Conclusion
To recapitulate some history, from a slightly different, panoramic
viewpoint, using Steiner's insights into the interplay of individual and world
karma:
The ruling Time Spirit, since 1879 AD, is now the Sun-Archangel Michael
(the "Countenance of Christ"). His previous rulership encompassed the time of
Aristotle and Alexander. Michael is the administrator of Cosmic Intelligence,
and a promoter of cosmopolitanism. Ideas to Plato had been living spiritual
beings, attainable in higher vision. His pupil Aristotle put this pictorial
wisdom into conceptual thoughts, suitable for the age of lost clairvoyance;
Alexander carried this Greek thought-culture into the wider world -- both in
the service of Michael. But this ancient Greek thinking was not experienced as
coming from within the Man; it was rather experienced as coming, like
perceptions, from the outside, a cosmic Pan-Intelligence. Later, this
Aristotelianism was carried over to Jundi Sabur, and thence into
Arabian/Muslim culture. Perhaps the most brilliant and influential proponent
of this Arabian culture were the Caliph Haroun al Rashid and his associates,
in the Eighth Century AD. This culture was, as indicated above, brilliant in a
way, but was also anti-evolutionary in that it failed to appreciate the
Christ-Impulse and was infected with the Sorat/Ahriman influence from Jundi
Sabur. Around this time the cosmic Intelligence began to "fall to earth", out
of the rule of Michael and in the "heads" of Men; the Pan-Intelligence
becoming individualized, personal intelligence. This process was a preparation
for what was to culminate after the dawn of the Consciousness Soul Epoch in
the Fifteenth Century: that Men were to experience their thoughts as coming
from out of themselves, as a personal intelligence in individual freedom. In
869 AD the fateful Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople declared to be
heretical the doctrine of "trichotomy": that the Man is body, soul and spirit
-- thus effectively "outlawing the spirit" in Western Christendom, and
plunging West-European mankind ever more deeply into material experience.
While this Council was happening on earth, in the soul/spirit world Haroun al
Rashid and his associates, who had recently died, conferred with the
individuality of Aristotle and associates: Alexander and the "Aristotelians",
together with the "Platonists" and the Knights of Arthur's Round Table. In
this meeting Aristotle and his associates resolved to bring to earth a renewed
and Christianized wisdom suitable for the epoch of individualized intelligence
of the Consciousness Soul, but al Rashid and his party remained opposed to
this Christianization. Subsequently, on earth, the Arabian impulse was carried
forward by philosophers such as Avicenna and Averroës, who upheld a decadent
and retrogressive quasi-Aristotelianism, which denied human-spiritual
individuality surviving death. And the Platonists descended to earthly
incarnation, up through the Twelfth Century, as teachers of the Christianized
Nature-wisdom of the School of Chartres. (This wisdom later inspired Bruno
Latini, and consequently his pupil Dante.) In the Thirteenth Century the
Aristotelians incarnated into the Dominican Order, wherein, with the help of
the Platonists then in the spirit-world, they upheld the doctrine of
human-individual intelligence and immortality, in the subtle conceptual
thinking of the Scholastic "Realists", as against the Arabian philosophers.
The greatest of the Scholastics was Aristotle himself, incarnated as Thomas
Aquinas, the proponent of the reality of Pan-Intelligence in the form of
concepts -- the "universals" -- and of the reality of human-individual
experience of intelligence. -- After the end of Medieval culture and the
beginning of the Consciousness Soul Epoch, al Rashid himself incarnated as
none other than Francis Bacon, the fountainhead of modern, Ahrimanic
scientism. (Paradoxically, Bacon was inspired by a high Initiate, who also
inspired Shakespeare, Jacob Boehme, and Jacob Balde. [Karmic Relationships,
Vol. II] Again: evolution is not a simple, two-sided conflict between
"good" and "evil" -- in a way, a nominalistic-empirical science "had to" enter
cultural development.) Ahriman intends to make the now-earthly human
intelligence entirely, overly individualized and personal, so that it
degenerates into mere cleverness, driven by lower instincts and divorced from
universal reality. But while Baconian science gained ground on earth, in the
spirit/soul world the Platonists and Aristotelians convened in a "school"
under the leadership of Michael. This school prepared the impulses which were
to appear later on earth as the renewing and enlivening of culture in the
coming Michael Age. (Meanwhile, in the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,
Ahriman had convened a "school" of his own, for the purpose, among others, of
preparing his human acolytes for their coming incarnations, especially those
in our time. This school was "sub-earthly" in the sense that it was beneath
the earth's surface, and in the sense that it was "sub-sensible" -- the
opposite of supersensible.) This heavenly gathering, around the turning of the
Eighteenth/Nineteenth centuries, culminated in a mighty Ritual, while on earth
the Romantic Movement brought life into culture, before the deep descent into
the materialism of the later Nineteenth century. (Goethe in a previous
incarnation had been a sculptor associated closely with Plato.) -- After 1879
the Aristotelians were in incarnation (led, as Prokofieff and Lievegoed
maintain, by Aristotle/Thomas himself as Rudolf Steiner) and brought to earth
the content of the Michael School as Anthroposophy ("spiritual science").
