: the oscillation of the citta).  We will also here come to a sense of the difference between the lower ego and the higher ego.  That which appears to introspection in ordinary consciousness as the seemingly endless flow of mental chatter is a phenomena of the soul.  I am not, by the way, in the immediate above trying to solve all of the relevant problems.  Instead I am simply pointing directly at soul phenomena that if studied objectively will lead to experiences of the double-complex in the soul.

All that said, let us now step away, and come at this more abstractly for a while, instead of so intimately, for this outer view, with its generalized mental pictures, is needed in order for us to have a context in which to place the meaning of why we need to have such an intimate inner companion, the shadow or double-complex, who is able to use our own inner voice as a vehicle for temptation and prosecution and other problems, while at the same time the conscience and the wind have a similar access to our deepest inner soul realities.  In this sense the soul is an inner mystery temple, which while it has many general characteristics, is also quite distinctively individual and unique.

Also, keep in mind that once we obtain to a certain degree of control of thoughts (the will-in-thinking) it then becomes possible (again see my essay In Joyous...) for us to begin to learn how to perceive inwardly the voice of temptation (the luciferic double), the voice of inner prosecution (the ahrimanic double) and the influence of the self-created egregorial beings (or better said: the self-generated wounds) in the soul.  Further, the lower ego (the I surrounded by the threefold double-complex) becomes able, via the will-in-thinking (control of thoughts), to begin to consciously co-participate with the conscience (the higher ego - which is itself never really separated from the Mystery).

Here is a diagram from my book the Way of the Fool:

Christ Jesus

Guardian Angel

i-Am  

[sense world < soul (A/d) < i-AM  > (L/d) soul > spiritual world]

human double

    (asuras)        

the Divine Mother

Here is another diagram, isolating part of the first one for special attention:

i-AM

(A/d) < i-Am > (L/d)

human double

We need to keep in mind that the symbols (the map) is not the territory.

The first diagram represents our general experiential relationship to the worlds, both inner and outer.   The second diagram represents the structural nature of the lower and higher egos as they sit within this world of experience.

From within our biographies we experience the world, mediated on the sense-world side by the ahrimanic double and the sensory parts of the  soul, and mediated on the spiritual-world side of experience by the luciferic double and the higher inner perceptual parts of the soul.  We are far more awake to the former (in the sense-world) in this stage of the evolution of consciousness than we are to the latter (the spiritual-world). 

This is an important point, and one of the reasons the study of Steiner's The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is far more important for the future of Anthroposophy than the study of Knowledge of Higher Worlds.  Only via actual introspection following the map that is  Philosophy do we begin directly with an encounter in the spiritual worlds.  In KHoW our approach is indirect, through the sense world (a world more informed by Ahriman, who is, in a way a stronger opponent than is Lucifer).

Further, not one of the spiritual powers, whether it is Christ, the Divine Mother, Ahriman or Lucifer have direct access to the social world of the tenth hierarchy.  Their only access is through us.  "...the very purpose of our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that man should become increasingly conscious of what takes effect through him in earthly existence." R. S. Lucifer and Ahriman [emphasis added].  This both insures our freedom and our capacity to in the end master the influence of the Shadow forces, as these pour out of ourselves onto the shared social world of humanity.  As pointed out above in my article on Ahriman's Incarnation, his power in Nature no longer quite influences us as directly as before, for the social world has emancipated itself from the natural world. [It could come to pass that this situation will change as Western Civilization passes through its death and then toward a rebirth - such that humanity could find itself once again deeply integrated with the natural world, albeit one badly damaged by our excesses.]

The main thing that goes on in the social world is the biographies of six billion plus human beings.  These are artistically arranged by Christ as Lord of Karma, so that each of us lives our biographies in the company of those with whom we have special and very much needed shared striving.  Once we incarnate into the social world of humanity, we are set free of direct spiritual-world influence, except for the fact of partial excarnation every night during sleep.  This is where needed adjustments can be made to keep us on track with regard to the goals we have agreed to experience in our biographies.  Here is a great mystery, and everyone should really only make a judgment about what this means for them individually, and not concerning any other person.

