The Electronic Doppelganger E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

'Large temptations will emanate from these machine-animals, produced by people themselves, and it will be the task of a spiritual science that explores the cosmos to ensure all these temptations do not exert any damaging influence on human beings.'In an increasingly digitised world, where both work and play are more and more taking place online and via screens, Rudolf Steiner's dramatic statements from 1917 appear prophetic. Speaking of 'intelligent machines' that would appear in the future, Steiner presents a broad context that illustrates the multitude of challenges human beings will face. If humanity and the Earth are to continue to evolve together with the cosmos, and not be cut off from it entirely, we will need to work consciously and spiritually to create a counterweight to such phenomena.In the lectures gathered here, edited with commentary and notes by Andreas Neider, Rudolf Steiner addresses a topic that he was never to speak of again: the secret of the 'geographical' or the 'ahrimanic' doppelganger. The human nervous system houses an entity that does not belong to its constitution, he states. This is an ahrimanic being which enters the body shortly before birth and leaves at death, providing the basis for all electrical currents that are needed to process and coordinate sense perceptions and react to them.Based on his spiritual research, Rudolf Steiner discusses this doppelganger or 'double' in the wider context of historic occult events relating to 'spirits of darkness'. Specific brotherhoods seek to keep such knowledge to themselves in order to exert power and spread materialism. But this knowledge is critical, says Steiner, if the geographical doppelganger and its challenges are to be understood.

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.

THE ELECTRONIC DOPPELGÄNGER

The Mystery of the Double in the Age of the Internet

RUDOLF STEINER

Edited and Introduced by Andreas Neider

Translated from German by Simon Luke Breslaw

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

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

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2016

Originally published in German under the title Der elektronische Doppelgänger by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Basel, in 2013

© Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Basel, 2013 This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2016

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

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

Print book ISBN: 978 1 85584 525 1 Ebook ISBN: 978 1 85584 477 3

Cover by Morgan Creative Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION, by Andreas Neider

THE ELECTRONIC DOPPELGÄNGER The Mystery of the Double in the Age of the Internet

AFTERWORD, by Andreas Neider

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY Cited Materials from the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner

A Note on the Translation

The German term der Doppelgänger (literally, a ‘double-goer’) has been translated throughout as ‘the doppelgänger’ rather than as ‘the Double’. This is partly because ‘doppelgänger’ (or ‘doppelganger’) is used in English, but also because it is an apt choice of translation in the context of online social media phenomena, such as digital avatars (see the Introduction and Afterword by Andreas Neider). It avoids conveying the misleading sense of a psychological alter ego and, for that reason, seems appropriate in the light of the distinction made by Rudolf Steiner between the ahrimanic doppelgänger, who only accompanies us for a single incarnation, and the luciferic doppelgänger (or Double), as mentioned in the Introduction.

Simon Luke Breslaw

INTRODUCTION

by Andreas Neider

In the lectures of November 1917 gathered here in abridged form, a topic emerges that Rudolf Steiner only spoke about in these particular lectures, or more precisely, in the lecture held in St Gallen on 16 November and in the lectures held in Dornach on 18, 19 and 25 November 1917. Neither before nor after did he speak about the secret of what he called the ‘geographical doppelgänger’ or the ‘ahrimanic doppelgan-ger’. The reason why we have entitled this volume ‘The Electronic Doppelgänger’ will be explained in more detail below.

First, however, Steiner discusses several other topics (both in the St Gallen lecture and in the Dornach lectures), which all relate to the topic of the doppelgänger, as we shall see. He first speaks of the existence of western occult brotherhoods that have an interest in propagating materialism to such an extent that ever greater numbers of the deceased are thereby unable to extricate themselves from earthly existence. For souls that remain entangled within the material realm after death produce destructive effects, which these brotherhoods are able to make use of for their own purposes.

Connected with this is a first main theme of these lectures, namely the interests of certain western occult groups who are seeking to control the Earth by material and technological means, and whose activities extend into the realm of the dead. According to Steiner, this exercise of power is only possible because certain secrets are kept secret and deliberately withheld. These secrets relate to the supersensible nature of the human being and concern the ‘ahrimanic’ or ‘geographical’ doppelgänger.

By speaking about these previously undisclosed occult facts for the first and only time here in these lectures, Rudolf Steiner deliberately counters this principle of maintaining secrecy in order to exercise power. For that reason, these lectures are of huge significance in terms of the secrets revealed within them, as will be explained in what follows.

