Secret Brotherhoods E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

In the age of the internet and the proliferation of 'conspiracy theories', the idea that secret groups are seeking to gain control over humanity is no longer uncommon. This was not the case in 1917, however, when Rudolf Steiner spoke on this theme in these extraordinary lectures. His unique contribution to this controversial topic is no abstract theory, but arose from his specific research methodology involving the use of advanced forms of perception and cognition. With the firsthand knowledge available to him, Steiner takes us behind the scenes of external events, revealing the dark world of secret, elitist brotherhoods working to control the masses through the forces of economics, technology and political assassinations. These hidden groups, he explains, seek to gain power through the use of ritual magic and suggestion. Among the many other topics tackled here, Steiner speaks on the geographical quality of the American continent and the forces that proceed from it; the nature of the double (doppelganger) and the dangers of psychoanalysis; the spiritual origin of electromagnetism; the abuse of inoculations and vaccinations; the meaning of Ireland for world development; the confusion of angels with higher beings and the divinity; and, above all, the need for clear insight into world events based on spiritual knowledge. Never before available in English as a complete volume, the text of this book has been freshly translated for this edition.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

SECRET BROTHERHOODS

SECRET BROTHERHOODS

and the Mystery of the Human Double

Seven lectures given in St Gallen, Zurich and Dornach between 6 and 25 November 1917

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Translated by Johanna Collis

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Originally published in German, with two additional lectures, under the title Individuelle Geistwesen und ihr Wirken in der Seele des Menschen (volume 178 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. (The lectures of 10 and 11 November 1917 are available in English in Freud, Jung and Spiritual Psychology, Anthroposophic Press.) This authorized translation, based on the 4th edition, is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 301 1

Cover art by Anne Stockton; design by Andrew Morgan Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Lecture Summaries

Introduction by Terry Boardman

1. Knowledge of the Supersensible and Riddles of the Human SoulPublic Lecture, St Gallen, 15 November 1917

2. The Mystery of the Double. Geographic MedicineSt Gallen, 16 November 1917

3. Behind the Scenes of External Events, IZurich, 6 November 1917

4. Behind the Scenes of External Events, IIZurich 13 November 1917

5. Individual Spirit Beings and the Constant Foundation of the Universe, IDornach, 18 November 1917

6. Individual Spirit Beings and the Constant Foundation of the Universe, IIDornach, 19 November 1917

7. Individual Spirit Beings and the Constant Foundation of the Universe, IIIDornach, 25 November 1917

Notes

Note regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Lecture Summaries

Lecture 1

Characterization of science and spiritual science: scientific observation traces phenomena back to their origin (birth) and studies what is visible; the starting-point for spiritual science is death and what happens thereafter in the spiritual world. Resignation or the courage to seek more knowledge when the outer limits are reached. F. T. Vischer. Du Bois-Reymond. Inner and outer pictures. Calculations by James Dewar and those based on the Kant-Laplace theory. Forces of construction (life) and destruction (death). Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. How the manner of death affects the next life. Understanding the soul and spirit elements in human being and universe. How spiritual knowledge illumines destiny. The effects on life and life after death of materialistic and spiritual world views. Darwin, Haeckel, Hartmann, Hertwig. Goetheanism.

Lecture 2

The time has come to reveal spiritual secrets. Increasing emphasis on materialism since the sixteenth century necessitates the search for spiritual knowledge today. The importance of a shared cultivation of spiritual science for the life of the soul after death. Spiritual concepts throw light on knowledge. How the spiritual world impinges on the physical. The faculty of love. The double entering before birth and wanting to remain after death. This has been prevented by the Mystery of Golgotha, as is known to secret brotherhoods and must now become known to all. Geographic medicine and how the double is affected by emanations from the earth. European contacts with America before and after the age of the consciousness soul. Christianization by Irish and Scottish missionaries. The earth as a living organism. Nationalism and world culture. Russia and America. Europe’s relationship with America; Emerson and Woodrow Wilson. Spiritual science as a force for life.

