Outrageous Genius
- Discovering the in-the-Present Incarnation of Ahriman in America,
through the Signs of the Times -
please keep in mind that this page is
under construction
first,
some necessary preliminary considerations
Honoring the Teacher and the Teaching
"And, just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh, and as there was an incarnation of Christ in the flesh, so will there be, before even a part of the third post-Christian millennium will have passed, an actual incarnation of Ahriman in the West: Ahriman in the flesh." R.S. lecture, 1 November, 1919 [emphasis added]
"The thing that will matter, though, will be for people in the age of Ahriman to know that John William Smith* is only what appears before them outwardly, and that inwardly Ahriman is there; they must know what is happening and not succumb to any deception in the drowsiness of their illusions." (emphasis added) R. S. 28 December 1919 [*a name Steiner made up]
The first and essential thing to
realize is that in thinking about the Incarnation of the near-god
Ahriman, as a human being,
on the cusp of the change from the 2nd Millennium to the 3rd, we must
not conceive of this as an incarnation of Evil. What Rudolf
Steiner has called the "opponents"
play a necessary and ordained role in the Creation. They are the
density and weight we are to meet and learn to carry (in both the
inward heavenly realm as well as the outward earthly realm), otherwise
our own incarnations would be too easy, and we would never really learn
anything. Macro Evil (the opponents) are different from the Beast from the Abyss, or collective
and conscious micro (human) evil. The tempters and confusers
tempt and confuse, they sow seeds of fear and doubt and judgment and
cynicism, but they do not bring true evil into the social world.
We
do that when we give into their urgings, instead of the wise
(though challenging and difficult) promptings of our own hearts.
The more consciously we choose
the dark, the more the Beast from
the Abyss has free play in human social existence.
The more we consciously seek and choose the Good, the more evolution
moves forward in the right direction.
"...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, lecture II, 2 November 1919 [emphasis added].
Some anthroposophists create pictures within their inwardness, in which they view the opponents as more or less extremely powerful and capable of overwhelming humanity (especially in connection with the hardly spoken of Soradt (the Sun Demon) and the Asuras. Simple logic refutes such an assumption, for if these Beings had the power some anthroposophists believe they have, progressive evolution would already be over. The fact is they are constrained, principally through the office of the Divine Mother, whose golden realm is found on the other side of the Eight Inner Spheres of the Earth. As we more and more are able to do research into the Feminine Mysteries (something Steiner could only hint at in order not to get caught up in the web of the Mary Cult of European Catholicism), we will discover that there is not only a male trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), but also a feminine trinity (Mother, Daughter and Holy Soul). Steiner could only point out to us a few facts about the golden realm, and also the significance of the return of the Imagination (the Holy Sophia) and as well the significance of Anthroposophia. The best present-day research on the Divine Mother can be found in Tomberg's Mediations on the Tarot, in the 11th Arcanum: Force. It is through Hell (the Eight Inner Spheres of the Earth) that Christ descended on the Saturday following His crucifixion, whereby he obtained the forces necessary for resurrection. See Proverbs viii, 22-30 for some hints.
More detail will be developed on
this problem in my essay below: The Mystery of Macro and Micro Evil: the relationship of
the Shadow (the double-complex) to the American Soul, wherein
knowledge of the Shadow obtained after 35 years of introspection will
be described. This must can be said presently: Ahriman and
Lucifer enter
directly into human affairs through
us - through our giving into the
Shadow, the double-complex. We are the gate by which the effects
of the opponents enter the world social order. In a like fashion,
it is also only through
us that Christ (and the Divine Mother - but
that is, as noted above, a whole other theme) can directly enter into
the social
order. The Fifth Cultural Epoch (the Age of the Consciousness
Soul) is the era in which great aspects for the responsibility of
earthly affairs falls to human beings.
Ahriman in reality is a gift to humanity, a two-edged gift to be sure, but a real treasure. His very one sidedness teaches us, and this is teaching we need to face squarely, for it not only teaches us about ourselves, but also about an essential aspect of the real nature of the Creation. We all contain within our souls the ahrimanic potential, the possibility to be calculatingly cold and heartless, and if we are as brutally self honest as our conscience would encourage, we have all made and will make judgments that have such a quality - that are, from a human perspective, callus and indifferent.
Do we not walk through the world turning a blind eye away from all manner of suffering and pain, fully aware that we do this in order to preserve our self interest, our comfort and our far easier lives?
To fill out this picture, think on Nature. In tooth and claw, in flood and earthquake, in all that seems as powers of death and radical sudden change, we see in the processes of Nature what appears as an absence of either compassion or love. The Natural world is a world of profound and complicated laws, which seem in their results to have not at all the same consciousness that one human being might bear, out of compassion and love, toward another. In this indifferent power of Nature and nature's lawfulness, lives Ahriman as he manifests in the sense world.
Yes, Nature contains beauty - it
is a divine work of art, but in its processes and laws it is basically
finished, fixed and complete. It is done. That human beings
may in the future have the possibility of lifting Nature up out of this
fixed and finished condition is a whole other story. That
Anthroposophy can yet teach humanity mysteries of Nature unimagined by
today's mankind is a necessary step in laying the groundwork for this
lifting up. Humanity must learn to see, and it is a mission of
Anthroposophy to enable this seeing. All the same, Nature is
Created (past tense), in which the last act was the arising of
thought. "Thought is the last
member of a serious of processes by
which Nature is formed" R.S. A Theory of Knowledge
Implicit in Goethe's
World Conception. This is why the path of Anthroposophy is
a path
of cognition. To see the real secrets of Nature requires the
metamorphosis of thinking, a task not as well advanced as it should be
in anthroposophical culture (more later). What we haven't truly
understood in practice we cannot teach.
Our social-political world has emancipated itself from Nature. As we more and more developed, we more and more separated away from Nature, so that today the Social World is a world all of its own, one in which callus indifference and compassion and love operate along side each other. We can now choose which course to take, which to embody. We can go to sleep and let raw animality (callus indifference and appetite) rule us (instead of us ruling it), or we can wake up.
Ahriman in entering into our world confronts other powers than those which would be normal to his realm - his usual place in the Creation. As a human being he now enters the world of choice, not of fixed processes and laws.
Part of what bothers us, and
will bother us about this Cosmic Being, now to be seen as a human
individual, is not how much he has done that we see
as wrong, but how much he is just like a certain part of us.
For
example, many people have and will in the future like and admire this
individual. Even so, as a human being, to the extent that he does
evil, he does it as a human being. Elements of his cosmic powers
are
restrained by being incarnated, just as are ours.
In addition, recall that Rudolf Steiner explained how our antipathy to another really acquires its strength and passion from the fact that we semi-consciously know just how much like that which we observe we ourselves are. Ahriman incarnate is a mirror to a common human failing, a failing to which everyone living today in the world is prone. If we want to avoid this, we must strive to know the true nature of our heart, and at the higher levels of inner development, think our way to the Ethereal Christ. This requires us to work properly and consciously at soul metamorphosis, and not just whine and complain about how awful the world is, and about how much everyone but us is wrong, evil and dumb.
