Dark Night of the World – Illuminating the Evil of our Times

Dark Night of the World – Illuminating the Evil of our Times

Posted by Terry Boardman on May 14, 2012

This essay was first presented as a lecture
at Rudolf Steiner House, London 25th October,1998

Contents
1. Percepts and Anthroposophical concepts
2. A picture of evolution – the prodigal son
3. The role of evil in evolution
4. 9 members developed in each age: the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch
5. The 1899 threshold and human threefolding
6. The coming of the Beast (666) from the abyss: 1933 – 1998 – 1999 - 2000
7. The 21st cent human ego
8. The incarnation of 3 spiritual beings over 5000 years
9. The New Rome – the “chosen people”: Britain and America
10. The British origins of the New World Order: Rhodes – Milner – the RIIA
11. The US takes over the New World Order agenda: CFR – Wall St – the Federal Reserve – the UN
12. The threefold global plan of the adversaries
Introduction

1. Percepts and Anthroposophical concepts
As a path of knowledge, one of Anthroposophy’s strengths is that it enables us to think in such a way that we can bring concepts to illumine and make sense of percepts which would otherwise remain confused and confusing. Today we have plenty of perceptions of evil, but we lack the concepts to explain them and thus come to terms with them. On the Internet, for example, one can find many websites which discuss evil in relation to the New World Order (NWO). If you still need evidence of plans for the New World Order, if you still doubt those who claim that there is a NWO conspiracy, you only need to lift your head out of the narrow orbit of ideas represented by the mainstream media and begin to seriously investigate the matter. You will then find that there is plenty of evidence to be found, whether on the Internet or elsewhere. Thousands of men and women have worked very hard and in many cases risked their lives or at least their reputations to bring the evidence to light. In contrast to the relatively simplistic explanations of evil and of the New World Order I have just mentioned, Anthroposophy offers a rigorous and profound conceptual, spiritual framework which is able to make sense not only of contemporary perceptual evils – that is, observable evil actions, but also of evil itself and its place in evolution. In this contribution I shall first discuss how Rudolf Steiner saw evil in relation to human evolution. I shall then go on to consider the problem of evil in relation to some percepts of the New World Order drive towards a global slave state and particularly the part played in it by British and American elites.

2. A picture of evolution – the prodigal son

The Bible speaks of the story of the prodigal son and this story is a metaparable of the whole of human evolution – the separation from the Divine, the Fall into the physical, the schooling on Earth, the development of human wisdom and love, and the eventual Return to the Divine. The purpose of this whole process is the initiation of Man into Freedom and Love. Freely expressed human love – as distinct from maternal love, or the love for one’s own people - is the result of choices made by individuals based on knowledge and understanding of relationship, however partial. Ultimately, that means understanding how everything in the cosmos is related to everything else: at that point human love and cosmic love become one. The reason why we are here is to turn this planet, this humanity, this cosmos, from being what Rudolf Steiner called a cosmos of wisdom into a cosmos of love, more prosaically, one could say, to add warmth to light. But to do this, to make this choice, we have to be free. Freedom requires opposition, and therefore the divine spiritual powers decreed that certain of their number should take on the role of providing that opposition to man’s initiation into love. There are 3 such beings we shall be concerned with today in our considerations of evil – to whom Rudolf Steiner gave the names of Lucifer and Ahriman, and a third, who is named, not only by him, as Sorath.

3. The role of evil in evolution

This initiation in love required that both the cosmos and Man descended into ever denser states of being until the final state – the mineral – was reached. This is the physical Earth and universe we see around us today. The various other states previous to this have all been described by Steiner in his works, notably Occult Science – An Outline. Man and the cosmos descended into this realm to the point where further condensation became undesirable if the purpose of the process – the initiation into love – were to continue. At that point, some 2000 years ago now, the process was put into reverse by the divine powers. The cosmic process of incarnation changed to one of excarnation. This process has been likened to a cosmic breath: exhalation and inhalation. The Master of this process is the Being known in the West as the Christ, the Logos, but in other cultures by other names. It is He who has accompanied Man throughout the process of incarnation, and He whose own Incarnation onto the physical plane 2000 years ago in Palestine began the reversal of the process. This is why Steiner always emphasised that it was not so much Christ’s moral teaching that was important, but rather His Deeds – His crucifixion and Resurrection – not the teaching of love, but the ultimate Deeds of love. The Buddha, after all, had been a great teacher of morality and love, but he was not put to death in an evil way as was the Christ. The confrontation with evil is at the heart of the events in Palestine.

