The Haunting of the United States of America

by Joel A. Wendt

Recent political events in the USA cry out for a deeper, perhaps spiritual, explanation.  It is the purpose of this article to make such an effort.  Bare facts must be met with artistic interpretation.  What is not loved, cannot be seen.

Geographical aspects are significant.  What is, from a certain point of view, the New World,  is also called: North America and South America.  The two continents are joined by a narrow isthmus, where the separation between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is very narrow.  North America over time became divided into three great nation-states: Mexico, the USA, and Canada, each with their own virtues. 

Of the three, the USA is the middle-element, and its history has led the USA to at least the  appearance of momentary dominance.   More aesthetically, the USA is becoming the People of Peoples, and at the same time, is culturally the errant adolescent child of the whole world.  Compared to other places and peoples, we are so very young.  A young culture, with such willfully inventive powers, will not always get it right.

“The Americas are the most dense region of the earth, with the mountains running North-South, rather than East-West.   Subterranean forces possess the American body - a geographical force, not a spiritual force.  They chain man to the earth.  Something from the human head streams toward magnetic and electric currents, neutralizing them - this is the human will.  What overcomes these dependencies, which are part of karma, so that our inner life (if not our outward form) can come to freedom?  The answer: the Mystery of Golgatha.”  (paraphrase of Rudolf Steiner in a long discussion, lecture One, "Anthroposophical Life Gifts").

As a consequence, everyone in the world has an interest in what goes on in that region of the Earth that is conventionally called: America.  We have too much an effect upon our cultural Mothers and Fathers to be ignored.  Misunderstood often, but not ignored.

Rudolf Steiner has led us to understanding that in 1879, when the present Michaelic Age began, Michael threw out of heaven, and into the spiritual sphere of the earth, significant hierarchies of spiritual beings.  As mentioned in Steiner’s “The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness”, these beings formed associations with the dead, especially the dead who were having a difficult time finding their way into the afterlife, due to the materialism their souls had to endure during life (Lecture One, "Geographic Medicine").

At the beginning of the 20th Century, many people in England, America, and elsewhere, began to associate with mediums as a means of communicating with the recent dead.  Called “spiritualism” this fad had a short life, although if we are paying attention to modern events on television in America, this medium-ship, and the hunting for “ghosts”, has greatly increased.  The fad has returned, and seeks to appear “scientific”.  Books are being written about the afterlife, and children are being born who very much seem to remember their last incarnation.

Of special note, from “The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness”, is Steiner’s remarks about how in modern times an instinctive spirit/soul development does not proceed past the middle twenties, unless something happens in the biography, such that an individual takes up a more conscious relationship with their own inner development.  This explains the social phenomena of continued late adolescent behavior among both men and women who seek to lead in the political life, in the economic life, and even in the religious life and the arts.  There is even a name for this phenomena: arrested development.

Over the centuries then, the whole of the Americas has become filled with troubled dead, who were murdered for various reasons.  There are those hundreds of thousands who were killed in the occult sacrifices Steiner describes in The Mexican Mysteries.  To that crime must be added  the eradication of millions of aboriginal peoples in all of the Americas, during the European invasions, a subject that is well documented.

Aspects of the modern drug wars, among the various cartels, and the frequent political violence in South America, are a reasonable phenomenological sign of the relevant lingering karmic influences.  The susceptibility of various people in America to certain political leaders, as well as to various infantile religious beliefs, is a sign of the common existence of arrested development, in both the candidates, the preachers, the voters, and the true believers.   Trump, for example, clearly reveals this not only in himself, but in those he attracts to his “showing off”.

While the above materials may be troubling, Steiner has elsewhere said, with positive implications: “English speakers are instinctively in the consciousness soul in their life of rights” ("Challenge of the Times").  And, “One can say that we in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the American develops it in a natural way.” (Rudolf Steiner, lecture to workmen 3 March 1923).  Not everything in America is fallen, by any means. 

And, some of this is true all over the world.  The whole world is haunted, just as worried Carl Sagan, when he wrote his book: The Demon-haunted World, which was concerned with the anti-scientific materialism of the New Age.   Reality, however, is not just rational, but irrational and trans-rational.  We can only know Reality when we can learn to see the world through all three aspects of our own complex nature.

All the world then are haunted with ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night.  Not all “spirits” are kind or wish us well.  The same with the human beings who suffer from “arrested development”.  Too many people are led, owned, and enslaved, by those whose irrational natures are given free reign.  Americans have a saying: "Karma’s a bitch".

What is on the News about politics in America is basically farce.  Our comics and cartoonists have more insight than does the News.  One American comic, Louis C.K. for example, described Hillary Clinton as a relentless sacrificing mother, and a two faced conniver, which is exactly what we need.  He went on to say, that to vote for Hillary is wise, to vote for Trump is to be a sucker, and to not vote at all is to be an idiot.