It is also important to realize that Ahriman incarnates in a specific place and time in order to accomplish something that as a more or less ordinary human being (with extraordinary intelligence - one-sided spirit thinking) he can only achieve at this specific place and time. Outside the social world of incarnate human beings, the cosmic power Ahriman can only do certain limited things, and these mostly indirectly through our shadow (the double-complex). Inside the social world, when with us as a human being, he can do directly things he was not able to do before.
In this, Ahriman's teaching is harsh - it is not for wimps, and his influence on our social existence is necessarily profound, regardless of how dark we may be tempted to seek to portray it. A cosmic power is on the earth living as a human being, and this is a power that can only be called Outrageous Genius.
Ahriman also belongs to America (the true West), in the same way Lucifer belonged to the East and Christ to the Center. American anthroposophists need to recognize that he is ours. Our materialistic society, mostly of our own making through our choices in terms of comfort and appetites, is ahrimanic because we opened the door to his influence and have benefited from it. For example, we have computers and all that goes with this electronic world, because of him. The genius of cold heartless calculation provides many gifts, and we have had to become awash in it - buried up to our necks in it - so that we will soon be forced to decide whether or not we really want it to rule us, or us to rule it.
Our task then in coming to
knowledge of this power is to recognize a part of ourselves in its
nature, and to also understand how fine and exact is the shape this
power seeks to give to our social life. This shape, crafted by
outrageous
genius, can tell us a great deal. In so doing it reveals to us,
we who would foster the good - that is we who would be balanced instead
of so extremely one-sided - just what we need to do and how we need to
act in the social world to bring into that world just the healing that
is needed. Ahriman would overbalance the world in a certain
direction, and it will be up to humanity to restore this balance.
In a peculiar sense, he also points directly at the true Second Coming, as happened in its initial ethereal world dynamics in the years 1933 to 1945, by pointing so strongly away from it. He (Ahriman) comes to distract us, to move us away from our true heart, and this is his temptation - to cause us to loose ourselves in the world of the senses, and never look within at the own soul and discover what lies there, for as Christ told us in Luke: the kingdom of heaven is within you. Yet, by this very distraction and its strength, he points the other way. He speaks into our lives and says to us: go here, for you will like it, for all your lower impulses will find there their satisfaction. He wants to pull us down into too much self-gratifying gravitas. Even the excess of seriousness in anthroposophical circles tends to have this ahrimanic character. We have to engender the counter-levity out of our selves. We have to overcome the cold-hearted and calculating materializing lower senses tendency in our soul that otherwise remains sub-conscious, and replace that with the ethereal forces of consciously moralized thought. Only our wills can do this, and we have incarnated just in this time precisely to learn this lesson and to accomplish this task, which Rudolf Steiner has called: the unfolding of the Consciousness Soul.
Moreover, if we learn to perceive the real dynamics of social existence correctly, we will see that already, in spite of Ahriman's incarnate activities, we have been instinctively engaged in much that is already transforming the worst that he would accomplish were we not to learn to understand his teaching. We are learning even now from this teaching how to make its countering healing gesture. Everywhere there is a waking up, and now it is time for Anthroposophy to step forward and help the world to wake up all the way. However, first we need to arouse ourselves by facing the mirrored shadow of our worst qualities as these manifest not just in American and World Culture, but more importantly, as a crucial first step, in American (and world-wide) Anthroposophical Culture.
Were we simply to look at the
outer culture, without first looking inwardly and squarely at
ourselves, we will fail utterly. We must meet the shadow in
ourselves or we will be nothing but the hypocrites to which Christ
referred when he said in Matthew 23: 25-28:
Woe to you canon-lawyers and Pharisees, you fakes, for cleaning off the rim of your cup and saucer while on the inside you're bursting with greed and wild appetites. Blind Pharisee, wash out the inside of the cup and saucer first, if you want the outside to end up clean! Woe to you canon-lawyers and Pharisees, you fakes, for being like dusty monuments that look pretty on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of corpses and all kinds of rot. You likewise from the outside appear to the world to be decent, but inside you're full of hypocrisy and ways around the law.
It is the thesis of this paper then that Ahriman incarnated in the West in the latter part of the 20th Century, and that his activity as an incarnated human being can be found in various phenomena of social existence. He leaves/left a trail, as it were, in events that mark his passage, and this paper means to discover that trail, and mark that passage, so that we know who he is/was and what he did, and can counter-balance this influence. Not erase it, or eliminate it, but consciously counter-balance it. Moreover, we must start to look also at its examples that are nearest at hand in our Society and Movement (a great deal in the collection of essays that follows does this). We look outwardly to understand it, and then inwardly to correct it; for we have nothing to teach anyone about this if we have not first understood it, and mastered it within ourselves and within our own circles.
Anthroposophists are faced in this trial, of coming awake to Ahriman's Incarnation, by the problem of the mote and the beam on a very large scale (See Matthew: Chapter Seven, et.seq.).
Those wanting to consider more details, as regards the indications of Rudolf Steiner, are encouraged to read and ponder the essay in the appendix to the book: The Future is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium, which appendix was called: When did Rudolf Steiner Expect the Incarnation of Ahriman? by Hans-Peter van Manen. This is, of course, in addition to the obvious books Steiner wrote specifically on Lucifer and Ahriman.
In order to fully appreciate this incarnation of a near-god, we have to have a proper inner picture of modern existence - to learn to perceive that Earth Events also have Cosmic Meaning. What can seem to some, to be merely historical confusion and social evil, has to be perceived by the anthroposophical thinking as Divine Drama, in which certain unusual Actors enter Stage Left, cross the Stage and leaving behind their Effects, exit Stage Right. I use the term Actors, because Ahriman does not incarnate alone - many others are drawn to this place and time precisely because of the unique characteristics Ahriman has stamped upon it.
We also need to ask good questions about where to look. Do we look in the Cultural Sphere that is: Religion, Art or Science, or in the Economic Sphere (Production, Distribution and Consumption), or in the Life of Rights (State, Media, People)? Where would Ahriman work?
I am going to suggest the Life of Rights, because if we read Steiner's The Inner Aspect of the Social Question, we will come upon the understanding that while the Cultural Sphere and the Economic Sphere have spiritual world counterparts, the Life of Rights is completely Earthly. It is our Earthly existence to which Ahriman wishes to bind us (while Lucifer would take us to a world of unearthly and illusory spirit). Nonetheless, nothing here should be taken to confine the reader to coming to a different understanding.
Why the Life of Rights?
Humanity now possesses considerable freedom with respect to the happenings in the human social life of the Earth, as well as with regard to our relationship to the natural world. We can build bombs that we believe make a small sun of death inside a city. We can alter biological life in ways we can't predict out of an almost cultivated arrogant ignorance (callus indifference). We can consciously spread horrible diseases, perhaps killing all human life, all animal life, all plant life.