(Plato himself had been incarnated toward the end of the Nineteenth century as
the Goethean scholar Karl Julius Schröer, teacher of Rudolf Steiner at the
Technische Hochschule in Vienna.) And, shortly before his death, Steiner
prophesied that the Aristotelians, together with the Platonists, would again
be on earth for the battle against Ahriman at the end of the Twentieth
Century. "...those who stand with full intensity within the Anthroposophical
Movement will return at the end of the century, and others will then unite
with them, for by this means the salvation of the earth and earthly
civilization from destruction must eventually be settled. This is the mission
of the Anthroposophical Movement...." [Karmic Relationships, Vol. IV]
-- The troops are mustering; the armies are forming up for battle: The hosts
of Ahriman against the hosts of Michael.
Note: This struggle is further complicated by the fact that, besides the
coming physical incarnation of Ahriman, a non-physical, ethereal manifestation
of Ahriman will occur, with the aim of obscuring the appearance of the
Ethereal Christ. This aim is being furthered by the supra-Masonic, occult
"power groups" (or "brotherhoods") mentioned earlier. Steiner says: "These
brotherhoods of which I have just spoken, whose aim is to banish the souls of
men into materialistic spheres, are also making it their aim to ensure that
the coming of Christ should pass by unnoticed in the twentieth century, that
His coming as an etheric Being should not be noticed by mankind. This aim is
developing under the influence of a very definite idea, a very definite
impulse of will, to win the sphere of influence which should come to us
through Christ in the twentieth and later centuries, for another being -- to
conquer that sphere for another being....These brotherhoods of the West do
exist. They aim to thwart the impulse of the Christ and put in his place
another individuality that has never appeared in the flesh -- an etheric being
of a strongly Ahrimanic nature." [lecture of 18 Nov., 1917; quoted in
Tradowsky's Kaspar Hauser, pp. 198-9]
-- Prokofieff [in The
Spiritual Origiins of Eastern Europe...], tries to explicate the
inter-relations of Sorat, Lucifer, and Ahriman -- thusly: The ethereal
Ahrimanic manifestation will be of a being still mightier than the "Ahriman"
who will incarnate in the flesh, an ethereal "emissary" of the Sun Demon,
Sorat. This "emissary" was the being who inspired the demonic impulse of Jundi
Shapur, and might "temporarily incorporate" in the incarnated "Ahriman" in
"the culminating moments of the earthly activity of the latter". (Sorat
himself will directly enter earthly evolution only in the distant future.)
Further, this "emissary" works through Luciferic spirits to inspire Jesuitism,
through Ahrimanic spirits to inspire the Western "brotherhoods", and directly
to inspire Bolshevism [and perhaps Nazism]. -- And [in The Cycle of the
Year...], Prokofieff tries to explain the present crescendo of phenomena
surrounding "UFOs" as proceeding from these Western "brotherhoods" which seek
to "...conjure forth a spectral ream which will -- in accordance with the
intentions of this [ethereal, Ahrimanic 'emissary'] Being -- be formed
immediately beneath the surface of the Earth in the region of its solid and
liquid elements....That is, in that sphere where during the fifteenth to the
eighteenth centuries the sub-earthly Ahrimanic school began its
operations....and from which [sphere] the many so-called 'unexplained'
phenomena of our time, mistakenly ascribed to extra-terrestrial influences,
proceed." [pp. 299, 410] As mentioned above, these "brothers" seek to so
harden their ethereal bodies as to attain an "Ahrimanic immortality" for
themselves in the environment of the Earth, and to so harden the Earth as to
prevent it from passing over to the New Jupiter.