Lecture 3

Human souls now becoming conscious of much that formerly lay beyond consciousness. Some are concerned more with the spiritual world while others seek earthly power. The guidance of humanity in accordance with esoteric laws. Becoming conscious of the mysteries of sickness, procreation and death. Knowledge gained by souls who die by assassination. The power of secret brotherhoods. Efforts to paralyse spiritual development. The important year of 1841. The spirits of darkness at work in human souls since 1879. Seeing through them robs them of their power. Working for spiritual science.

Lecture 4

The transformation of soul life during the course of time. Monotheism leads human beings only to their own angel. Personal monotheism leads to national monotheism. Instead, one ought to enter into a concrete relationship with the spiritual world. Reality must prevail over abstraction. The battle in the spiritual world between 1841 and 1879. The spirits of darkness at work. Secret brotherhoods and their various goals. The task of spiritual science. How materialistic views work in the spiritual world. The nature of freedom. Relationship with the dead. Psychoanalysis. Disorders of the soul as a consequence of a wrong relationship with the dead. Spiritual knowledge as a remedy. Working out of spiritual impulses and the obstacles encountered.

Lecture 5

The spirit cannot be comprehended by means of the concept of the unconscious. Where there is spirit there is consciousness. Secret brotherhoods seek to use occult knowledge for their own ends. The zenith of materialism and experiencing the appearance of Christ in the etheric. To tackle evil consciously is a contemporary task. How spiritual or materialistic concepts work in the life after death, and how secret brotherhoods use this knowledge. The illusion that spiritual forces are merely forces of nature. Spiritualism—a higher form of materialism. A protection against occult machinations is to recognize them. The Christ-impulse. The inclination of western and eastern secret brotherhoods to distract human souls from the appearance of Christ. The impulse of Ireland. Eliminating the ‘American’ impulse. The subconscious and the double. The latter’s dependence on terrestrial conditions.

Lecture 6

The secret brotherhoods and spiritualism. Contradictions in life. A unifying universal principle and how certain spiritual individualities work. Living reality and abstract lack of contradiction. Outer nature suggests the existence of a unifying universal principle, but individual spirits contradict one another behind the tapestry of the senses. The elemental beings. Thinking, feeling and will and how differentiated beings work. Evil. Christ in the fifth post-Atlantean period. Freedom. The legend of Ireland. Ireland and the Christianization of Europe. The double and freedom. Taylor’s division of labour as an example.

Lecture 7

The old culture is gone and spiritual science points to the future. Vital questions: Use of etheric forces in machines. Control of life, sickness and death. Control of procreation and birth. Forces coming in from points in the zodiac. To overlook spiritual impulses or take hold of them in freedom. The philosophers’ stone. God, virtue, immortality. How the secret brotherhoods redefine them. Selfless consideration of spiritual matters is a contemporary necessity. How western and eastern brotherhoods use spiritual knowledge. Depending on how human beings behave on earth, the dead can work out of the spiritual world in freedom or be coerced into human existence in an artificial way.

Introduction

by Terry Boardman

This is a stark and extremely challenging group of lectures, given at a decisive time of tremendous crisis for humanity and dealing with themes that stretch from 1917 back into the distant past as well as into the far future. Johanna Collis’s new translation is eminently readable and lucid, making the reader’s task of getting to grips with the challenging nature of the content that much easier.

