By Douglas Gabriel
The forging together of human nature and that of machines will be a great, significant problem for the remainder of Earth existence. (GA 178)
We are engaged in a raging battle to defend the living etheric realm from the forces of darkness that intend to crucify Christ again and prevent His “Second Coming” in the etheric realm of the cosmos, earth, and human etheric body. If you are not aware of this battle, then you may have already been overcome by the illusory and selfish cold-light of Lucifer working in your astral body to make you feel like the king/queen of your own sub-natural realm of personal astral desires.
Or perhaps, the dead, grey light of Ahriman’s delusion has already entranced and hypnotized you until your heart has became cold and devoid of selfless love. Many have been lulled into a lazy, comfortable surrendering of their will to the Asuras, who are inspired by Sorat the Sun Demon. Sorat intends to consume the human “I am”, in contradistinction to Christ’s mission of re-enlivening the living etheric realm with His own cosmic etheric body that brings the waters of life and the grace of love to all who can rise up to this realm and witness Christ’s Second Coming in the etheric.
Rudolf Steiner tells us that the Second Coming of Christ in the etheric realm is the second most important focal point in human spiritual development. The Mystery of Golgotha, which is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the most important turning point in human history. We are living in a crucial time for the development of humanity and each individual is a battle-ground in the spiritual war that is fighting over human thinking, feeling, and willing.
The outcome of this battle is not yet known, and the soul and spirit of each human can evolve into super-nature and develop higher thinking, feeling, and willing into the spiritual capacities of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. These are higher realms governed and populated by angels, archangels, and archai that work to help humans spiritually evolve.
On the other hand, the spiritual war for the etheric realm and the battle to stop the re-crucifixion of Christ can be lost and the soul and spirit of humanity be drawn into an evil realm of fallen spirits called the Eighth Sphere. This binary realm of two-dimensional beings are luring, transfixing, and hypnotizing humanity into a sub-nature realm ruled by the condensing forces of electricity, the binding forces of electromagnetism, and the destructive and fragmenting forces of atomic materialism intent on enslaving humanity in the Eighth Sphere.
Only the forces of Christ can conquer the onslaught of Lucifer, Ahriman, and Sorat’s Asuras.
To compound the battle, the physical being of Ahriman has incarnated in North America as a counter-pole to the incarnation of Lucifer in Central Asia in the third millennia B. C. Ahriman’s influence is quite profound and his materialistic, abstract, mathematical world-view has turned human thinking into machine-intelligence, a foreign and alien intelligence that is the “grey shadow-thinking” that Steiner describes that runs along the spider-web of electromagnetic lines encircling the earth.
Human thinking, which can be filled with warmth and light when focused on virtue, love, and morality, is being turned into shadow images of cold-light that draw the soul into dark selfishness. It is Michael’s cosmic thoughts that should be drawing humans up into the realm of the etheric where living thinking can become aligned with angelic thinking in the manifestation of Imagination (higher thinking). Instead, the unwitting warrior in this battle is pulled into his electrical device or machine and soon begins thinking evil thoughts unconsciously. The human double grows strong when it assumes it is personally deserving of the marvelous inventions that scientific materialism has brought place at his disposal.
Mechanical Omnipresence is a Delusion of the Heart
Consciousness and gratefulness are the keys to overcoming the immense technological forces that wish to draw from the human being its future spiritual development and replace it with selfish immediate gratification that makes the user of the device a thief in the night who takes advantage of other people’s work and effort without gratitude or consciousness. The modern technology user is given, what seems to be, super-human powers in the palm of her hand. The user can ask any question of her device and have the answer almost instantaneously via a search of the Internet, where almost all knowledge is stored and easily accessed. Any question can be answered by the user’s seemingly omniscience electromagnetic computer driven devise.
Almost anything that has ever been written down, or any video that has ever been filmed, or any data byte of knowledge ever recorded can be available to the uninformed, uneducated, and generally ignorant tech-user who can now look like a “god of knowledge” via the Ahrimanic device.
This Luciferic temptation of “knowing all” is an illusion and lures the users into ever growing unconsciousness as grey shadow-thinking that is found in the virtual world of machine-intelligence takes over human-intelligence.
The tech-user learns from an alien-intelligence (AI) and then pridefully believes that we are smarter than humans and have even become a superior thinker. The spiritual scientist, on the other hand, becomes a thinker who has warmed his thoughts with love instead of a selfish ego-illusion of superiority through materialistic thinking. This astral illusion, created by Lucifer, draws thinking into the trap of enslavement in a personal world of seeming technological omniscience.
When a user of tech-science becomes fluent in social media on the internet, they can connect all their contacts instantaneously, no matter how far away they live. The tech-user’s Facebook account may have thousands of friends and they may participate in hundreds of groups. When they send out a message, it may reach thousands of people instantly, and if they post an interesting video or URL link, they may get millions of “hits” and “likes.” The more hits, the more stimulating the mechanical interaction can be which may engender an addiction to the process of tech-stimulation. Internet addiction is a well-known disorder in the modern age.
This type of delusion, believing you are communicating with many others, is seemingly a type of technological omnipresence. The idea that you can be everywhere at one time is magical thinking, and yet machines convince us that we have friends we have never met in person. The tech-user has traveled all over the world through Flicker, Google Earth, or live feeds of video cameras all over the world that make the users think they are truly global citizens. Mechanical Omnipresence is a delusion of the heart that fosters a tech-user’s belief they are a social person and well-liked individual, even though they make speak in person with no one.