We can also control the economy by the hidden secret levers behind the issuance and management of currencies, and then using the power that this concentrated wealth can buy, the holders of these hidden levers subvert politicians and media outlets so as to hold great temporal power in a few hands, which hands cannot be challenged or often even named. A secret cabal tries to rule mankind, and seems to direct through money most of the scientific research of our great industries. All this inside a world view dominated by ideas and concepts that make little or no room for the reality of Spirit. All to what end?
At this climatic point in world history, one Nation State is behaving as if it is the main center of political, economic and technological power - the United States of America. The entire social and natural spheres of earth existence are spread out before this power like live prey waiting to be devoured. Since the United States Government is a nexus of these powers, those who seek to rule from out of the economic and financial circles still must work through the Life of Rights. If someone were to be inside this nexus of power conduits, they would be able to sit astride all those flowing streams of power running from the economic, and the cultural (as in that which is controlled by corporations - television and movies etc. and also the dangerous oversight of the State in education) in and through the Life of Rights - the middle Sphere of the emerging Threefold Social Organism.
Moreover, of the threefold nature of the Life of Rights (State, Media, People - see my essay below Waking the Sleeping Giant: the Mission of Anthroposophy in America), these streams of power are currently dominated by the State alone.
We could place then Ahriman's human incarnation right inside the current Bush II Administration and not be far off the mark in our efforts to see if some kind of heartless calculating force is radiating from there outwards into the political life of the United States, tilting it and the world in certain directions. We should also expect that Ahriman will not incarnate alone, but will bring with him (or along side him) those who have some karma to work out with respect to such Genius. His cold calculating genius does not need to be perceived as just localized in him, but needs to be seen as distributed - as spread out among many many individualities around or near him (and also throughout the world).
Moreover, we need to recognize that there will be those intimately within these circles (although more will be outside), who oppose him and these tendencies. Christ is the Lord of Karma, and through His Art as the arranger of the relationships of all human biographies, has allowed in the circles around Ahriman not merely his closest allies, but also those who have the remarkable strength needed to thwart much that he would otherwise like to achieve. Michaelic warriors will be right next to those who have chosen to be the Dragon's earthly spawn.
Moreover, Ahriman has no need to
hold
directly any reins of temporal power, for the use of such power is not
his genius. His genius is to see how number relationships can be
gripped and thus give an excessive strength of fixed-like order to the
normal living and fluid nature of social existence. He knows
better than anyone, human or divine, what power lives in number, and
earthly temporal power has no attraction to him at all.
second,
a presentation of the relevant context in the form of a contemplation
on the social organism
The Wise Earth* as Counter-force to Ahriman's Incarnation
*c.f. Paul Hawken's http://wiseearth.org/
We need now to revisit the above
themes, but from an even higher and more picture-like level. It
is important for the reader to realize that our conventional conceptual
frame of reference as regards political-social themes, in particular
the Life of Rights, do not adequately take account of the related
spiritual reality. To speak or think of the political-social
using the same terminology as conventional media is to "materialize"
our mental pictures, concepts and pictures. In this next section
I will endeavor to help the reader overcome these habits of mind.
First, we should step back a little, and see if we can see earthly events in the more mythic or imaginative form. Events in the social organism are also a story, or perhaps better said a Cosmic Tale as it were. Just like nature speaks in its appearances, so does the logos nature of Christ speak into social events, which He artistically arranges through His role as Lord of Karma (see my essays below: The Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul; and, The Methodology Necessary for a New Social Science).
Picture the Earth sphere, that
narrow band of human lives and cultures. Six billion plus people
spread over the surface of the earth, all held dear by the Divine
Mystery. Waves of change move through this sphere of social
existence, which in the 20th Century became truly global economically,
at the same time it became more self-aware globally (the
Internet). In fact, if we think away the mental pictures we have
of this world that are derived from the senses, and begin to substitute
more imaginative, more fluid and dynamic pictures of the social world
as the interplay of downward and upward flowing will forces of Cosmic
Beings, in which the human being moves through fields
of thinking, feeling and willing born in the hierarchies, we will come
closer to the truth. The apparently material earth sphere, in
which
the social world seems to have emancipated itself from Nature, is in
fact a nexus of dynamic and inter penetrating cosmic spiritual
activity. Rudolf Steiner gave us a very necessary picture of this
activity, when he said that "man was
the religion of the Gods". There is a reason so much
activity is directed from the Cosmic Spiritual Heights and from the
Earthly Spiritual Depths, at this center - at this place where human
beings unfold their biographies. Inside us, in the i-AM that is
the human spirit, exists something that can't be found anywhere
else. Rudolf Steiner wrote of this in his youth, in A Theory of Knowledge
Implicit in Goethe's
World Conception:
"Man is not behaving in accordance with the
purposes of the Guiding Power of the world when he investigates one or
another of His commandments, but when he behaves in accordance with
his own insight. For in
him the Guiding Power of the world manifests Himself. He
does not live as Will somewhere outside of man; He has renounced his
own will in order that all might depend upon the will of man."
[emphasis added]
Within the consciousness of these many billions of human beings, whose true mystery we are hardly ready to acknowledge, exists struggles, which we call in general the Evolution of Consciousness. In the current phase of this evolution, which we call the time of the Consciousness Soul, the I seeks to awake in the encounter with other I's. Within the soul, moral challenges appear out of these encounters, as each biography confronts its necessary karma and destiny. First radiating outward in waves from the Western Democracies (where individualism is most fully developing), while at the same time appearing in smaller communities world-wide, the Consciousness Soul begins its unfolding. In the totality of the inner world of humanity, for the most part lost from the insight of our thinking in an inner darkness of coagulated concepts, such as rigid and arid religious beliefs, or a spiritless materialistic natural science, or even the Anthroposophical Society and Movement via the intellectualization during the 20th Century of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence, the I faces both outer and inner challenges.
Meanwhile, unknown to most, the
Christ works in between. He is able to work in between
because having arranged our karma, our integrated and finely
interrelated biographies, to the extent that our social relationships
are informed with moral qualities (even weak impulses of the heart),
these moral acts in the Epoch of the Consciousness Soul also amount to
an encounter with the Eternal. In that we seek the Good, and draw
even a weak tea intuition of it into our social relationships, Christ
can be present precisely because of that qualitative vertical inner
gesture we make in our
souls in order to seek knowledge of the Good in the dramas of the moral
challenges in modern life. (For
every one step in spiritual development, we must take three steps in
character - moral - development)
In the outer stage setting we believe we know through our materialized conceptions of present world history, itself a kind of polar opposite to the inner world of spiritual awakening and moral challenge, gestures of change seek to warp the slowly unfolding threefold social organism to their own uses and needs. The Prince of the World seeks to dominate the Stage, while the Lord of Karma weaves the biographies into a musical-like harmony of inner conscious spirit evolution. The I, under the influence of Christ, tends to become We. While we, under the influence of Ahriman, are pushed to remain only I.