This publication of these lectures, originally given by Rudolf Steiner in Dornach, Zurich, and St Gallen in November 1917, is timely indeed, for so many of the topics are of direct relevance to numerous difficult aspects of life in our own time. Steiner deals with: the drive towards a world government by elitist forces that seek to control the masses through the forces of economics, technology and political assassinations; the goals of secret brotherhoods in the West that work through these forces and other such brotherhoods in the East with their own aims and methods; the ways in which both these groups work against the Christ; the nature of the American continent and the forces that proceed from it; the relations between Russia, Europe and America; the meaning of Ireland for world development; the spiritual origin of electromagnetism; the relation between the life after death and life on the physical plane; the abuse of inoculations and vaccinations; the nature of the double, or doppelgänger, and the dangers of psychoanalysis; the confusion of angels with higher beings and the divinity; the difference between thinking and brain activity, and above all, the need for clear insight into world events that is based on spiritual knowledge. These are just some of the main themes in this remarkably illuminating collection of lectures, which, in a way, complement the lectures given in December 1916 and January 1917 (published in English as The Karma of Untruthfulness, Vols I and II). While in that earlier series of lectures at the beginning of the year 1917 Steiner went into very great detail about the specifics of world events related to the coming of the First World War (an effort to illuminate the past causes of the war), in these November lectures he paints on a much broader canvas and is looking more to the future in the light of what the war has revealed, especially in view of the dramatic events of the year 1917 itself. In these lectures he was giving his listeners important strategic keys with which the developments in the twentieth century and beyond could be illuminated.

Much has been said in recent years about the epoch-making significance of the events of 2001, notably that of 11 September, but historians in the future may well look back and judge that 1917 was a far more signficant year for humanity—the year in which, arguably, the twentieth century really began. The year 1917 was indeed a crucial one for the modern world and for Rudolf Steiner, as these lectures make clear.

He began the year by continuing the series of lectures he had commenced in Dornach in December 1916 on ‘The Occult Background of the War’, published in English under the title The Karma of Untruthfulness, Vols I and II. Given at a critical point in the war when at Christmas 1916 there was the best hope for peace negotiations following formal peace proposals put forward by the German and American governments, those remarkable lectures were akin to a crash course in applied media studies and world events for an anthroposophical membership who, he felt, had been too interested in hearing only about the spiritual world and not so much about the relations between the spiritual and material worlds that had resulted in the catastrophe of the war. The peace moves of December 1916 offered perhaps the last real hope for sanity and peace. The month proved to be the hinge on which the war turned. The Western Allies rejected the vague German peace offers of Christmas 1916 out of hand, and on 6 April President Woodrow Wilson took the United States into the First World War. On 11 March the British captured Baghdad from the Turks and on the following day, the Russian Revolution ended the 300-year-old rule of the Romanovs. The first American troops arrived in Europe in June. From May to October ‘visions’ of the Virgin Mary were seen at Fatima, one of which on 13 July spoke about the need for the conversion of Russia. On 1 August at the same time as a lecture course Rudolf Steiner gave in Berlin on the Karma of Materialism, Pope Benedict XV, in a vain attempt to wield the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, issued his seven-point peace plan to the belligerents, which was ignored by all except Austria-Hungary. During the summer the revolutionary republican government led by Alexander Kerensky in Russia crumbled, and at the very time Rudolf Steiner was giving the lectures in the present collection, the Bolsheviks seized power on 7 November. Two days later the British Government’s Balfour Declaration to Lord Rothschild was published, which promised a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people. On the Western Front, the appalling slaughter and macabre horrors of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) had just dragged to its end on the day Steiner gave the first of these lectures. It had begun, back on 18 July, with a British artillery bombardment from 3000 guns firing four and a quarter million shells that lasted for ten days. British and German casualties numbered some 600,000 after the three months of the ‘battle’—such was the karma of European materialism, the direct result, as Rudolf Steiner puts it, of too many people having been asleep both to world events prior to 1914 and to the ways in which spiritual realities play into those events.

After the lectures in the present collection, Rudolf Steiner gave in Dornach a course of seven lectures in December of this fateful year 1917 that concerned themselves with historical necessity and free will. During that course, on 11 December, the first ‘Christian’ army for 673 years entered Jerusalem under the British General Allenby, a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell. On 23 December in Basel, Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture, later published under the title Et Incarnatus Est, The Time-Cycle in Historical Events, in which he presented the vital key for historical understanding of the 33-year periodicity in historical events that is based on the life of Jesus Christ.

Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Vatican—all the old European powers proved themselves in 1917 to be utterly bankrupt of new and fruitful ideas that could lead the Continent out of the morass of the war and into some kind of healing process. The karma of European materialism, especially since 1841–79, had led to the result that Europe’s 300-year period of global domination was about to be overwhelmed by the massive forces of the peripheral superpowers of America and Russia, whose mutual enmity would overshadow the rest of the twentieth century and threaten to extinguish European culture altogether.

Any good public speaker is always very aware of the time and space in which a lecture is being given. A good public speaker who also happens to be clairvoyant can go further and be aware of the individuals in the audience who will— as a result of their special interests and destiny—be especially receptive to the content of the lecture. It is never an easy matter to determine why Rudolf Steiner gave a particular lecture on a particular date at a particular place or why he chose to insert a particular section or even a particular sentence in a lecture that might, on a superficial reading of it, seem odd or out of place. One of the points he makes in this collection of lectures is that those who communicate spiritual ideas to the wider public must be prepared for many disappointments. They must realize that out of an audience of scores or hundreds, only one or two may be really open for what is being given. Only one or two lives may be changed by it, if any. Nevertheless one must press on with the work regardless, with iron determination, understanding that spiritual reality is mirrored in natural reality; just as nature is amazingly fecund and only a few seeds in a season may actually survive to become fully grown plants, so the speaker on spiritual realities must be aware that in the audience in the specific location where the lecture is being given there may be just the right individual(s) who will really be able to make something of what is being said.

As a clairvoyant researcher, Rudolf Steiner was in a position to know these things, so that when he gave some of the lectures in this collection, those in St Gallen and Zurich, for example, he was aware that in St Gallen he was speaking in a location where the early Celtic Christian monks of Ireland with their strong impulse for healing had been active during the Dark Ages. He was aware that some of those Celtic Christian missionaries to the Continent knew of the existence of America and of the need to keep Europe ‘walled off’ spiritually from America until Europe was ready to deal with the powerful spiritual forces related to the American continent. These forces had a purely geographic nature connected to subterranean magnetism and the north-south axis of mountain ranges such as the Rockies and the Andes. Spiritual knowledge of this fact by Europeans with insight led to visits to the American continent to do special research into medicines that could only be done on the American continent. Was it merely coincidence that one who carried the same name as the Irish Celtic missionary Columbanus and who hailed from Italy, the land where Columbanus died, found the way to America 1100 years after Columbanus and the Celtic Christians had, according to Rudolf Steiner in these lectures, been responsible for assisting Rome in cutting Europe off from America?

Steiner was also aware, as he says in lecture 4 of this collection, that in his own day Zurich was a strong centre for the modern practice of psychoanalysis, a practice he describes as extremely ‘dangerous’ because it was attempting to deal with powerful spiritual forces operative in the subconscious without understanding the very real nature of those forces. Later in the twentieth century, Zurich, with its infamous ‘gnomes’, and Basel, home of the central bankers’ bank (the Bank of International Settlements), would become centres of global financial control closely linked to London and New York.

This relates to another in the trio of main themes in these lectures: the clandestine efforts of secretive oligarchical brotherhoods to exercise a control over the masses of humanity that is historically illegitimate in the post-Renaissance, post-Reformation modern epoch—a control that is based on influencing the subconscious by means of instilling fear, for example, the kind of economic fear that proceeds today mainly from the Western world. The activities of these secretive elitist groups that work through modern capitalism and technology create juggernaut-like forces that produce a counteraction of fear in others, who may be members of traditional non-Western societies that feel their cultures threatened. They may be idealistic people in Western societies whose feelings and instincts are in the right direction for the modern age but whose thinking and insight are unable to cope with events. Both of these two different types of groups can then lash out in forms of terrorism at what they feel to be oppression.