If we narrow our gaze to the Anthroposophical Society in America, we arrive at a curious place, because that Society is such a small part of what America is.   There is for anthroposophists also a difficult matter, given that few people are willing to be truly honest about their own darker nature.  While I have done original spiritual research on the three-fold double complex (1), this is not recognized in the Society, and cannot then be applied here.  Similar spiritual research material of mine, on other themes not yet recognized, will also be given a footnote reference below.

Of all the ghosts and dead that haunt America, there is one that for me is the most terrible of all: Rudolf Steiner.  There is a rumor in certain circles, that when Central European anthroposophists came to America, a community of spiritual beings also tried to cross the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  According to this story then, a war broke out between those spirits, and the guardian spirits of America’s original peoples.  The guardians were mostly successful in banishing the interlopers, although the Anthroposophical Society will always be lamed until such time as the constantly evoked ghost of Rudolf Steiner no longer haunts its halls and schools.

Needless to say, as many today recognize, anthroposophists could do better.  But that is true of everyone.  Just keep in mind that facing the Double in America is essential for anyone with “self-development” ambitions here.  Americans are destined to work on the lower chakras.  Steiner taught mostly of those from the heart and above.  In America we must work from the heart toward those chakras which are below (2).  It is a calling few will comprehend.

All the same, certain unlikeable phenomena must be faced if the Anthroposophical Society is to move forward.  Basically we are required to wake up to a more recent invasion of America by many European anthroposophists, if we have the courage to look upon ourselves as strangers as advised by Steiner in "Knowledge of Higher Worlds",   As anthroposophists multiplied in Central Europe, there were not enough opportunities to occupy the striving of many, and so the 20th Century saw a spiritual/human immigration into America, on a relatively large scale, as related to how few anthroposophist there were/are in America.

Against the larger background of events in America, this can seem very minor.  Unless we buy into the Idea that Anthroposophy is meant to inspire greater cultural evolution, in which case we need to delve further.  Meanwhile the tragic fact is that, for many years, the major anthroposophical institutions in America were run and guided by the souls of Central Europeans.

This second invasion, while driven from mostly unconsciously and understandably normal human motives, had some rather peculiar qualities.  Keep in mind that the Central European anthroposophist has experienced his/her culture as the highest achievement of Western Civilization, culminating in Goethe and Rudolf Steiner.  Although the following statement of Steiner’s does suggest a caution in making too much of this: “...America is the place at which races or civilizations die.”  Rudolf Steiner "The Mission of the Folk Souls", lecture Six.

I will next then tell on little “story”, which for a Goetheanistic Social Science (3) is one of those “instances worth a thousand”, for we have to consider what “spirit” entities did the Central Europeans successfully drag across the Atlantic, as part of their own choices and karma, that contribute to the haunting of America.

When I was first becoming a part of an already existing anthroposophical community in Fair Oaks, California, in the early 1980‘s, I went to a Christmas celebration (called Holy Nights Celebration, that was a term with which I was at the time unfamiliar), and when came the ripe moment to sing, I was handed some sheets of paper with “carols” that were completely unfamiliar.  Immediately my soul was swept off its “feet” into a world that had no “religious” or spiritual meaning to me at all.  All my deepest feelings for the meaning of Christmas were torn away, although I had implicitly trusted the European anthroposophist to lead me rightly.   In the most secret and sacred places in my heart I was bereft, and I have yet to fully recover.   In trying to capture my mind, the self-imagined experts in European anthroposophy had failed to appreciate my very very different soul.

Basically I was being asked to stop being an American, and become a Central European, singing songs in German, to tunes I had never before heard.  I suspect this was done with the best of intentions, but the cost to both European and American anthroposophists has been high, because the fundamental gesture was the denial of the reality of a “spiritual America”.  Also denied is the existence of a soul nature in the true West that is vastly different from that of Central Europe, which denial continues to this day, having become habit everywhere in anthroposophical circles here.

I have no doubt that the fallen spirits of darkness, and their companions among the troubled dead, have been very active here, aided by the stronger doubles of Americans (see Geographic Medicine, Lecture Two).  One of their collective dark purposes seems directed at the laming of the Anthroposophical Society in America.  Why?  Because in our present day circumstances in anthroposophical circles in America, we only speak of Steiner, and of Michael, and almost never of the two events whose importance to the coming developments of the Third Millennium (4) are far more crucial:  

A) The embodiment of the Cosmic Christ, via the Second Coming, in the social and political life of humanity (5); and,

B) the incarnation of Ahriman in America, and his direct influence on American public life via his close association, from within the White House, to all the events that followed (and harmed the whole world), flowing from the American political response (co-participation?) in the events on 9/ll/2001 (6).