Ahriman divides communities into
smaller and smaller groups, ultimately to become isolated I's.
Christ unifies I's into communities through His in between
support of our moral challenges.
Let us look for a moment closer
at the threefolding of the social organism of the world social order.
Many in anthroposophical circles
will tend to believe threefolding is something we have to create and is
not the present condition of the social world. This is partially
true, but at the same time we need to recognize that the dynamics of
social life have been active for thousands of years, and the slow
evolution of the social organism has been set on a progressive course
for a long time. In the third cultural epoch, cultural life ruled
the social order. In the fourth cultural epoch, a rights life
impulse was added at the foundations of Greek and Roman civilization in
the idea of the State on the one hand and the Citizen on the
other. As the fifth cultural epoch emerged from the fourth, the
rights life itself threefolded (State, Media, People - or citizen),
just as the cultural life had already threefolded into Science, Art,
and
Religion. At the same time that the on-looker consciousness
appears (as did the deepest aspects of the Ahrimanic Deception, namely
materialism in all its aspects), so began the birth time of the
economic life, which now struggles to differentiate into an inner
threefolding of producers, distributors and consumers.
Clearly we live in a time when
the concept of the threefold social organism had barely begun to be
present and was at the same time never more needed. Here again is
a teaching task which anthroposophists may fail entirely to bring into
social life.
With Ahriman's incarnation,
powerful dividing forces entered into the nature of the Stage Setting -
the stream of historical events and its structurally embryonic
threefold relationships. America under this influenced
isolated itself on the world Stage, taking the attitude that it could
stand alone. Within America, groups were set against groups,
communities against communities. Hate and mistrust was fostered,
for to some at least this was seen as an advantage. This we know
from the News, but other impulses were simultaneously at work.
At the same time that this isolating gesture pushed against the instincts of the human spirit for community, the instinctively developing consciousness soul produced another gesture. People did not really want separation, and felt in their hearts the social poverty of this tendency. As this situation ripened, it brought with it a certain developments in technology, which also contained both potentials - one for isolation and one for community building. This was woven into the the whole world's social fabric - a means of connecting across previously disconnecting boundaries. Someone in China could now meet and work with someone in Sweden, instantly in the moment.
Out of the earth, human intelligence, guided in part by Ahriman's genius, raised up from the world of metallic substances a network, perhaps a spider web of inter-connectivity. A great power oozed out of its previous sub-natural condition and took on form in metal and plastic, spreading its arms all over the world.
Yet, Ahriman was not the only inspiring genius, and other impulses from human beings took hold of this transformation of substance and sub-nature and gave it higher potential uses. It was after all only a tool, and the real meaning of this tool was in the hands and hearts of those who set it to work.
One kind of work was the turning
of human beings into number. Everything that could be counted was
being counted and every fact that could be converted to data was
being converted.
Human beings became capable of being known as mere cyphers.
Such that when Ahriman incarnated, he
could take hold of this number meaning of human beings and use that
tool to create a top down driven political power machine, filled with
the callousness of cold calculation exactly in the center of the social
organism: the Life of Rights.
A kind of social heart attack was created in the instinctive relationship of Americans for the Consciousness Soul (English speakers are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights - R.S. The Challenge of the Times). Just when the most egregious terrorist attack of modern times shattered the world's divisions and united them in a shared sense of loss and tragedy (remember the Towers were centers of international financial activity), the political power of America turned away from this warm-hearted world-wide joining, and used this situation in the most callus and calculated fashion. Centered in the most powerful Nation State in the history of humanity, this heartless thinking flowed outward as a political foreign policy out over the world, encouraging division and in the lie of all lies, everywhere (domestically and internationally) suppressing freedom in the name of freedom.
But, again as we have already seen, Ahriman had not incarnated with only his minions as companions. Michaelic warriors, some very aware but most only instinctive, entered into incarnation as well. At their insistence and from their genius, the tool of metal, plastic and sub-natural forces was put to other uses. Reacting, the Consciousness Soul took on a world-wide social form in thousands upon thousands of new kinds of communities of association, something it had been slowly preparing to do for a long time. Civil Society was born, and the tool - the Internet - was placed in the service of heart warmed thoughts. In so doing we need to emphasize that this Sphere of heart centered activity (the Wise Earth) tended to arise on the Internet as individual expressions of community service. The I's sought out other I's and many kinds of We's were born.
The same tool Ahriman used to create a machine for the manipulation of political power in America, was used by others to create a living organism of communities world wide in scope, while at the same time concentrated in America and active on all political fronts. Above, in the top of a political hierarchy, Ahriman worked, while below, spread out across the social commons, the Consciousness Soul - the Wise Earth - spoke back.
In the Wise Earth impulse all manner of spiritual voices are heard. The excesses of the Ahrimanically driven assault via the Life of Rights on social order and individual freedom has become so plain and obvious, that communities of opposition are everywhere being formed. As a prime incarnate opponent, Ahriman does his duty, driving individuals toward the necessary moral dilemmas and challenges. You could say that one of the aspects of the Ahrimanic Incarnation is a kind of heating up of social chaos - an inflaming of disorder. This engenders in morally awake human hearts the will to do battle. The dragon forces circle social life everywhere, and the knights of Michael, themselves no doubt students of the spiritual world Michael School before incarnation, take up their earthly social tasks. (see the book Blessed Unrest, at: http://www.blessedunrest.com/)third,
an entry more into the physical, in the sense of ordinary political and
social considerations
Brother What Ails Thee
In the
following discussion it is very important to keep in mind that we are
now mostly using a quite materialized way of speaking and writing about
something whose true essence remains entirely spiritual in its most
significant meaning.
Such a personality, in my view,
can be found just here then in the America Life of Rights (working from
there upon the whole world), for after all these preliminaries we must
begin to name him. The question for us, however, is: Will we
recognize this "human" being as a brother?
Karl
Christian Rove (birth name), was born December 25th 1950. Karl's biological father abandoned him early on, his
adoptive father left home when Karl was 18, and it later became known
that this second father was a homosexual. His mother committed
suicide when he was 30. Karl described himself in high school
this way: "I was
the complete nerd. I had the briefcase. I had the pocket protector. I
wore Hush Puppies when they were not cool. I was the thin, scrawny
little guy. I was definitely uncool" [facts
and quote from Wikipedia].
Now we must tell a more detailed story of
certain changes in social life that have come at the same time as this
incarnation entered deeper and deeper into a core aspect of the Life of
Rights in America. Let us begin by considering certain
changes in law and other governmental emphasis that have accompanied
the 6 plus years so far of the Bush II administration. While
doing this we need to keep in mind how crucial is this moment in the
Evolution of Consciousness. A great deal is being decided by
individual human beings just now, and we cannot blind ourselves by
assuming that the struggles for the future of America, and as a
consequence the whole World, are simply passing and insignificant
moments in history. These events are profound in the deepest
sense of that concept.