The double-complex plays a special role here, for much that the double does is needed in order for us to experience our karma, fate and then eventually (perhaps) to form our free destiny.  We need the Shadow in earthly life in the same way we need a physical body.  Granted aspects of the double-complex are similar in kind and nature to immense spiritual powers, yet Steiner also describes this as a hierarchical structure of gloves within gloves within gloves - a stepping down of the original Power into something much smaller and more in tune with the real I.  While the double is like Ahriman and Lucifer, it is ordained to be in a balanced relationship to the ego, for the freedom of the I is the essential matter.

In the last Lecture to the John Gospel cycle, Steiner also speaks of the result of properly passing through the trials of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (becoming able to reproduce the meaning content of the book out of our own thinking, feeling and willing) as producing a condition of katharsis (or purification) in the astral body.  This purification is what makes the soul (the astral body aspect) more permeable to the Light and to the Life, and this forms the necessary basis out of which the Rite of Initiation can later be enacted.

Every incarnate human being is thus accompanied in the biography by a relevant Shadow (double-complex), which is rich and just in its being and nature.  We can begin to observe the field of play of this being by studying (with scientific objectivity) our own inwardness, especially the phenomena of thought.  Because of the laws of karma and reincarnation, the astral body also contains (in addition to the ahrimanic and luciferic doubles) the human double, we will explore this in more detail next.

In my writing I used to speak of the human double as various kinds of egregorial beings.  This is a middle-ages term, and refers to a kind of self-generated psychic parasite in the astral body (the heroin addict calls it: the monkey on my back - a quite suitable imagery).  Such artificial beings are created by our giving into a prompting of either or both of the ahrimanic and luciferic doubles, except that the egregore requires an almost rite like-repetition for its creation.  The ritual by which the heroin using shots up is such a rite.

The result of the rite is a kind of forbidden pleasure (the payoff to the rite), and a kind of separation occurs in the astral body such that the egregorial being becomes more and more independent of the will of the I as the rite is repeated.  Steiner hinted at such beings in the last lecture of the cycle called: Man as Symphony of the Creative Word, where he called them cancers or tumors of the soul.

I have taken to dropping the term egregore, and replacing it with self-generated wound.  I believe this is more accurate if we want our conceptions about such matters to not only be true, but also good and beautiful.  Steiner also referred to such beings somewhat indirectly when he described the processes of excarnation and incarnation in a way that suggested that as the astral body expands (excarnates) into the cosmos, it leaves behind pieces of itself, which later during the incarnation process are picked up again.

Now such beings are of varying degrees of harm.  Many of us will have had the experience of driving on a freeway, and because there was little traffic we let our minds go into a kind of reverie, such that 20 miles down the road our ego consciousness (our attention) returns from the day-dreaming with a kind of shock that we did not at all notice what we did as a driver for the lost time.  Who drove the car while our conscious ego was participating in the experience of reverie?  A modern thinker, using computer terminology, might speak of a sub-routine, which is not entirely inaccurate since a sub-conscious habit was driving the car. 

We have many such sub-conscious habits (physiologists also speak of muscle memory, as if the physical body itself could self-direct its complicated activities).  What else is the training for certain dancers, gymnasts and others, but the creation of a whole community of sub-conscious habits.  Experience in fact teaches us that many such activities require of the ego that it not over-think the activity, otherwise we become awkward and clumsy.  Also, if we come to understand that the ego is much more than where our I directs our attention at any given moment, we can see that in the sub-conscious of the will are rather remarkable capacities.

It is really only in thinking that the activity of the will can become the most conscious (see again In Joyous...).