-- Tradowsky, in his more
recent work >>>Christ and Antichrist gives a somewhat
similar, and perhaps somewhat differing, view: "...three stages [re
Jundi Shapur] are defined: Sorath, the Beast, as the impulse-giver; and
ahrimanic being as inspirer; a Man, who, so to speak, propagates and acts as
the representative on earth of his doctrines. With that an indication is given
of the co-operation between Sorath and the ahrimanic beings, which have
several characteristics in common." [pp. 21-2] Tradowsky seems to see the
666-year rhythm as pertaining more essentially to Sorat than to Ahriman. Here
is an excerpt from the same book, quoting Steiner's lecture to priests of the
Christian Community in Sept. 1924: "We can say, as the writer of the
Apocalypse would put it, that before the Etheric Christ can be properly
understood by people, mankind must have passed through the encounter with the
Beast, which will make its appearance in 1933....At the end of the century
[1998] we come to the time when Sorath again rises his head most
powerfully from the surrounding flood of evolution. He will oppose the vision
of Christ which will appear in the etheric world to those who are prepared to
receive it in the first half of the twentieth century..." (It is startling
that Steiner named the exact year of Hitler's [and FD Roosevelt's] accession
to political power as the time of the direct intervention of the Beast Sorat
in earthly affairs.) Tradowsky comments: "...the present situation [re
Sorat] is far more dangerous [than in 1933], if only for the reason
that people imagine that it is less dangerous....At present, however, the
situation is the reverse [vs. 1933]. One is exposed to an inner
undertow, which is so insidious because it gradually creeps up on the soul
unawares in tiny steps, in such a way that truth and the reality of the
spiritual world become ever more shrouded in oblivion. Truly, it is so
difficult to tackle such an elusive foe because he does everything to remain
unnoticed." [p. 48-9] Tradowsky apparently sees the present incursion of
Sorat as distinct from the impending incarnation of Ahriman, though both are
closely related. For some, this may seem a fine point, given the horrific and
tremendously critical nature of the crisis. However, in the end it may not be
a superfluous distinction; we may need all the understanding we can get, in
order to face the crisis correctly. Again, I refer the reader to this
excellent book, as well as to Steiner's 1924 lectures, both now available in
English.
Steiner sums up the nature of the struggle between Michael and Ahriman for
the formerly-cosmic and now-earthly Intelligence: "...in Ahriman there
stands before us a cosmic Being of the highest imaginable Intelligence, a
cosmic Being who has already taken the Intelligence entirely into the
individual, personal element. In every conceivable direction Ahriman is in the
highest degree intelligent, over-intelligent. He has at his command a dazzling
Intelligence, proceeding from the whole human being, with the single exception
of the part of the human being which in the human forehead takes on human
form.
"To reproduce Ahriman in human Imaginations
we should have to give him a receding forehead, a frivolously cynical
expression, for in him everything comes out of the lower forces, and yet from
these lower forces the highest Intelligence proceeds. If ever we let ourselves
in for a discussion with Ahriman, we should inevitably be shattered by the
logical conclusiveness, the magnificent certainty of aim with which he
manipulates his arguments,. The really decisive question for the world of men,
in the opinion of Ahriman, is this: Will cleverness or stupidity prevail? And
Ahriman calls stupidity everything which does not contain Intelligence in it
in full personal individuality. Every Ahriman-being is over-endowed with
personal Intelligence in the way I have now described; critical ... in the
repudiation of all things unlogical; scornful and contemptuous in thought.
"When we have Ahriman before us in this way, then too we shall feel the
great contrast between Ahriman and Michael. For Michael is not in the least
concerned with the personal quality of Intelligence. It is only for man that
the temptation is ever-present to make his Intelligence personal after the
pattern of Ahriman. Truth to tell, Ahriman has a most contemptuous judgment of
Michael. He thinks Michael foolish and stupid -- stupid, needless to say, in
relation to himself. For Michael does not wish to seize Intelligence and make
it personally his own. Michael only wills, and has willed through the
thousands of years, nay through the aeons, to administer the Pan-Intelligence.
And now once more that men have the Intelligence, it should again be
administered by Michael as something belonging to all mankind -- as the common
and universal Intelligence that benefits all men alike.