Before doing so, however, we need to consider the historical background to the matters set out here. This concerns what Steiner refers to as the ‘fall of the spirits of darkness’. He had previously spoken about that topic in the lectures held from the middle to the end of October 1917 in Dornach,1 and again, shortly afterwards, in Zurich on 6 and 13 November (the relevant passages have been included in our compilation).

The ‘fall of the spirits of darkness’ relates to these matters as follows. Steiner described a historical but supersensible event that took place between 1841 and 1879 as a kind of reflection of the fight with the dragon described in the Apocalypse. In order to prepare for his rulership as the Time Spirit from 1879 onwards, the Archangel Michael (who is also referred to in the Apocalypse) had to cast out the spirits of darkness onto Earth, i.e. into the consciousness of human beings.

This battle in the etheric world ended after 38 years in 1879. Michael had triumphed over the spirits of darkness, who, since that time, can only operate in the physical world, i.e. within the earthly consciousness of human beings. And 38 years after 1879, the earthly consequences of this fall were manifested in 1917. This explains why Steiner spoke about the matters discussed here in the year 1917 in particular. He also characterized materialism, which had been spreading since the 1840s, as the ultimate expression of this fall.

We now have to consider what type of spirits Rudolf Steiner means when he speaks about the spirits of darkness, whom he characterizes as belonging to the realm of the Angeloi. In particular, we need to consider the kind of consciousness the Angeloi possess. As angels do not have physical bodies but etheric bodies as the lowest constituents of their being, they live in their thinking directly in the etheric sphere, thus without needing to reflect their thoughts in a physical body. In the etheric world, the ‘time here becomes space’ dictum applies. Everything that in the physical world must be thought in temporal succession appears simultaneously in the etheric.

In their thinking, angels therefore live permanently in this space or ‘anti-space’ of the etheric. Thoughts do not arise in succession for them but are simultaneous and permanently observable as a kind of panorama. Furthermore, angels do not need their etheric bodies to maintain a physical body and can therefore fully dedicate all their energies to the activity of thinking. As a consequence, angels possess foresight and a clairvoyant overview (which is also what enables the personal, guardian angel, who accompanies a human being, to guide that person's destiny).

At the beginning of the modern period, a whole grouping of angels had turned to Ahriman, thereby darkening and obscuring the etheric sphere. This is what Michael, the ruler of this etheric thought sphere, had to redress by casting out these beings into the earthly realm. Angels that become ‘spirits of darkness’ and are cast out of the etheric into the earthly realm, the realm of human consciousness, lose their previous clairvoyance in the process. They are cast out of the etheric web of light and panoramic vista of simultaneity into our earthly consciousness, where succession in time is determined by physical materiality. This kind of darkening or obfuscation is one of the essential characteristics of the being whom Rudolf Steiner calls Ahriman. Ahriman wishes to bind the consciousness of human beings, their free powers of attention, to the earthly realm. With the help of the spirits of darkness, he seeks to obscure the etheric from human beings.

This is a goal that Ahriman has only been able to achieve since the time when thinking effectively took up its seat within the physical body. Before the dawn of the modern period, human beings did not think with their physical brains, but with their etheric bodies. That meant their thoughts were not as closely tied to the nerve-sense system as they are today. Since the onset of the modern period, however, thoughts are reflected in the physical body. Thus bound to the nerve-sense system, living ideas are paralysed as we experience them, and this is what enables us to research and understand material processes with such precision.2 living thinking that is woven within the etheric is limited in a sense by the physical body and deadened.

The further evolution of human consciousness should now consist of us overcoming the darkening linked to materialistic consciousness by our awakening to the etheric quality of thinking. However, that is precisely what the spirits of darkness, those Angeloi beings, are seeking to prevent, since, due to their ahrimanic colouring, they had to leave the etheric realm and can now only operate within the earthly realm of our materialistic consciousness.

Knowledge of this historic occult event was another secret those western brotherhoods wished to keep to themselves, so as to be able to exert power. Rudolf Steiner also spoke about this, again entirely deliberately in 1917, in order to make knowledge of these matters accessible to humanity. For if the powers of the ‘spirits of darkness’ were used in such a way that nobody else could have any knowledge of them, then that would naturally be the best way of fixating human consciousness on the purely material, even after death.3 It is only against this background that the real focus of the lectures gathered here, the secret of the ‘geographical doppel-ganger’, can be understood correctly.