Now as we know, the more dangerous and problematic self-generated wounds (addiction, alcoholism, etc.) have in the 20th Century become more treatable.  A great aid came into existence at the beginning of the most intense period of the Second Coming of Christ in the Ethereal in 1933, when Bill W. was visited, while detoxing in the hospital for the umpteenth time, by Christ in the form of an angel, and the impetus was given for the later community development of the 12 Steps.  There is no present day spiritual discipline better suited for healing self-generated wounds than the 12 Steps.

I'll not lay out the Steps here in detail, but I will do a kind of overview, and point out their threefold nature.  The beginning gesture of the Steps is one of surrender.  We recognize our powerlessness before the self-generated wound (the monkey on my back, my disease, demon rum etc.), and we turn to the Divine Mystery (as we individually understand this - our spiritual freedom remains fully intact) for help.  Here is some Novalis which touches this process quite directly:

The heart is the key to the world and of life.

We live in our helpless condition

in order to love, and be obliged to others.

Through imperfection we become ripe for the influence of others,

and this outside influence is the aim.

In illness we must be helped by others and only others can help us.

From this point of view, Christ surely is the key of the world.

What actually happens in a spiritual technical sense is that by our act of surrender the forces of the Divine Feminine (which oversee, from the other side of the Eight Inner Spheres of the Earth, the hierarchies of the left) are able to enter for a time into the soul and stand in between the I and the self-generated wound, as well as in between the I and the ahrimanic and luciferic doubles as these through inner prosecution and temptation encourage the flaw in our character that has led to the self-generated wound.  We surrender to our helpless condition, and in so humbling ourselves make it possible for the soul to have enough embryonic purity (humility) that the Mystery can come to our aid.

In the middle elements of this process we enter into community.   We confess to another.  We admit our flaws to the Divine, and we get ready to make amends to those we have harmed.  We start to shoulder, on our own, acts of purification rooted in the slowly unfolding true humility.

In the final elements of this process we then act in the social community world so as to transform our character flaws, and build out of this a conscious spiritual practice that keeps us awake in the moment to our next potential fall from grace.  As we do this it becomes less necessary for the Divine Feminine to provide direct inner support, as long as we can remain on the path of humility and service to others.  The ego is strengthened in the very best way (beginning with and remaining in: washing the feet).  This process, which I call the elevation of the spirit for the mastery  of the soul is as follows: surrender, entrance (naive membership) in the community of like wounded and then becoming a self-transforming example and actor in this same community.

Lets now look a little more deeply at the ahrimanic double and inner prosecution (we hear in our inner voice the repeating tape of: you are such a loser!).  This is not all the ahrimanic double does, for it is a kind of cold and calculating intelligence.  In fact, precisely because it is so cold and calculating it has (in a way) a higher order intellect. Heart-warmed thoughts are wise and generally far less clever in making life decisions.  Further, heart-warmed thoughts often selflessly involve us with others, such that they often lead to troubles and difficulties (see the film Pay it Forward), whereas clever thoughts are quite selfish and enable us to avoid more easily messy life situations.

Now in extremis, inner prosecution is often accompanied by what we tend to call depression, using conventional psychological terms.  We have lost ourselves in self-negative feelings, and out of this inability to control our life of feelings, the inner prosecutor (the ahrimanic-double) is given a kind of free reign to provide us with negative thoughts (remember from above the need to learn to control thoughts).  Here the problem involves the mastery of feelings.  The Shadow during much depression is in charge of the feeling life (yes, there are physiological problems that can lead to depression, but we need to learn to work within our own soul first, before we turn to a pill.  The pill can weaken the I, because it fails to wake up within and then face the Shadow in the soul out of the I's own forces.

By the way, do not go around giving advice to any of your depressed friends, unless you have clearly mastered the following practices yourself, and they (your friends) already have a general spiritual understanding of their own life of soul and spirit.  What is being said here requires that it remain within its necessary context, and if abstracted out of that context will lead to harm.