Not only that, we, living today,
are in
the middle of them. It is no accident we too have incarnated in
the Time that Ahriman is to be discovered as our most significant
outer-world teacher. What Ahriman could not do while excarnate
through the Shadow - the double-complex - he could now do as a human
being having incarnated just in this time into the center of human
social life: the Life of Rights.
Over the course of activity of this Administration, several structural changes have occurred, which changes by the way are not just confined to the time of the Administration, but were authored further in the past, and then matured and polished off in the time since the 2000 election, the election at the cusp of the New Millennium. Let us list a few of those.
The Executive Branch, mostly
through the exercise of raw power has been able to achieve a certain
freedom from restraint by the other two Branches (the Legislative
Branch and the Judicial Branch). This breaking down of the
threefold balance of the U.S. Constitution gives to the will force, of
those addicted to power, extraordinary latitude in its conduct (this is
how we must see Chaney and Bush, as addicts to the most addictive
temptation of all - earthly power). This executive power has
become so freed of any restraint that it neither must feel (the
significance of the Legislative Branch - the People's House) nor be
wise (the import of the Supreme Court). The American
Government, during Rove's strongest period of influence, had no
wise head, nor any open heart. Nor would it do to see this as a
reflection of just the Republican Party. The Ahrimanic confusion
is everywhere, and we have now mostly raw will forces dominating the
Executive Branch, which from there radiate out into the whole world
social organism.
The Bush II administrations
definition of the meaning of the War on Terror has taken hold of the
political consciousness of both parties. No major candidate
currently running for President of the world's most powerful nation
state wants to appear weak in the War on Terror (a complete illusion by
the way, once critically examined as is being done out of the social
commons by the Wise Earth appearance of Civil Society).
Thus also has torture become officially permitted in the conduct of self-interest by the U.S. government (using the identical language of the Third Reich in its justifications for torture). Included in this are the powers to remove any claim of citizenship of a natural or naturalized Citizen. Anyone anywhere in the world can be kidnapped and taken anywhere anytime to places of prison and torture (extraordinary rendition). To call these Imperial Powers, akin to that of Rome at its most decadent, is to severely understate the case, for the United States has far greater powers than ever Rome could dream of.
There is a quote, falsely attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville: America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. While it turns out the great French thinker never wrote this, the fact that it is constantly quoted in public life suggests that it nevertheless has deep meaning for Americans.
Civil liberties, once taken for granted in the United States have been neatly and nearly castrated. Since there is nothing to require the government to admit to even possessing the body of a single human being (habeas corpus exists as a rule, but is consciously ignored and obstructed by the Bush II administration at every turn), we have no idea how many have disappeared into the hidden bowels of this out of control will. This is all the more problematic if we recognize that to a certain extent America is very much a cradle for future spiritual development, so that the unopposed emasculation of major components of the Life of Rights in America is a significant victory for Ahriman.
The power radiating out from the imbalance in the State (the out of control Executive Branch), has been joined by an ahrimanic corporate control of the Media (the heart of the heart of the social organism). Thus it has come about that the threefold social organism's inner core (the Life of Rights), itself is out of balance such that (or so it appears) that the polar opposite to the State - the People - is completely dominated through so much fear and hopelessness, that many of the People have come to believe themselves to be completely powerless.
"He [Rove] could carve up constituencies with the best of them, and divide the country as easily as columns on a spreadsheet -- and with no more thought" diarist "Hunter" DailyKos Aug.2007.
Yet, here is where the
counter-pole begins to appear, for recall that Rudolf Steiner spoke in
a lecture
collected in The
Challenge of the Times: English
speakers are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of
Rights. Ahriman's
incarnation arouses the Consciousness
Soul to action. Rove, by pushing forward the callus
and indifferent to consequences unconscious will forces of Cheney and
Bush II (and others), stimulates in others the opposite reaction.
This administration has made of the lie an art never dreamed of even in the time of National Socialism (see Steiner's "The Karma of Untruthfulness"). They have lied so successfully that large portions of the People of America have bought elements of it for years, and still buy into it (polls still show that large numbers believe Iraq was connected to 9/11). Granted the culture of the lie is everywhere, from daily advertising to individual human biographies, nevertheless the callus, calculated and repeated nature of these lies offered by a United States government is staggering. The only matter more staggering is how much they have simultaneously hidden from view.
The art of secrecy is equally adept in this government. No one knows what it is doing, and so clever has been the manner of this hiding, that it is carefully layered such that even if you think you have caught them out, they have a backup plan - lies within lies, as it were. As time has gone on, and various members of the administration became more publicly vulnerable, they have easily blocked every effort to have them removed from office (Rumsfeld and then Gonzales, for example), until it was time to cut them loose and then install an even better buffer in between public interest and the truth. For example, every military general officer who would not spin and lie about Iraq has been systematically removed until all that is left in positions of power are career military general officers who are themselves essentially politicians and sycophants.
The pure outrageous nature of the nerve of this administration is extraordinary. They lie, and then they act, and then even when caught out, continue to lie and lie. Holding powers stolen from the other Branches (and to which these Branches acquiesce) there is no motive to come clean in any fashion, for almost no human heart forces are really present in this home in which Ahriman created for himself and his priests to incarnate.
"That's not the way the world
really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when
we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that
reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other
new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort
out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do" Senior white house
official, assumed by everyone to have been Karl Rove, summer 2002. [An
earthly social-political act comparable to materialism - a kind
of political-social Ahrimanic Deception.]
"The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as if they were realities" Machiavelli
At the locus of the center of power of Earthly streaming forces, he has come to rest, with his aides, in order to imprint with his nature, the most earthly aspect of the potential and unfolding threefold social organism: the Life of Rights.
One of Ahriman's qualities is hardening. He desires that things become fixed, immobile.
This means that one Party in the
United States strives to achieve continuous dominance. Not only
was a world dominating power to radiate from the United States as a
center, but it was to have within itself a loss of what had been an
otherwise self-correcting fluidity - that more than one Party would
hold power, which would mean that no longer could any Ahrimanic excess of the Right be balanced out
through the pendulum swing by any Luciferic
excess of the Left . So it was desired that this swing of
balance be stopped for a while, especially at a particular Moment in
Time, AND if this unbalancing gesture was to take into itself an also
rigid and arid religious impulse, then the knowledge
of the social effects of Christ's
True Second Coming could be hidden, if not completely blocked for
centuries, in that the otherwise good effects on the social world of
humanity, this Second Golgotha offered, were obscured and interfered
with.
Consider: Already, the Anthroposophical Movement and Society had been eviscerated from within, and led in its centers into great confusion (any honest rendering of our history in the 20th Century shows this - for details see the essays below), so that basically unopposed and unknown Ahriman could now undertake the task to boldly assert temporal powers as an obstacle to spiritual inspiration [e.g. the New Freedom Act which enables the government to test all for mental illness and require medicine to be give to those who fail this examination]. In addition, granting political power to an arid and rigid religious cult, calling itself Christian, could do much to convince the world that Christ and Christianity had nothing to offer. So drawing this already decadent religious impulse deeper into politics does a great deal which is far more than just to secure votes at a crucial moment, for whatever the outer world press sees of the effects of this genius that radiates out of the White House, you can bet this outer world press is completely clueless to what is truly at stake.