In these lectures of the autumn of 1917, Rudolf Steiner calls attention to a particular feature of our nervous system. He explains here, for the first and only time, that there is a being within our nervous system that does not belong to what constitutes the human being at all—an ahrimanic being that enters the human being shortly before birth and is forced to leave again on the latter's death. This ahrimanic being provides a basis for all the electrical currents we need in our nervous system in order to process our sense perceptions, coordinate them and react to them.

The human being thus arrives into this world with his organism in which he clothes himself, without reaching down into this organism with his soul. There is, however, an opportunity, shortly before we are born (not long at all before we are born) for another spiritual being, in addition to our soul, to take ownership of our physical body, of the subconscious part of our body. It is just a fact that, shortly before we are born, we are permeated by another being, whom, in our current terminology, we would call an ahrimanic spiritual being. This being is as much within us as our own soul is within us. Such beings live their lives by using the human being in order to be present within the sphere in which they wish to be. They have an extraordinarily high level of intelligence and a very highly developed will, but nothing in the nature of a life of feeling [Gemüt], not what we would call a human life of feeling. And so it is indeed the case that we go through our lives with a soul and this doppelgänger, who is cleverer, far cleverer than we are. This being is highly intelligent, but possesses a Mephistophelean intelligence, an ahrimanic intelligence, as well as a very strong will, a will that is much closer to the forces of nature than our human will, which is tempered by our life of feeling.

In the nineteenth century, natural science discovered that the nervous system is permeated by electrical forces—and natural science was right about that. However, if science holds, or scientists believe, that our nerve forces, which belong to us and provide a basis for our life of thought, have anything to do with electrical currents passing through our nerves, then they are mistaken. For the electrical currents are the forces that are placed into our being by that other being, whom I have just described, and do not belong to our being at all; we do also carry electrical currents within us, but they are of a purely ahrimanic nature.4

Medical science tells us that electrical currents, so-called action potentials, are built up and transmitted both in our brain and within the rest of our nervous system. These are measurable with an ECG or EEG. If a current flows, then this is a message that is transmitted, which triggers the relevant chemical reaction; if no current flows, then this is also a message, and no chemical reaction takes place.

Our entire nervous system is pervaded by such currents, which convey stimuli to the brain that are received via sense organs from the outer world. They also coordinate, via the nerve pathways and nerve cells, the movements of our muscular apparatus in response to sensory stimuli. For example, if the surface of our hand conveys a strong stimulus from a hotplate, our arm reacts instantly and our hand is immediately retracted. This reaction requires neither a thought process nor an emotional response. The soul remains completely excluded in this case, while the body reacts with a spontaneous reflex.

The ahrimanic being who lives with us in our body is therefore necessary for our earthly consciousness. We would not be able to live without this being, which is also apparent from the fact that our life ends the moment no electrical current flows through our nervous system.

At the same time, however, Rudolf Steiner also identifies this ahrimanic doppelgänger as the originator of illnesses— specifically, illnesses that depend upon geographical conditions. Why is that? It is because the ahrimanic doppelgänger is himself subject to geographical conditions, since the Earth is also permeated by electromagnetic forces. These forces are aligned according to the Earth's mountain ranges and are particularly strong where mountain chains run from south to north, rather than from east to west. Rudolf Steiner points out that these forces active within the human nervous system correspond to such electrical and magnetic forces. He then indicates that humanity in the twentieth century will be in a position to transfer these forces to machines.

I have frequently pointed out, quite deliberately, including in public lectures,5 that human consciousness is associated with forces of destruction. [...] into our nervous system we die. These forces, these death forces, will become ever more powerful. And the connection will be made between the death forces in the human being, which are related to electromagnetic forces, and outer machine forces. In a sense, the human being will be able to let his thoughts flow into the machine forces. As yet undiscovered forces within the human being will be discovered, forces that have an effect on outer electrical and magnetic forces.6

Now, one of the pioneers of computer technology in America, John von Neumann, described his method of developing the computer in the 1950s as follows:

To design the machine, my co-workers and I tried to imitate some of the known operations of the live brain. This aspect led me to study neurology [...] and, eventually, to give lectures on the possibilities of copying an extremely simplified model of the living brain for man-made machines.7

As the only one among his colleagues, von Neumann studied neurology alongside his work on developing the first computers. That is why no one apart from him noticed what they were actually doing in developing these machines. Transmission of all information in the computer, just as in the nervous system, is based on the polarity of current/no current. In the case of the human organism, however, a significant amount of chemistry also plays a role (in terms of what are known as messenger substances or neurotransmitters). When we consider computer technology, it is apparent from the above that we are dealing with an externalized ahrimanic doppelgänger, whom, in the context of the lectures by Steiner gathered here, I would like to call the ‘electronic doppelgänger’. It is no accident that, for a long time now, the computer has been called the PC, the personal computer. Almost all the work we do with our minds is now done only with the help of computers and their networking via the internet. Nearly all areas of our life—our personal data, our work, our consumer purchases—are captured and recorded by computers. The ‘personal’ computer does indeed now accompany us as a kind of electronic doppelgänger.