In effect in much depression we are in the grip of the ahrimanic double.  Our life of feeling is not mastered, nor are our thoughts within our control.  Also remember that this being is very clever, so one must begin by recognizing (as in the 12 Steps) our fundamental helplessness.  The best advice I have ever practiced in this regard, apparently came from Dennis Klocek (indirectly attributed to him through another), and involves taking hold of our inner voice, and saying inwardly: Who are you?  This should be repeated two or three times, with the accompanying thought (remember that context) that we are waking up in the realm of soul and spirit and speaking to a being in the still somewhat inner darkness of ordinary consciousness.

This being cannot give us its name, and is compelled upon being asked to do so to withdraw from its activity as a contributor to the state of depression.  Part of what is going on is that during depression we are experience a related paralysis of the will.  When we activate the inner will by asking the question, we take from this being a power it has tricked us into allowing it to have, which power really belongs to us.

Don't expect immediate relief.  Feelings linger, and the depression (especially if quite strong) will not fly away (unless a higher being intervenes, an experience I have also had, but which requires petition - prayer - followed by grace from above).  Sometimes we just need to lie down, ask the question a few times, and then rest.  The being must withdraw and the depression will lessen.  At this point, however, we are not yet done.

Just as in the 12 Steps, when during surrender there arises a gap in between the I and the self-generated wound, so the question (who are you?) creates a gap between the I and the ahrimanic double (the inner prosecutor).  Into this gap now we must assert further inner activity.  The best activity I have found is to then consciously create a mental picture of this being and its cohorts.  I make a picture of three such beings (really seeking thereby to effect the whole threefold double-complex, for these tend to cooperate), imagining them being somewhat like the character Gollum in Lord of the Rings, but which instead of being rounded in shape are actually quite angular with very sharp features.

We imagine these beings kind of gleefully dancing, holding hands, and moving in a circle.  Then to this picture we add something humorous.  Perhaps we picture cold maple syrup pouring over these beings, making them slippery and causing them to pratfall.  We, of course, don't want to imagine harm coming to them, but we do need to make an inner picture in which their activity is seen as quite silly and ineffectual.  Maybe we picture that they get depressed and then start to eat all kinds of ice cream until they get sore of stomach because of the excess.

By this activity we have first dismissed the being by asking the question and then second made a counter picture to those negative self images the Shadow has been urging on us.  The final (or third step) is to become physically active.  We rise from the sofa or bed where we have lain down, and take up some activity (cleaning is good, if we otherwise because of weather can't go for a walk).  Nature is certainly a good experience here, or if we are housebound for some reason, then music, made by ourselves (singing, playing a recorder, or listening to a CD).  Something like the Gregorian Chant music that was popular some years ago is also helpful.  Whatever choices we make, it is movement that is essential. 

The depression has paralyzed the will, and now after we have first asserted the will inwardly by asking the question and then developed it further by creating the humorous counter-picture, we must then press this will gesture all the way into the physical body and into movement.  With the state of depression lifted, the thoughts we need will come to us, and we can return to life.

Next lets look at temptation, a principle arena of the activity of the luciferic double.  Again, this temptation comes to us via our own inner voice, which we have, mostly by habit and lack of development, allowed a kind of independence from the I.  Our attention is on listening to the tempting inner voice, and not on control of thoughts or mastery of feelings.  At the same time we need to keep in mind that the luciferic double is also a voice of a kind of wisdom.  We sometimes need this wisdom in life, even though it will tend to be a bit ungrounded.  Luciferic wisdom takes us off the Earth, while Ahrimanic cleverness drives too deep into a mood of gravitas.  Keep in mind also, that Steiner has said that often the cure for Ahriman is Lucifer, and the cure for Lucifer is Ahriman.

Essentially the same problems as above apply, except that we are not generally depressed (although often in states of depression we are more easily tempted).  The root of the temptation is generally a mood of soul.  So lets come at this from the problem of mastery of feelings (something a bit different from control of thoughts).  Obviously the six supplementary exercises are a support here as well.