The role of evil in the world is that played by the 3 spiritual powers I have mentioned to frustrate Man’s understanding of, and co-working with this great process of human evolution – to prevent Man from developing the freedom to choose love. Without the opposition they provide, we could not wake up. Paradoxically, they seek in their own ways to keep us asleep, but if they did not work within us, we would have nothing to wake up from. In this sense they help us to wake. The actual power to wake, however, comes not from them, but from the Christ insofar as we exercise our freedom to unite ourselves with His impulse. It goes without saying that this does not necessarily mean becoming a member of a Christian denomination, for the Christ came for all humanity.

4. Nine members developed in each age: the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch

Spiritual science has shown that there are 9 members of Man’s organism, which correspond to the 9 levels of consciousness – traditionally called ‘spiritual hierarchies’ - above that of Man. These 9 members of the human organism are 3 ‘bodily members’, 3 soul members, and 3 spiritual members. In the course of evolution one of these members has been developed in each successive historical epoch. An epoch lasts 2160 years and is an astronomical phenomenon related to the vernal equinox which I do not have time to go into now. This does not mean that Man’s existence lasts only 9 x 2160, or 19,440 years, for prior to the Atlantean catastrophe which ended approximately in 8000 BC, there were 7 further developments of Man’s organism, and even more in the epochs before that. In what RS calls the Post-Atlantean epoch, from 8000 BC to approximately 8000 AD, there are 7 periods when the various members of Man’s being are further developed. Since the 15th century, we have been living in the 5th of these periods, and this 5th period will continue until the 36th century. During this 5th period one of Man’s soul members is being developed, namely the Consciousness Soul. This is that part of our soul which enables us not merely to develop our own individual thinking capacity, which was the task of the previous 4th epoch, but to apply that thinking to morality so that we can do the Good; it is intrinsically thus bound up with conscience. As such, this is the epoch above all which is concerned with the problem of evil. Each epoch has its own key problem or task to deal with. The problem of the 4th epoch was that of developing individualised thinking in order to answer the question: what is the truth about birth and death? The question of our 5th epoch is that of morality, of right, or Good action, and it is the confrontation with evil that awakens us to this. Evil then in the broad sense, can summarised in the following perhaps uncomfortable statement: it is ultimately the result of action by two polar opposite spiritual beings, Lucifer and Ahriman, who are the servants of the third, Sorath, and who work within human consciousness in order to pose the questions that human beings need to awaken to spiritual reality in modern times in their Consciousness Soul. Evil stands before us or rather, within us and challenges us: understand me, and in understanding me, begin to awaken to all spiritual reality. It poses a question – will you wake?

5. The 1899 threshold and human three folding

Within this mighty process of human development a small period of 5000 years has been crucial. This lasted from 3101 BC until 1899 AD and is known as the Age of Darkness. In that period, the natural clairvoyance which most human beings had been born with until the 4th millennium BC and which had given them – without any effort on their part – insight into the spiritual invisible worlds – this natural clairvoyance was removed. Only a few initiates retained real clarity with respect to the spiritual worlds, and only after a difficult training. During those 5000 years mankind was the most cut off from its spiritual parents, and had to walk its way towards freedom alone, in spiritual darkness until Mankind had learned to think for itself. The darkness could not be allowed to continue forever, though, for if it did, the errors which Man would fall into as a result of the inspirations of the Powers of Evil would result in Man’s suicide – it would be a one-sided contest, you might say. In 1899, therefore, the Doors of natural clairvoyant perception slowly began to reopen. More and more people in the 20th century have been having spiritual experiences, but owing to the length of the Age of Darkness and the ignorant materialism which developed during that time, many are in confusion about the nature of their experiences.