The ahrimanic Christianity of
the Religious Right hates all that it judges (all beam and no mote),
and speaks into world culture in such a way that more and more the
world is pushed to hate such Christianity back. What better way
to turn minds away from the true Second Coming, than to raise up a such
a false and foolish alternative, that rational people cannot but think
of the idea of Christ and the Second Coming as some kind of
insanity. How do we bring into such a world, a true appreciation
of Christ's Second Coming, and the related Second Eucharist, when
ahrimanic Christianity has gained such temporal power in the Bush II
administration to the dismay of so many intelligent people.
Ahriman is clever beyond our imaginations.
Christianity is not alone in
being so publicly compromised by the materialization of religion.
"The grim truth is that when George W. Bush declared "a global war on terror", he was really announcing a jihad of his own - a struggle to convert the whole world to American-style capitalist democracy....Here lies the peril for the future. For how can "the Axis of Evil" and "the Great Satan" negotiate a businesslike compromise on the basis of live-and-let-live?" from the article: Bush the Jihadist: How the world was plunged into an apocalyptic war, by Correlli Barnett, Daily Mail, Sept. 2007.
"...these ahrimanic powers are
present wherever disharmony comes about between groups of people..." R.S. lecture, 2 November 1919
Another
matter to recognize is that after 9/11, the ahrimanic forces radiating
out of the temporal power center that is Washington, were able to bring
about a Crucifixion of the Imagination of America as a Beacon of Hope
for the poor and disenfranchised the world over. Previously
America (which is at root itself a Mystery) stood in the imaginations
of the world's downtrodden as the place of dreams, where one could go
and find freedom (spiritual-religious, as well as political). So
Rove-Ahriman not only created a debased Christian Meaning in the World,
but also cast down the single most important aspect of the American
Mystery - its meaning as a Beacon of Hope.
Let us take a small side trip
here, and fit in two of Ahriman-Rove's chief allies: George W. Bush and
Dick Cheney. Both are addicted to power, but in two entirely
different
ways. At the same time, let us keep in mind the title to this
section: Brother
what ails thee. These are flawed (as we are flawed) human
beings, placed by the Lord (Artist) of Karma, in their biographies into
very special places in relationship to all of us. Like
Ahriman-Rove, they participate in the creation of the heating and
speeding up of social chaos - conditions necessary for the development
of the Consciousness Soul.
Bush is what is called a dry drunk, that is while he is not actively drinking or drugging (we assume) he still displays all the behaviors of a serious alcoholic or addict: bouts of extreme anger, coupled with a psychological need to never admit he is wrong - the problem always lies with someone else. In taking up the outward posture of recovery, he adopted the attitude of someone who has been saved by Christ. No doubt encouraged by Rove (all the way back in Texas), Bush courted the Religious Right, and here found fuel for his own megalomania - a religious conviction which included him as being an active and dominant world player in the End Times fantasy. So rigid is his faith, as he constantly demonstrates by his unchanging behaviors, that only this illusion has meaning - the truth has been banished from his consciousness.
"Mr. Greenspan described his own emotional journey in dealing with Mr. Bush, from an initial elation about the return of his old friends from the Ford White House - including Mr. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, secretary of defense - to astonishment and then disappointment at how much they had changed." New York Times book review describing Alan Greenspan's (former chairman of the Federal Reserve) book: The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World "...much to my disappointment, economic policy making in the Bush administration remained firmly in the hands of the White House staff.” He was clearly referring to the political team led by Karl Rove at the White House. Mr. Rove was a neighbor of Mr. Greenspan in a leafy enclave near the Potomac River, but the two men almost never had a conversation.
"Rove's method is to plot out elaborate strategies well in advance of the campaign, and stick to them vigilantly. John Deardourff, Rove's media consultant for races in Texas and Alabama, says, 'This rap Bush has of never changing his mind and never admitting a mistake-that's Karl! That's where it comes from.' It is a tribute to Rove's strategic skill that he is so often right." Joshua Green Atlantic Monthly 2007.
Already long before his incarnation, Ahriman-Rove had cultivated this illusory religious impulse, probably through the help of Lucifer's legions, for in its rigid End Times world picture and rigid and fixed morality, it has hardened all that was once Life in Christianity, and turned that Life into a fixed system of beliefs in the soul.
Then comes Cheney. Already a hard line cold-warrior, well connected and supported by the elites of industry and banking throughout his political career (Cheney won his spurs here, while Bush was born into these circles), Cheney (again no doubt encouraged by Rove) became Vice President, and having an intellect of far more depth than Bush's, discovered that the child of privilege had little interest in actually understanding and wielding the reins of governmental power (Bush loves to playact as president). These then fell by default to Cheney, and gave to his addiction more temporal power than any human being has had in history, and of such a nature that as a behind the throne power he could do much that was unseen and thus experience as all the more delightful its private pleasures (the addictive payoff).
So then we have around Rove, two personalities, the one lost in a luciferic dream of egoistical historical place, and the other given the opportunity to wield enormous earthly temporal powers, becomes instead the creature of those very powers - possessed by them. Rove's true contributions, however, are of a whole other kind, even thought he transformed a child of privilege, from out of the culture of Texas oil and wealth, into a public persona that doesn't actually bear any relationship to the underlying human personality. See: "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove made George W. Bush Presidential" by Wayne H. Slater and James C. Moore.
In order for a single Party to dominate, certain possibilities inherent in this time in relationship to technology have become applied to the political process. Computers are turned into ballot boxes. The striving for power, which had taken possession of the Republican Party, found a crucial inspiration in all that Ahriman had prepared before his incarnation, and in all that he was about to accomplish during his incarnation. Win at any cost is the goal, and the corruption of the ballot box by electronic means an easy tool in a war in which number is to play such an essential role.
Data is accumulated, not just State by State, or city by city or neighborhood by neighborhood (voting precinct by voting precinct), but individual by individual. Profiles are created showing, through the accumulation and use of well tracked commercial purchases, just what attitudes each individual who is potentially a voter is likely to possess. The out-of-strict oversight computer powers, of the United States intelligence community (and willing corporate allies), is through secret process turned on its own citizens, and further data accumulated, such that there now is in place and in the hands of a single party, exactly which voters to encourage, and which to discourage in order to place in power and keep in power a single political party as the dominant political force in America.
Nor is this done with any sense
of the individual itself, as an I. It is only their general
characteristics as a set of numbers on a spreadsheet that matter.
One young woman, who had worked with Rove, the human incarnation
of
Ahriman, remarked in a televised interview how remarkable it was to
watch him pick up a newly generated spread sheet from a computer,
glance at it and then immediately begin to issue instructions, down the
well oiled machinery intended to coerce an election effect, from the
inside of the White House out into a neighborhood and then surrounding
an individual home.