There is some imagery from the middle-East, Persian or perhaps Sufi, which I have found useful in understanding this problem.  The soul and spirit can described as consisting of a charioteer, a chariot and a horse.  The charioteer is the I.  The chariot is the self constructed mental world - our collection of ideas and concepts which we use to travel through life.  And, the horse is our feelings or emotions (e-motions).

The charioteer is most in balance when he has consciously created and maintained his chariot, and is able to tame and direct the energies of the horse (the mastery of feelings).  As regards the chariot, we have the need to control thoughts, and to not be in bondage in the experience of an idea.  As regards the horse, we have to be able to step aside from unredeemed (sub-conscious) feelings of antipathy and sympathy, and develop the ability to be able to replace these with cultivated feelings (such as reverence, equanimity etc.).

A temptation is generally a desire (which Steiner speaks about from many directions in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity).  It is a want, perhaps experienced as a need: sex, hunger, revenge, etc.  Lets just work with hunger and sex, to keep things simple.

Hunger is often a need of the body, as is sex.  The I experiences the need, and in fact often identifies with it, having already identified itself with the body.  We feel/think: I need food or sex (when it is really the body).  In the Philosophy Steiner has put the question this way: Can I want what I want?  Can a desire be an act of will, or am I powerless before it?

His answer is that we can will what we want, if we put before the want a self chosen moral intuition.  We put in front of the want, a self-determined because.  Not after the want, in front of the want.  Just like with depression, the first step is actually to create the gap in between the want (the temptation) and the action.  And the same rules can apply.  We experience the want, the temptation, which will often appear in discursive thought as if our own inner voice was saying: oh boy, I was so good today with what I didn't eat at lunch, I can take my dinner hunger and satisfy it with ice cream (a friend of mine humorously calls this an ice crime).

If we notice the temptation, and then we can say: Who are you? There is also an old folk remedy from Europe, where we cross ourselves three times and spit over our left shoulder.

Of course there are all kinds of temptations and desires, this is just an example.  Lets look at sex as well, since there is a lot in common with other inner soul gestures that can make these questions of soul management (control of thoughts and mastery of feelings) stand out.

Generally with sex and hunger we also deal with inner pictures.  These images are not insignificant.  Further, our culture through advertising is constantly stimulating desire.  This (sex) is a bit of a different problem for men than for women.  The temptation for men is to see a women just as a women and not as an individual.  A man wants to get laid, and is often in-discriminant about who is the object of his desire.  The temptation for women is more of one toward immodesty in dress and action.

The man is stimulated by the culture to make women into sex objects, and the women is stimulated by the culture to dress provocatively, forgetting that (or asleep to the fact that) men are intoxicated by such stimulation (intoxication being a kind of surrender of the I to the aroused passion).  No one in these circumstances is free, because they are in fact in bondage to the idea (the related mental pictures), and mastered by the feelings instead of being their master.

So the first problem as noted above is to awake to the temptation.  The second problem is to create a gap in between the desire and the action, so that before it sparks across that gap, a freely chosen moral choice can be inserted in the front of the desire.  Thinking can do this.

Again, since the chariot is relevant, we can create an alternative mental picture to the one prompting the desire.  We can shift from a picture of an ice crime, to one of another food choice, which our thinking helps us recognize as more healthy.  We can also try to self observe the feeling life which has prompted the desire.  We can then ask, where did this mood of soul come from, and how can I substitute another mood (take the reigns of the horse).

The most significant matter is to have in our world view of our inner life a quite concrete and accurate understanding of the relationship of the Shadow (the threefold double-complex) to the I.  With this understanding we now shift the battle with evil into that realm were we are most able to meet it.  We understand that evil (and the good) enter into the world through us, and since this is the case, we are then able to meet it, and render it impotent out of the own developing I.

As a corresponding element of this understanding, we also need to recognize (as pointed out in the essays above on the mote and the beam) that what we observe in the outer world (the Stage Setting) is more beam than mote.  Yes, we can in the outer world oppose evil, but first we must master the beam (You hypocrite, first you must get the beam out of your own eye, before you can help your bother with his splinter).