Now the opening of the Doors means the crossing of a threshold for humanity. Whether we like it or not, we are today effectively living in the spiritual world while yet in the physical body, and many people are becoming aware of this – hence the many bizarre events that have happened in the 20th century. One of the consequences of this – which parallels our individual experience after death – is that our soul faculties of thinking, feeling, and willing separate. These 3 are more or less bound together during our earthly lives by our physical bodies, but after death, it is not so much a case of 3-in-one but 1 among or between 3. One sees an increasing one-sidedness in people as they incline to thinking, feeling, or willing respectively according to their karma. This is why Rudolf Steiner said that deep in the unconscious will of modern humanity there is an awareness of what he called threefolding, the threefold structuring of reality. The threefold slogan Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was a foreshadowing, a heralding of this event – the threefolding of our soul-life that results from crossing the threshold of the spiritual world. If we are awake and look around us, we shall see evidence of this threefold impulse everywhere, even though we have not yet managed to realise it consciously in our social arrangements. The yearning for some kind of 3rd Way is only another manifestation of it.

Now the Powers of Evil know all this; they know that it is inevitable. It is written into the script of evolution which they had no power to write. They therefore have to work within its parameters. So they try to introduce threefold elements themselves in illegitimate ways that will serve their purposes of total world domination. They know that because people feel this threefold impulse subconsciously, they will subconsciously incline towards them. The aim of the powers of opposition, however, is to prevent a real threefolding at all costs – to keep Mankind stuck in binary dualistic systems and false destructive dichotomies. But because their plans for world dominion will have to be world-spanning, they will have to take threefolding into account, for they will have to embrace the whole of the modern human being, the whole of society – the economic, the political, and the cultural/spiritual realms. The current construction of the NWO slave state on threefold lines – stage 1, from the EEC to the European Union, stage 2, from NAFTA to the American Union, and stage 3, from APEC to the Asia-Pacific Union is clear evidence of this. Blair’s 3rd Way is a lesser example.

6. The coming of the Beast (666) from the abyss: 1933 – 1998 – 1999 - 2000

As a result of the crossing of the threshold, RS maintained, 33 years after the event, some people would begin to perceive the Christ in the realm where He is now active, namely, the biosphere of the Earth, called in spiritual science the etheric realm. This is the very beginning of the process that is called the Second Coming in the clouds. It is the realm where the spiritual beings traditionally known as Angels are most active, and whereas 2000 years ago, Christ moved among physical men in a very limited physical space as Jesus, He now moves among the Angels on a simultaneous global level. Before what he called this reappearance of Christ in the etheric realm, however, Rudolf Steiner said that Man would first have to meet the Beast, the Antichrist, rising out of the the Abyss of the spiritual world in that year 1933. Rudolf Steiner had died eight years earlier in 1925, and the Beast did indeed rise, with a threefold proclamation: “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer!” which was a perversion of the three social realms of economic life, political life, and cultural life. Those 3 realms of the social life correspond to the 3 soul forces of Man: willing, feeling, and thinking respectively. For 12 years the Beast rampaged, trumpeting with hideous violence and evil his assault on the new Christ revelation, seeking to deflect Man’s attention away from that revelation and towards himself.

Many have drawn attention to the fact that 1998 = 3 x 666, the traditional number of the Beast of the Apocalypse. Rudolf Steiner also did this, saying that in this year the Antichrist, who is the Being known as Sorath, the master of Lucifer and Ahriman, will again attack humanity through his favoured techniques, which are those of black magic. 3 x 666 = 1998, and whereas 1997/3 = 665.666rec and 2001/3 = 667, 1999/3 = 666.333rec and 2000/3 = 666.666rec. The 3 years 1998, 1999, and 2000 are thus directly linked with the number 666, and in these 3 years above all we can expect the most significant endeavours on the part of the two-horned beast Sorath. These will in a sense be the culmination of the ways in which he challenged humanity 666 years ago in 1332 and 666 years before that in the year 666 itself. Rudolf Steiner dealt with these earlier challenges at some length in his work.