The battle between Christ and Ahriman, for the hearts of minds of humanity, has been joined on all planes of existence - physical and spiritual.  The Anthroposophical Society was meant to mature into a needed guide for spiritual awakening.  Are American anthroposophists (6)  ready yet to play their part?  If there is a grace, it is in the fact that Steiner anticipated it would take 400 years for Anthroposophy to truly enter the social life of humanity.  We still have time to reflect, and to reconsider the course of our actions.  How do we serve (wash the feet) of the people experiencing the haunting of the United States of America?  Do we continue to seek to make them into mini-Central Europeans, or do we selflessly seek to lead them into the deeper mysteries of themselves?

Meanwhile, there is another potential ghost waiting in the wings.   Me.  Should I die without being able to have sufficient personal interactive contact with members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society in America, even if my writings are read, and my videos (8) watched, I will still haunt the halls of anthroposophical activity in America.   Why?

Because. I was made for this task, and my work is not done.  Like Steiner, I have an impeccable pedigree, although we are very different.  I don’t work for Michael, or out of that school.  I work for the Cosmic Christ and the Holy Mother.  I’ve devoted myself to Anthroposophy from the Autumn of 1971, when I experienced a change of egos (9), even though I was not to meet Rudolf Steiner through his books until 1978.  To me, as an American, Anthroposophy is the Rising of the Sun in the Mind, something quite a bit more earthly than European anthroposophists understand it.

Some Thrones in 1980 told me I had been St. Matthew and George Washington.  Around 1998, my angel told me that between my present incarnation and the George Washington one, I had been Clara Barton.  Even the seventh Elohim, who we know as Yahweh, visited me at my place of work in 1978, to bless my transition from the Moon Stream (His place of operation) to the Sun Stream, on the occasion of my beginning to read the works of Steiner.

Apparently I was at the Birth, at Chartres, and participated in the Culmination (see again note (4).

If you think this is a brag, you are very mistaken.  It is a curse, and required the development of considerable forces of will in my thinking, to not over-inflate my view of myself; and, instead, to work ever harder at utilizing the gifts with which I have been graced.

In the mid-1980s I had to abandon the constant reading of all things Steiner, because I discovered it was harming my American soul life.  I had to fly independently, even though inspired by all of Steiner’s principle philosophical works (GA-2, GA-3, and, GA-4).  Ultimately I created my own science of the mind: Sacramental Thinking (10).

Finally and unexpectedly, in 2010/2011, I was visited by the Lesser Guardian and then the Greater Guardian, becoming an actual “initiate” in the sense of Steiner's way of Seeing.  In the Spring of 2011, I also experienced a Second Pentecost in the Ethereal.  Details are here (11).

These experiences joined the many decades of a slowly growing awareness of the Second Eucharist in the Ethereal, concerning which I wrote in detail around 2004 (12), after digesting the unexpected visions that accompanied a 45 day fast in 2003.  In that year my physical, astral and ethereal bodies were 62, while I had only been incarnate for 31 years.

As much as possible, I was faithful to the teachings of the Gospels, and to all that I could glean from Rudolf Steiner, and his many remarkable students.  If you appreciate spiritual economy and symmetry, then my previous incarnation in the public life of America, as George Washington, is now being renewed, with my working mostly privately, and on spiritual, not political, matters.

Yet, why am I consciously ignored by the holders of institutional power in the Anthroposophical Society in America?  Because, like Socrates, I insist on the value of the truth, in a community that runs from it.  I’ve done the work and earned the trust of Higher Beings.  But for all that, my main hunger/desire still remains to find a way to serve Anthroposophy.  Will I die before getting a real opportunity?

Factually, I have nothing to lose by going “all in”.  What does the Society have to lose by meeting me halfway?

(1) The Mystery of Evil in the Light of the Sermon on the Mount
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/mysteryofevil.html
(2) Sex, Porn, and the return of the Divine Feminine
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/sex,porn.html
      The Spiritual Scientific Import of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/TwelveSteps.html
(3) Introduction to a Spiritual Social Science
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/introductionsss.html
(4) The Culmination
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Culmination.html
(5) The Art of God: an actual theory of Everything
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/artofgod.html
(6) Outrageous Genius
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/genius.html
(7) American Anthroposophy
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/AmericanAnthroposophy.html
(8) The Tree:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thetree.html
(9) Biographical Necessity
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/anthro-bio.html
(10) Sacramental Thinking
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/SacramentalThinking33x.html
(11) http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/threshold.html
(12) the Way of the Fool
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/twotf.html