"We human beings shall indeed do rightly...if we say to ourselves: the
idea that we can have cleverness for ourselves alone is foolish. Certainly we
cannot be clever for ourselves alone. For if we want to prove anything to
another person logically, the first thing we must presume if that the same
logic holds good for him as for ourselves. And for a third party it is again
the same logic. If anyone were to have a logic of his own, it would be absurd
for us to want to prove anything to him by our logic." [Karmic
Relationships, Vol. III]
And, Steiner makes this concept of "Intelligence" more concrete: "What is
Intelligence? These abstract generalisations do not of course exist in
reality. `Intelligence' means the mutual relationships of conduct among the
higher Hierarchies. What they do, how they relate themselves to one
another, what they are to one another -- this is Cosmic Intelligence. And
since as Men we must first consider the Kingdom that is nearest to us,
concretely speaking the Cosmic Intelligence will be for us the sum-total of
the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angeloi. If we are speaking concretely we
cannot say `so much Intelligence', but rather `so many Angeloi'. This is the
reality." -- Around that fateful year of 869 AD there was a split in the world
of angels: the other six "Planetary Archangels", which until then had been led
by Michael, "rebelled" against the Sun-rulership, taking with them their
associated angels. Since the angels are the carriers of the reincarnating
human individualities, this split brought human karma into "disorder"; much of
the chaos in recent history is the result of this schism. And those Men whose
angels fell away from Michael "...receive their personal Intelligence as a
complete matter of course. This means that it works in them automatically,
through their bodily nature. It works in such a way that they think, think
cleverly, but are not fully and deeply and humanly concerned in what they
think." [Karmic Relationships, Vol. IV] -- These now-earthly angels can
"incorporate" themselves into Men, the cleverest ones who deny the spirit,
when human consciousness becomes impaired or dull: a very real kind of
Ahrimanic "possession": "Ahriman's perpetual endeavor is to appropriate the
intelligence of human beings and not allow them to realise what they can
achieve through their own intelligence....Men must strive as time goes on to
keep their intelligence under their own individual control, to keep unceasing
watch over it.....Ahriman takes full advantage of moments when, in full waking
life, a man falls into a state of vertigo or dizziness, into a kind of
twilight consciousness, when he feels not quite securely anchored in the
physical world and begins to yield himself to the whirl of the universe, when
he does not stand firmly and steadily on his own feet as an
individuality....The best way we can protect ourselves is to develop clear,
exact thinking, not simply skimming over things in thought as is the general
custom today. We should go even farther and try to avoid colloquialisms and
current catchwords, for directly we use such words which come, not from
thoughts but from habits of speech, we are not exercising thinking -- even if
only for a very short time. These are particularly dangerous moments because
they are not heeded. We should really be careful to avoid using words behind
which there is not sufficient reflection." [The Occult Movement in the
Nineteenth Century pp. 170f.] It really does matter how we use language!
[What is now happening in mankind is nothing less than a further
Incarnation of logic (the Logos, "Word"), which is Cosmic Intelligence. The
"Word" is "becoming flesh" in the individualities of Men on earth. The Christ
(Logos/logic) is indwelling individual Men. Ahriman -- the Spirit of Lies --
seeks to falsify this intelligence by severing it from the Cosmos and making
it, and mankind, entire earthly. But just as logic (Logos) is universally true
for all Men, an entirely individual, subjective logic/intelligence is false --
a lie, an unreality. To think truly, as an individual being with universal
Intelligence, is a deed important for the whole earth, for all mankind. It is
an act in the battle for the future of the earth, for Michael against Ahriman,
for the Cosmic Christ Who descended to become the Spirit of the
Earth.]
Again, Steiner says that the time of decision is around the end of the
Twentieth Century. We "will either stand at the grave of civilization" or we
will turn toward a spiritualized culture. We may face a scaled-down "War of
All against All". (This War is known to occultism as the catastrophe that will
end the Post-Atlantean Age, as the Flood ended the Atlantean Age.) We are
given help through the present Second Resurrection of Christ -- in the
consciousness of Men -- following the Second Crucifixion of Christ by the
materialism in the souls of the dead from the Nineteenth Century onward. We
can now think angel-thoughts, have Christ-thoughts and Christ-feelings on
earth. This ability prepares, but is not to be confused with the perception of
the Ethereal Christ. This natural clairvoyance, which was hindered in 1933 may
again become possible from 2000 AD onward, as a reflection of the Deed of
Abraham around 2000 BC. He was the first Man to transform the old clairvoyance
into brain-thinking: the reflection of this event will be the freeing of
thought from the brain and transformation into free, conscious clairvoyance.