7. The 21st century human ego

The 3 years 1998-2000 of course also stand on the cusp of the transition from the 2nd to the 3rd millennia. Is this 21st century more than just a number? Materialists, rationalists, and atheists do not think so. I do not have time to go into this in great detail today, but because it belongs very much to the question of evil in our times, it must be touched upon. Since the reversal of the direction of humanity’s path by the Christ, from involution to evolution – there has been effectively a new humanity on this planet – what St. Paul called the New Adam, the humanity of the Christian era – a humanity in which the Risen Christ Being makes His Presence felt everywhere, no matter what the religion of a country. Now this new humanity has a life; it was born 2000 years ago; and a careful study of human history, East and West, shows that one year in the life of an individual is equivalent to a century in the life of this humanity. Spiritual science reveals how an individual being grows in seven year periods as the members of his organism develop. 21 is a particularly important point since that is when the human ego begins to take full responsibility for the organism after the threefold development of the physical body, the life body, and the feeling body. This was recognised in the old days by the custom of giving the key to the door at 21. Now the new humanity, the New Adam, is about to enter its 21st year – and it is precisely at this moment of Mankind’s incipient responsibility for its own development and for the Earth as a whole that the Powers of evil intend to launch their strongest attack, so that humanity may fail to connect with its higher Ego, Who is the Christ. This is an important reason why manifestations of evil are so prominent today, just at this point in the 2160 year-long 5th Post-Atlantean epoch, which, as I have said, will not finish until the 36th century.

8. The incarnation of 3 spiritual beings over 5000 years

The final concept we need to understand the machinations of evil in our times concerns another imminent event of truly global proportions. I refer to the incarnation onto the physical plane of the Being of Ahriman, the senior servant of Sorath since the turning point of time 2000 years ago. Sorath himself has never and will never incarnate into physical reality, but the triad of Lucifer, Christ, and Ahriman do incarnate – all in the space of 5000 years; Lucifer in the East, in China in 3000 BC, a hundred years after the closing of the doors of clairvoyant perception; Christ in the centre, in Palestine, at the turning point of time itself and in humanity’s darkest hour, when clairvoyant perception and the Mystery Centres were all but dead; and Ahriman in the West, in America, a hundred years after the doors of perception began to reopen in 1900. While Lucifer has sought to lead Man away from the beneficent spiritual powers and make Man excarnate prematurely, abandon the Earth and thus his schooling on the Earth plane, Ahriman has tried to keep Man illegitimately fettered to the Earth, to condense humanity to the point of abject slavery to the material realm. In our time, since the Industrial Revolution, the application of electrical power, and the development of cyborg technology, this means the utter mechanisation of humanity. Ahriman must now play his part and incarnate onto the earthly plane. Before Man’s clairvoyant faculties recover to the point where spiritual reality will once again be obvious, Ahriman has a short time in which to appear on Earth in the physical form of a human being and establish a purely material empire that is truly global in scope – a net to ensnare all humanity.

The physical stage Ahriman needs for his incarnation is the continent of America, and especially the Far West of that continent, the land of skeletal nature – of salt lakes, Death Valleys, Grand Canyons, and the Rocky Mountains. Rudolf Steiner indicated that wherever mountain ranges from north to south are in parallel with the Earth’s magnetic polar structure - and that is above all the case in America, north and south – there the forces of sub-natural electromagnetism are strongest. Ahriman needed to spread the forces of death and scleroticism which are stronger here than anywhere else on Earth all over the globe. It is not an accident that there we find more abstract purely geometric geographical boundaries than anywhere else on the planet – Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Saskatchewan; nor is it an accident that there we also find the centre of the computer industry in Silicon Valley and the centre of the industry of illusions in Hollywood. Above all, Ahriman needed a people, a particular nation through whom he could work. Rudolf Steiner has described in great detail the long preparation needed for the Incarnation of Christ into the Hebrew-Jewish people. Ahriman’s incarnation has also required a long period of preparation, both of the place and of the people into which he will incarnate. He needed to create the beginnings of a new world state precisely in this land of America, and from there, he could reach out to enmesh the whole globe in his spidery web.