Whereas normal development in the modern age ought to take place in accordance with the conscious understanding of the autonomous individual, Steiner shows in these lectures how esoteric groups seek to perpetuate the methods of past epochs when societies were led, flocklike, by the initiates of the mystery centres. Furthermore, actions that were once justified in the right historical context have become evil, he says, in that these power-hungry elite groups are now serving spiritual beings who have been particularly active within human thinking (in what can well up from the subconscious) since the last third of the nineteenth century and which seek to extinguish all spiritual life and replace it with a thoroughgoing materialism, aiming to cut off the possibility of human contact with the Christ. One of the ways in which they do this, Rudolf Steiner reveals, is by making use of the dead in ritualistic fashion; those who cross the threshold of death through murder or assassination can thereby learn things which those who cross over in normal ways do not, and the secret brotherhoods can acquire this knowledge from the dead by means of mediums and rituals. Steiner’s research here opens up an avenue for how to reconsider events of mass killing such as the Tokyo underground gas attacks or the deaths of nearly 3000 people in the attacks on the Twin Towers. What happens to the dead when they go over the threshold in such a way as the result of willed murderous action that emanates from groups with specific political or cultural aims? Indeed, the topic of relations between the living and the dead, especially in terms of manipulation of the dead and of the thoughts of the dead, is a main theme of these lectures, which were given between 6 and 25 November, traditionally the season for remembrance of the dead. It is noteworthy that in the first lecture in the collection Steiner starkly points out that spiritual science must take its starting-point from the fact of death and the limits it appears to impose. Death and its role in the scheme of things must be understood. Without understanding of the relation between death and life, without going beyond the limits that death appears to present, says Rudolf Steiner, we will be at a loss to comprehend the real nature of many events in the modern world.

In these lectures Rudolf Steiner shows the relation of 1917 to the Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, the dark angels who were cast out of the spiritual world in 1879 following the long ‘War in Heaven’ that began in 1841. He draws attention to the actions of power groups serving these beings in east and west in 1917. ‘Awareness alone ... clear recognition and understanding’ of spiritual realities together with willingness to recognize the objective evil forces at work in the world and their purpose in the scheme of things—these are the only means that can be of real help in modern humanity’s predicament, says Steiner. These capacities of awareness, recognition and understanding of spritual realities lead to what in modern parlance has come to be called ‘consciousness raising’, and that is a real power, because, as Rudolf Steiner points out in these lectures of nearly 90 years ago, the idea that ‘you are what you eat’ is a lie. The fact is that both in life and after death we actually become what we think: if we choose to think that we are animals, entirely materialistic beings concerned essentially with survival, as many of today’s neo-Darwinist evolutionary biologists and sociobiologists would have us believe, then that is what we will become. It should be obvious to anyone that this is actually taking place before our eyes today, as some people actually attempt to turn themselves into lizards or cyborgs, seeking to turn parts of their bodies into animal forms or to incorporate various technological devices into them, from robot limbs to brain implants and infra-red vision.

Again and again, when confronted by the many serious problems with which humanity has been struggling since the First World War and is still facing, the almost despairing question is often asked, even in anthroposophical circles: ‘What can I do? What can the individual do about the machinations of these secret groups, if indeed they exist? It’s all too much for individuals.’ Rudolf Steiner’s answer in these lectures is bold and clear:

The only defence against these things is knowing about them. If you know about them, you are protected... But you must not be idle about acquiring real knowledge of these things.

The old word of the New Testament, ‘Repent!’ —metanoia— change your thinking and raise your consciousness and that of your fellows—such is the challenging call of these lectures given at the birth crisis of the twentieth century.