[The date of 2000 BC for Abraham derives from Stegmann. Prokofieff puts the
calling of Abraham around 2100 BC.] There will be no real social healing
unless Men allow the Christ into their souls.
To outward appearances, the Christ-influence might seem so weak, and the
Ahrimanic influence so strong, that we might lose heart. But we can take heart
by ever recalling that the greatest, most powerful event of our times is the
coming of the Ethereal Christ. It is the unseen driving force behind the
visible depredations of the Adversaries. A new clairvoyance is coming as a
natural development; Ahriman seeks to divert it into the earthbound,
intellectual pseudo-thinking of the hardened ethereal body, so that the
Ethereal Christ passes by mankind unnoticed and another (Ahriman) is
substituted in His place. But cosmic wisdom in the human mind has power: Men
permeated by this wisdom -- spiritual science -- instill horror into the
Ahrimanic spirits. If we meet the Ethereal Christ and the earthly Ahriman
consciously, with spirit-will, both events will serve the good of mankind and
the world.
The battle against Ahriman in the West will require greater inner force
than elsewhere (as indicated, because the "spiritual geography" of the
American continent favors the Doppelgänger and Ahrimanic spirits
generally), therefore the gain from the eventual victory can be all the
greater. Ahriman can be defeated in America, just as the Mexican black
magician was defeated by the Sun-being Vitzliputzli almost 2000 years ago. And
we have the prophecy from Steiner that, while the present American materialism
is strong, it is youthful and childlike; it is destined to be outgrown, into a
spiritualized culture -- during the sixth (Slavic) epoch. The power Ahriman is
great, especially in America, but the power of Christ is greater. Yet the
Christ and His hosts (with Michael in the forefront) respect and wait upon
human freedom; and with freedom comes responsibility. If Men will consciously
take up the Christ-power, the earth can be won for the good.
Back to Table of Contents
A note on some un-PC terminology: The English language does not have as
clear a word for human being irrespective of sex as does, for instance,
the German language, which has Mensch in contradistinction to
Mann, which means (male) man. I have decided to avoid, when
possible, the use of the word human, for, as Terry Boardman has pointed
out, human has the same root as humus, (soil, earth),
whereas man has the same root as manas. The natural English word
man, of course, can mean either human being or (male) man
-- or at least it could before the advent of PCism. The context would usually
make the meaning clear, but even disregarding PC considerations, confusion
still could sometimes happen. So, one might use human being to mean
man in the sexless sense, however, besides being awkward and
cumbersome, this usage does deny the wisdom contained in the natural English
language: that man means a creature having an inherent spiritual
principle (manas), not necessarily a (male) man, still less a
creature of the soil, of the earth. -- So, I use Man, capitalized,
to mean human being, and mankind to mean the aggregate of
human beings. I usually use the Man to refer to the individual, so
as to avoid confusion with the universal archetype, the Platonic Idea,
MAN. -- However, I do use the adjective human; somehow,
Manly just won't do. But, after all, human is not altogether a
"dirty word", it is related to the Latin homo = man.
This essay is based, directly or indirectly, on
the "spiritual science", or "Anthroposophy", promulgated by Rudolf Steiner in
the first quarter of the Twentieth Century. I say "based on" because this
exposition can only be grossly oversimplified, and must contain whatever
misunderstandings that derive from my own (more or less) weak grasp of the
subject-matter. The reader must assume that this essay is almost wholly
derivative; it contains scarcely any original ideas of my own. In the interest
of readability (and to give my strained resources a break), I do not provide
full citations in the text. If I did, almost every sentence would be
footnoted. I do provide below some bibliographic remarks, which I hope will be
useful to the conscientious reader. It is probable that hundreds, or
thousands, of people in this world are better qualified than I to write this
notice. I wrote it because: 
The
foregoing discussion can help us understand a presently unfolding event: the
"emergence" of the so-called "Maitreya", now being promoted by Benjamin Creme
and others. Allegedly this "Maitreya" is not only the Christ but also the
Messiah, Krishna, and the Imam Mahdi. The story goes like this: 