Let us now return to the consideration of Macro Evil, for one of the characteristics of the Stage Setting (the cultural historical background to individual human biographies) is that because the relationship between the opponents (Ahriman, Lucifer etc) takes the shape of gloves within gloves within gloves giving thus a general specific nature and character to the threefold double-complex, a whole culture (even a Civilization) can be turned in a certain direction because each individual double expresses to a small degree the same time-related impulses originating in its Hierarch (or ruler, such as Ahriman).

For example, scientific materialism (an aspect of the Ahrimanic Deception) arises in Western humanity in large part because the individual doubles are able to be coordinated, and consists (in part) of inner temptations and prosecutions designed to cause natural scientists (natural philosophers at the beginning of the scientific age) to make the same (common) error of judgment.  The whole of Western Civilization pivots in the direction of a spiritless (all matter no spirit) world view because the threefold double-complex is moved in sync with this basic impulses originating in the realm of the hierarchies of the left.

William Blake called the effect of this generalized confusion: "single vision and Newton's sleep".  The natural scientist lost confidence in his senses (which Goethe said never lie, only the judgment - discursive thinking moved out of the sub-conscious - lies), and so the natural scientist believed he could only find the truth of the world through instruments and mathematics.  Thus arose a spiritless world-view, which while itself seems a terrible thing, was actually turned toward the good by Beings more powerful and wise than Ahriman and his minions.

In the stream of earthly world events, a central theme is the evolution of consciousness.  Humanity evolves by being offered precise tasks in each cultural epoch.  While not every biography achieves what is offered it, at the time it is offered, the possibility is always there.  In terms of the evolution of consciousness, the Ahrimanic Deception enabled humanity to become (more or less) free of the Gods.  The human being was to feel spiritually alone, until bearing a hunger for a return to the spirit, it awoke enough to being to strive once more for reintegration.  Even faith was to become arid and dead (thus the appearance of spiritual materialism everywhere as a kind of rigid - ahrimanized - dogmatic fundamentalism).

As we saw above in the essay on Methodology, the processes in the social that gave rise to the potential for moral freedom (the development of individualism and the loss of the cohesive nature of the family and community), were accompanied by the effects of natural science and the industrial revolution.   The social effects of Ahriman's character, as stamped on present day civilization, served the good - the evolution of consciousness, by causing the I to have to stand on its own (leave its childhood behind), and begin to draw from the deeper inner wells of its nature a true - self-created - knowledge of the Good, or moral freedom (see also above: The Meaning of...).

Christ even told us to expect this effect, when He said in the Gospels, Matthew 10:34-40:  "Don't think I came to cause peace across the land.  I didn't come to cause peace, I came to wield a sword, because I came to divide a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a bride against her mother-in-law, and to make a man's servants his enemies.  Whoever prefers father or mother over me is not worthy of me; and whoever prefers son or daughter over me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.  Whoever found his life will lose it, and the one who lost his life because of me will find it.  Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me, receives my Sender."

Rudolf Steiner called this effect of the Christ Impulse: the loss of the blood ties that at one time bound us into various forms of group soul.

This then is how we need to see (from this point of view) the Mystery of Evil.  Macro-evil, the Stage Setting, is one aspect of the living and evolving social organism of the whole world.  It is context, not essence.  Essence is micro-evil, which occurs in individual human biographies in the nature of the relationship of the I to the threefold double-complex - the Shadow.  The counter to the Shadow is the own I.  We are the key to the Mystery of Evil, for real evil (along with the good) only enters the world through us.  By unfolding within ourselves the Christ Impulse (free moral grace via the Second Eucharist), we tame evil and subdue it at the only point it has through which to enter the social world.

Again and to conclude: "...the very purpose of our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that man should become increasingly conscious of what takes effect through him in earthly existence." R. S. Lucifer and Ahriman [emphasis added]  As well: You hypocrite, first you must get the beam out of your own eye, before you can help your bother with his splinter.