Public Lecture, St Gallen, 15 November 1917

1. Knowledge of the Supersensible and Riddles of the Human Soul

Tracing how the human spirit evolves across the centuries and millennia leads to a sense of how it progresses step by step ever and again to new and yet more new achievements in the field of knowledge as well as in the field of action. Perhaps one should not place too much emphasis on the word ‘progress’ as such, since this might raise serious doubts in certain connections in view of the tragic times that have befallen humanity just now. But apart from this it must surely be obvious to all those who are interested in the evolution of the human spirit that the forms in which this spirit casts its efforts undergo radical changes over the course of centuries. In what I want to put before you today we shall strive to understand something new that wants to enter into human evolution, so we shall be helped by comparing this with other situations in which similarly new elements came into conflict with older views and had difficulty in taking hold as humanity evolved.

How difficult it was, for example, to establish the validity of the Copernican view of the world in the face of people’s habits of thought and feeling;1 in the case of certain aspects it took centuries to establish this view, which broke with what people had for ages considered to be the truth about the structure of their universe based on what they could see with their own eyes. A time had come when they could no longer rely on what their eyes told them about how the sun moved, rising and then setting again. In opposition to what they saw they had to concede that the sun stood still, at least in its relation to the earth. People’s established habits of thinking and feeling do not fit in easily with such revolutions in knowledge.

In the case of the spiritual science of anthroposophy, which is to be the subject of this evening’s talk, we are dealing with an even greater turnaround. There are good and firm scientific grounds for being convinced that the content of this spiritual science, too, must now take its place in the further evolution of human thinking and feeling. In the hope that you will not be offended I would like to begin by introducing this subject as follows.

The Copernican world view, like many other things, was opposed by countless prejudices and traditional opinions because people believed that if they were to replace them by something else this would spell the end of all kinds of religious ideas and so on. But in the case of what I shall be speaking about this evening a great deal more is rising up as well. It is here not only a matter of the kind of prejudices that stood against the Copernican world view. The problem here is that very many people in our time, the majority in fact, people who consider themselves to be enlightened and well educated, are raising up more than their prejudices and assumptions in opposition, for these enlightened and well educated individuals quite simply feel embarrassed to enter in all seriousness into the realms of which anthroposophy has to speak. They feel they are letting themselves down not only in front of those around them but in front of themselves if they admit that it is possible to gain knowledge regarding the subject we shall be discussing today that is just as scientific as knowledge regarding external nature and its structures; they feel they are making fools of themselves or behaving childishly in their own eyes.

These are the factors that have to be taken into account when speaking today about the spiritual science of anthroposophy. Someone speaking about this science on the basis of real knowledge about it is only too familiar with the hundredfold, even thousandfold, objections that are raised. Such a person is familiar with the objections simply because it is not only the separate truths and results of this spiritual science which are doubted but the very fact that there can be any true knowledge about the realm with which the spiritual science of anthroposophy is concerned. Very many people still regard it as entirely justifiable to develop beliefs, general beliefs about the realm of the eternal in the human soul. But when it comes to facts not understood in the world of the senses, facts pertaining to what is immortal and eternal in human nature, then those who form their judgements on the basis of our perfectly valid present-day scientific thinking regard as mainly fantasy and visionary nonsense the statement that actual factual knowledge can be gained about such things.

Well, this evening we shall not be dealing with any fantasy or visionary nonsense but with a realm that may well put off many, especially those who consider themselves to be scientific in their thinking. But first let me also briefly mention that the spiritual science of anthroposophy has no intention of being in any way sectarian. Anyone assuming that it is intended to be the foundation of some sort of new religious denomination is entirely mistaken as to its nature. As it is today, anthroposophy is a necessary consequence of what scientific progress has produced by way of a world view, a general, even popular world view held by the widest circles of humanity. This scientific progress that has yielded so many concepts on which the world view of the widest circles is based, concepts which are in turn the source of feelings and sentiments, this scientific way of looking at the world has assumed the task of exploring and explaining whatever can be detected by our external senses, whatever natural laws about facts observable by the outer senses can be comprehended by the human mind.