In addition was perfected the
Republican talking points.
Spreading out from the political center of the West Wing of the White
House, a well controlled and perfected set of lies and spin was
distributed throughout Party officials (elected and otherwise) and
among the cooperative media, such as Fox News and the widely listened
to conservative radio media. If one listened across this
spectrum, as well as to the President himself and his chief spokesman
the White House Press Secretary, the same reality was presented.
Remember that Rove's idea of the power of deception is
remarkable. Set the agenda, set the tone of what is to be claimed
to be true. Create our own reality, and never ever give an inch.
Radiating from the imbalanced
and unhealthy will force of the Executive Branch had been created a
huge manipulative mechanism for coercing the vote, precinct by
precinct, drawing certain voters in, keeping certain voters out, and
all the while ignoring places, neighborhoods and communities that could
be seen by this cold calculating genius as having no meaning or worth
at all. Coupled with this was an enormous publicity machine,
never seen before, creating in that Nation State that believed itself
most able to have free speech, a propaganda mechanism quite beyond that
known in the time of National Socialism or Communist Russia.
In the center of the Life of
Rights, a machine like process came into existence, in which data
streams about voters were turned into numbers on a spreadsheet. and
false ideas about social reality merely items on a sheet of talking
points. What genius created such a work!
"President Bush's powerful adviser is one part spreadsheet-carrying, vote-counting political wonk, and one part no-holds-barred, brass-knuckled political operative" Dan Froomkin.
"I'm looking at 68 polls a week. You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not impact the outcome -" Karl Rove in a radio interview late October 2006. "You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to "the" math." same interview.
In all this, the Legislative Branch was compliant. Even so far as to pass legislation requiring all States to issue common-in-nature drivers licenses, that individual States could then require be presented in order to vote. This process of making voting more and more difficult was another part of the grand scheme, which then makes it possible to eliminate those most inclined to vote for the Party that is not to dominate - namely the Party of the poor and less literate. Remember, Ahriman incarnated with a community of like-minded, already disposed through all his preparations to their own weakness and self-interested heartless cold calculating judgments. All he had to do was enter into the center of these streams of radiating powers, take hold of the number relations, and polish off the machinery that was to permit a solidified rule from the top down, during one of the most significant moments of emergence of the Consciousness Soul, with its natural impulse to bring in social reform out of the social commons - out of the social below.
Now in this work, he was not unopposed. As a human being, his will was bound by many earthly laws. He could not force those around him serve his will. He could only, with extreme cleverness, encourage their weaknesses and inclinations, thus the personality changes that can be observed in those he influenced while in (and on his way to) this center of temporal power (from which he himself recently resigned).
Further, his very genius in its one-sided nature was also a blindness. This blindness came to the fore in the 2006 general election in America. Rove fully expected to win, his spreadsheets told him so. However, human beings are in fact not numbers, and not really predictable at that level. Rove's numbers told him only of general characteristics, which were all based on specific assumptions. When many of these people walked into the polling booth, something happened (and will continue to happen) which can't be reduced to number. People, when they vote, are faced with what to them is essentially a moral choice (English speakers are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights).
This righteous impulse, invisible to number driven perception, expressed itself strongly in the 2006 election, reacting in large part to all that was being experienced as the callus indifference radiating from the White House, and as political impotence, corruption and incompetence in the Legislative Branch. The Democrats won the House with far more seats than expected by any pollster (whose science suffers the same limits as Ahriman), and further won the Senate as well, something not expected by either Party. Since this victory gave the chairmanship of the various House and Senate committees to the Democrats, a very large shift in power occurred in the Life of Rights in the United States of America (in the People's House especially, with it role as regards "feeling"). While such a shift of power is not able to manifest in a rapid fashion (in spite of the hopes of the Left), this expectable time-delay has enabled the White House to continue to act out its disdain for the People, treating them as number-cyphers instead of as real human beings.
"Rovism is not simply a function of Rove the political conniver sitting in the counsels of power and making decisions, though he does. No recent presidency has put policy in the service of politics as has Bush's. Because tactics can change institutions, Rovism is much more. It is a philosophy and practice of governing that pervades the administration and even extends to the Republican-controlled Congress. As Robert Berdahl, chancellor of UC Berkeley, has said of Bush's foreign policy, a subset of Rovism, it constitutes a fundamental change in 'the fabric of constitutional government as we have known it in this country.'"Neal Gabler The Los Angeles Times Sunday 24 October 2004.
"The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack." Rove campaign memo from the early years in Texas.
"Rove is the greatest
political mind of his generation and probably of any generation. He not
only is a breathtakingly smart strategist but also a clever tactician.
He knows history, understands the moods of the public, and is a
visionary on matters of public policy. But he is not a magician." Fred Barnes, conservative commentator, editor The
Weekly Standard.
This then is what happened on the macro scale of modern human history. What then on a micro scale has happen in the internal makeup of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement? Were we somehow free of this influence? Did Ahriman incarnate and just ignore us in the process? I think not, and in the next essays it will be unfolded just what needs to happen within our circles in order for us to be able to speak first honestly among ourselves, before we can earn the moral authority to truly bring Anthroposophy further into world incarnation. The greatest potential for leading the instinctive Consciousness Soul into full awakening lies in Anthroposophy, and by implication in the Society and Movement. But these problems are not simple and many of the essays below are required of anyone wanting to really learn what is needed to be learned in order to meet the Challenge of Ahriman's Incarnation on the Cusp of the New Millennium.
We have one last task,however, which is most essential. Having discovered Ahriman's incarnation, how are we to treat the living man, now and into the future? Ahriman-Rove has a family, a wife and a son, should they think of him as evil? Of course not, he is a genius, he is a cosmic power incarnate, who will at the final judgment weep at the feet of the Mother and beg forgiveness for all that he had, out of his given nature, the responsibility to author.
Those seduced by Ahriman-Rove are to be pitied. Our problem then is not to assume evil and seek to rub it out, but to see clearly the social processes so that we, who would do the good, can discover how our work can be applied in the right places. Many already are, and otherwise will want to hate Rove, Cheney, Bush and others. Should we follow such an example, or create another? How do we redeem what Ahriman-Rove has done and properly honor it?
We are also frustrated by the scope of the debacle - Ahriman-Rove has spread chaos in the world in a huge way, and this is not yet finished, for much worse may yet be done by those who have succumbed to his influence.
One of the worst effects is the crucifixion of American Dream. All over the world, that which had once been a Beacon of Hope to many people living amidst poverty and despair, has now been tarnished, perhaps beyond repair. It this not then the next goal for America, to discover how to restore what has been defiled? Who will lead here? Who will understand this need for the imagination of the downtrodden the world over to have once more a Beacon of Hope?
All kinds of debris live as the after-effects of Ahriman-Rove's incarnation. The situation and consequences will not go away, but reverberate on into the future, and we have to not just come awake, but must learn how to stay awake.