And the nature of the personal computer is exactly as Rudolf Steiner described the ahrimanic doppelgänger:

And so it is indeed the case that we go through our lives with a soul and this doppelgänger, who is cleverer, far cleverer than we are. This being is highly intelligent, but possesses a Mephistophelean intelligence, an ahrimanic intelligence, as well as a very strong will, a will that is much closer to the forces of nature than our human will, which is tempered by our life of feeling.8

The computer is a cold machine with a very high level of intelligence and an uncompromising will, otherwise known as efficiency. Numerous processes of movement, including the conduct of warfare, are today guided by computers. Even our economic life, with all its money flows, is today largely controlled by these machines.

It is therefore evident that Rudolf Steiner had such an extensive overview of the technological developments of the twentieth century that he was able to foresee the transition from the industrial age to the digital age.

At this point we should discuss the term ‘doppelgänger’. Steiner used this term in all his basic works, in his lectures and in his Mystery Dramas to designate a being who accompanies us like a shadow, even after death and through our different lives on Earth. At a certain point in the lecture of 16 November 1917 (reprinted in this book) he distinguishes the ‘ahrimanic’ doppelgänger discussed here from the ‘luciferic’ doppelgänger, whom he otherwise simply refers to as the doppelgänger [or ‘the Double’], in the sense of the human being's shadow. The distinction is essential, in so far as the ahrimanic doppelgänger only accompanies us from birth to death during one life on Earth.9

In this lecture, however, Steiner goes one step further by connecting the discovery of the ahrimanic doppelgänger with the previously described ‘fall of the spirits of darkness’. He describes the attempt by western occult lodges to keep these facts secret in order to exploit them as a deliberate means of exerting power and of darkening people's awareness of supersensible reality.

In order to understand this connection, we have to look more closely at the physiological basis of human soul life. We have a nervous system that supports our sense-bound consciousness. The latter is not identical to our soul experience. In order to become aware of a sense impression, we require a sense organ and the relevant nerve pathways in the brain and nervous system. The nerve impulses generated can be physically measured and observed—but not so our soul experience! The colour red and the song of a blackbird will never be found physically in the brain or in the nerve pathways. Where then does this soul experience occur, if it cannot be found within the body?

The answer to that question is that our soul experience does not take place in the body but where the sensory phenomenon is located, i.e. outside of the body. After all, I do not hear the blackbird singing in my head but on the branch of a tree. I do not see the colour red in my eye, but externally on the wall. In our soul life, we are always with the things that we are perceiving at that moment.10

The nerve-sense organization merely serves as a kind of mirror in which we are able to become conscious of our soul experience, as Steiner had described at an earlier date.11 But how does the soul experience outside the body relate to the nerve-sense organization? Rudolf Steiner spent almost his whole life researching the gap that opens up here between the realm of the soul and the physical/bodily realm.12 He sought to understand the link between the soul and the body right down to the physiological details. In doing so, he discovered the essential function of the etheric body.

To begin with, the function of our etheric body is to animate, construct and organize our physical body.13 It is the designer who shapes the organs and regulates their interactions. However, these forces of form and organization are not only used to animate and organize physical materials but can also be used to grasp, shape and retain experiences gained through our soul-spiritual faculties (i.e. through our ‘I’ and our astral body) in the form of thoughts and perceptions. Our memory enables us to bring our soul experiences to life again repeatedly.

Steiner pointed out on many occasions, as one of his central discoveries, that the nature of our etheric body undergoes a change around our seventh year of life. After the formation and construction of the physical body has been concluded, a part of the life functions of the etheric body is freed up during the second seven-year period and can henceforth serve the creation of thoughts and memory. Our powers of thought and memory, we could also say our powers of attention, are therefore transformed life forces. They could also be called ‘free forces’, as they have been ‘freed’ from the task of providing for the life of our physical body.