Thus 3000 years before Christ and 2000 years after Him – a period of 5000 years in all – Christ’s chief opponents appear in the physical world as He did in accordance with profound occult laws in order to assist the process of Man’s spiritual development in freedom. In occultism 5 is the number both of Man and also of evil, the number of the upright pentagram of white magic where 3 is above 2, and also of the upside down pentagram of black magic, where 2 is above 3. 5 is thus the number of choice for humanity – choice between white and black magic, between freedom and slavery, for in the evolutionary scheme of things, we are now living in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch. It began in the 15th century and will continue until the 36th. Ahriman’s incarnation is now approaching to present Man with the ultimate choice; his incarnation will present the ultimate picture of unfreedom – of the global slavery which the New World Order represents. That incarnation is now imminent; RS said it would take place very shortly after the beginning of the 3rd millennium, and there are good reasons to think the event may have been brought forward; the ‘birth’ of the individuality that is to bear Ahriman may well take place within the 3 years 1998-2000. There are some who say that it has already taken place and that Ahriman will step forward in those 3 years to claim his earthly power. Either way, it is clear that the social and cultural, even the physical atmosphere, is being prepared for this event. Hence the widespread fear and unease, the increasing sense of being driven by an unstoppable force, the removal of opportunities for quiet reflection, the trivialisation of cultural and political life that works against measured thought.

9. The New Rome – the “chosen people”: Britain and America

Before Christ had chosen the Hebrews as His vehicle, Lucifer had also chosen a people – the Chinese – around the year 3000 BC to aid him in his purposes. Out of the European people Ahriman chooses around the year 1500, he fashions a world empire and a world culture. Out of this people he inspires scientific, philosophical, political, industrial and economic revolutions that in myriad ways serve to propagate his creed of materialism. In the 18th century he leads this people to establish its domination first through crude military and commercial means, through trade and war, and above all, he brings forth from this people a new abstract nation, the first ideological nation in history – a country without an actual name: the United States of America. This, not his European instrument, is the country he will ultimately require for his purposes. In the 19th century meanwhile, he initiates his European instrument into the more subtle ways of control through finance and politics, not hesitating to misuse the genuine idealism found in many members of that people. He causes his minions to speak of the need for Empire to spread the benefits of their civilisation. Through lies told to his chosen people he brings about a world war in which he seeks to destroy the spiritual capacities of cultures, namely Germany and Russia, very different from those of his chosen people. These are cultures which represent dangers for him in that they contain within them particular seeds of effective spiritual opposition to his materialistic purposes.

Amidst the chaotic conditions following the War which he has precipitated, he creates a League of Nations and later still a United Nations organisation to unite the world behind common ‘universal’ values, which are of course the values that he insinuates into the heads of his puppets. Since his chosen European people are now exhausted by the wars he has forced them into, he does not hesitate to make them hand over the baton of world domination to their offspring - a mere stripling of a people in historical terms – a people that with all the arrogance of immature and vigorous youth considers itself to be both the finest distillation of the Old World and much more. Into the hands of this immature Parsifal-like youngster, Ahriman gives awesome technological material power in order to fit the new chosen nation for its role as the New Roman Empire. Recognising that, over the threshold, the soul of Man is threefold, Ahriman seeks to bring about in Man’s 21st year a trinitarian world, three-in-one: three giant economic blocs prior to the establishment of his crowning achievement – the creation of a single world state, a single world government that in the century of Man’s coming of age will be able to exercise a more total but more subtle control greater than anything a Hitler or a Stalin ever dreamed of. Ahriman’s chosen peoples for this task of world domination in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch have been we ourselves, the English-speaking peoples.

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