Into the world the power, the tone, the sound of number, and the searing light of geometry incarnated, with its naturally given mission to draw downward the heart of the developing social organism into rigid form and lifelessness brilliance - what Rove called "the math". Here too was "mission accomplished", because while the Anthroposophical Movement and Society lost themselves in a massive forgetting of the true significance of Steiner's scientific introspection (The Philosophy of Freedom, and A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception), and in ignoring the beauty and potential for community life given by Steiner in Awakening to Community as the Reverse Cultus, we also took the living Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence given to us by Steiner as Anthroposophy and converted it to dead intellectualized content, without any life at all: the Steinerism displayed constantly in the excesses of Steiner-said.
There are no redeeming powers in Steinerism, such that without The Philosophy of Freedom (Spiritual Activity) and the Reverse Cultus, with which to meet the deeper spiritual after effects of Ahriman's incarnation, the Movement and Society are impotent. At the same time, American Anthroposophy (which this book seeks to illuminate) offers just those needed antidotes and inspiration for all of Anthroposophy world-wide. The American Soul must awake now, and the best leaders for this will be those American Anthroposophists who have the will and the courage to find the truth of who they are, as a separate but equal soul force in the threefold world.
Ahriman accomplished a great deal during the weaknesses of the 20th Century into which the Society and Movement fell, such that all kinds of wisdom was lost and buried in Ahriman's "preserving jars", locked up either in books stashed in libraries, and in books allowed to go out of print, while the anthroposophical publishing houses printed again and again Steiner's lectures, leaving aside all the work done by others during the 20th Century.
Let me take up just one other theme left in the dust heap of the 20th Century, along side The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and the Reverse Cultus: namely Projective Geometry. Nothing else has quite the ability to give to the Life of the Mind the forces necessary with which to meet Ahriman's one-sided: "...power, the tone, the sound of number, and the searing light of geometry incarnated...".
Let us begin with an obscure essay by George Adams Kaufman: Space and the Light of Creation: a new essay in cosmic theory. Just in the Chapter headings of this essay we can see the redemptive force of the new thinking as it penetrates the very realm of Ahriman and lifts it free through the art of thought of the tendency to an excess of gravitas: Chapter I: Radiation of Space; Chapter II: Music of Number; and, Chapter III: Burden of Earth and Sacrifice of Warmth.
One of the tasks of American Anthroposophy will have to be to rediscover and ingest the art which has been given to us by European anthroposophical endeavors during the 20th Century. This is something far beyond what Steiner had provided, but which he certainly inspired. In the essay far below: a letter to a young anthroposophist, you will find details.
Olive Whicher's book: Projective Geometry: Creative Polarities in Space and Time, should never be out of print, and ought to be on the same shelf with every anthroposophist's copy of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Awakening to Community. Little or no abstract thought is called for in this way of study - as all that is essential is taught through drawing.
The significance of Projective Geometry can be found here, quoted by Olive Whicher in her introduction to Adam's remarkable Physical and Ethereal Spaces: "Confirmed by Rudolf Steiner in the knowledge that the quality of thought prevailing in the new geometry is in reality indispensable both to the scientist in his quest of world-reality and to the individual on a path of spiritual development..." [underlining emphasis added].
The living (heart) thinking, to which many anthroposophists today aspire (but think comes far easier than it actually does), needs to remain scientific and picture-like in all its qualities. Nothing aids this need better than the study through drawing of Projective Geometry which teaches the I how to move and weave living pictorial thought, through and from one metamorphosis to the next, all the while never losing the exact and precise quality of scientific thinking.
To truly meet and contain Ahriman-Rove, we need a living spiritual social science, whose scientific qualities can only be found through pictorial thought trained in the disciplines of Projective Geometry. We meet his powers, with those of our own. Then out of this soul training, the I can hear the World Song in which is contained the logos speaking of the Christ into the social world of humanity (as the Lord - the Artist - of Karma). Just as Goethe learned to listen to the speech of Nature, we must now learn to listen to the speech of the social world, and then out of our own forces of art and story telling, render this logos speaking into pictures we share with each other.
Let me end by bringing forward
one last matter, which in its details can be found in the essay: The
Mystery of the True White Brother: an interpretation of the
meaning of the Hopi Prophecy by a member of the Elder Brother People.
[http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/eldbr.html] This essay, written ten
years ago, has not been revised, and so some of what is below, I was
not then able to introduce and will not be found therein.
The roots of the American Soul
are not found in Europe, but in America's Aboriginal Peoples. The
soul is determined by two main influences of which the most earthly is
and the most heavenly the incarnating spirit. Spirit and place
interact, and the soul is born.
Among the various Nations of
Indians, there is one who has a very special relationship to the whole:
the Hopi. All the Elders of the other Nations recognize
this. It is from a Hopi that we received the idea in the 1990's: we are the people we have been waiting for.
The Hopi Prophecy anticipates
the arrival from the East (from the
rising Sun), of the True White Brother. This influence is
to come at a time when the Nations of Indians will be in dire need, for
world conditions were have brought about their near destruction.
In the most crucial words of the Prophecy we find this statement: "This
third event will depend upon the Red Symbol, which will take command,
setting the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion for the benefit of
the Sun."
You can find details in the
above essay. but let me just render the true interpretation of this
phrase in the language with which anthroposophists are familiar.
At the time of great crisis, the World will be three times rocked into
War. It is the last, the
third event, which is the most crucial. The outcome
of this third event (Ahriman's Incarnation) will depend upon the
Red Symbol, or the People of the Rose-Cross. These People
of the Rose-Cross, the True
White Brother (true in the sense of also being awake to the living
Being of the Earth Mother and the Father in the Sky, as were all
Aboriginal Peoples), will then take command, setting
the four forces of nature in motion. These are the forces
of the Four Directions (honored in the Pipe Ceremony of the Lakota
Sioux), or the Cosmic Ethereal Forces (and their elemental servant
beings in Nature), which even Steiner recognized when he laid the
Foundation Stone for the original Goetheanum in the Earth, and then
later the Foundation Stone Meditation in the hearts of those who
attended the Christmas Conference.
All this for
the benefit of the Sun. For this all we need to remember
is that the Hopi Prophecy originated in a People who remembered
Atlantis (see my essay above). At the time of Atlantis, where was
Christ? He was in the Cosmic Sun Sphere! What then
does all this come to mean, especially given that the Prophecy also
recognizes that this needed work of the True White Brother can fail to
manifest?
The outcome of the Third Event -
the third time the World is rocked into War (Ahriman's Incarnation)
depends upon the People of the Rose-Cross bringing forward a
scientifically based knowledge of the Ethereal Cosmic Forces, not just
in the living aspects of the sense world, but in the life of thought
itself. Moreover, all this in service to the Christ, by
announcing His true Second Coming in the Ethereal, with all its majesty
(a Second Crucifixion, a Second Resurrection, and a Second Eucharist).
Are anthroposophists up to such
a task? Apparently that remains to be seen.