Tech-science has created a form of omnipotence through the software and hardware called, The Internet of Things. This program controls your entire life from your phone and coordinates your personal life, work life, and global life through one system that links every digital devise you own to one central command system. Net-bots link your doorbell, microwave, house lights, alarms, coffee-maker, car, computers, and everything else to your phone. You can program your net-bots to react as soon as your phone passes by and creates an augmented reality to the real world.
Omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnipotence Belong to the Future of Humanity
Your entire life can be programmed into the Internet of Things until the line between human and machine blurs. If you have a house in a distant place and want to turn on the sprinkler system because your phone informs you it has been quite hot there, you simply push a key and the Internet of Things seems to be omnipotent and can reach out and effect net-bots anywhere on the earth. This omnipotence is not earned or deserved by the tech-user and tends to lure, hypnotize, and imprison the unconscious and unwitting user in a virtual world.
The spiritual scientist knows that Omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnipotence are products of the future spiritual development of humanity. In time, as we became angels, archangels, and archai; we will develop higher thinking, feeling, and willing that resembles these stages of consciousness. Lucifer, Ahriman, and the Asuras inspired by Sorat, try to bring these future stages of spiritual development to humanity through mechanical means – a type of mechanical clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience.
Ahriman himself will even start a “school of spiritual clairvoyance” that will delude followers into believing that they are becoming clairvoyant through mechanical means. Ahrimanic clairvoyants will not agree on what they “see” because they will be looking at grey shadow-thoughts of the spiritual world which will be tinged with the base astral nature of the person and thus will produce spurious results which lead to spiritual materialism and ultimately the Eighth Sphere.
Lucifer’s enticing allure, Ahriman’s brilliant cleverness, and the overwhelming power of the Asuras to consume the human ego are the weapons we must fight against in the battle in the etheric realm to guarantee the etheric resurrection of Christ and assure His second coming. We must become conscious of this battle between good and evil and find our personal place in this war.
The war is within our very own etheric body and we cannot escape it. The war is also collective and takes place in the etheric sheaths around the earth that Rudolf Steiner called: the realm of spiritual economy, the etheric ring, Shamballa, the New Jerusalem, and the living realm of angelic Imagination. Without the health of the earth’s etheric sheaths, the human etheric body cannot be healthy.
The Battle Rages All Around You
The battle is within us, but it is also waged outside of us in the etheric body of Mother Earth, the Wisdom of the Beings of the Kyriotetes. The personal battle for our own life-body effects every other person on the earth, as well as the future life of our planet. If we lose the battle individually, we will reside in the Eighth Sphere after death in a physical two-dimensional world instead of evolving through time into the fourth dimension and beyond where the higher hierarchy dwell.
The battle is raging and the losers are quietly ignoring the enemy’s weapon which is clasped in their own hands. They don’t realize that weaponized subliminal programming is coming from every digital device and that they swim in a continuum of electromagnetic frequencies that bombard them from all directions. Sorat’s digital weapons have lulled the innocent user into believing they are virtual kings and queens in their own selfish domain. When fallen angels stand ready to do the tech-users bidding, it is hard to lay down the harmful weapons that have come to define who we believe we are.
One large solar flare could wipe out all digital memory and electromagnetism on the earth for a long period of time. The losers in this battle would simply stop existing as the being they thought they were when they were augmented with miraculous digital machines that were actually the weapons of their enemies. The internet is out of control and at this point controls commerce, education, and social life in the West. The modern teenager might “die” if all of Ahriman’s weapons ceased to function. Thus, it is easy to see the true control Sorat and his followers have over the “I am”, of the human being ensnared as a tech-user.
Are there solutions to the war in heaven that has now come down to earth?
Are there spiritual scientific weapons that can be used against the enemy as Michael used the sword of God to strike Lucifer down from heaven?
Can we consciously face the evils of Lucifer, Ahriman, Sorat, the Asuras, and scientific materialism and win the battle?
Where do we look for assistance in this battle and find a way through that doesn’t just simply reject all technology?
Did Rudolf Steiner show us a path through the mechanical take-over of human evolution?
Should we ignore or combat the incarnation of Ahriman?
What can protect us in this war for the soul and spirit of each human being?
With the Sword of the Spirit and the Word of God, We Can Win
One of the best descriptions of the spiritual weapons that can protect and defend us during this war is found in the Bible, in Ephesians 6:12-17:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God…
With the armor of God, truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, the sword of the Spirit, and the Word of God we can win the battle and gain victory in the war against the “principalities, powers, darkness of the world, and spiritual wickedness in high places”, according to the author of Ephesians. These spiritual weapons may seem tame compared to the “spiritual wickedness in high places” but they hold the key to divesting evil’s power.
The “higher” beings of evil that are described are actually fallen hierarchy who are far more advanced than human consciousness at this point in human spiritual development. We are fighting beings of the rank of hierarchies called Spirits of Form. Sorat was a Spirit of Form who fell from grace. Ahriman and Lucifer have fallen also and they are from the higher realms of the “principalities”, “powers”, and “high places” referred to in the quotation.
We need to know the names and nature of the evil that we must confront to maintain proper spiritual evolution throughout this battle for the soul and spirit of humanity. We have heard about the evil ones and their wicked nature that use evil methods for luring, entrancing, and hypnotizing tech-users, but what we need to know to antidote evil’s intent is: “Who is there to help us counter the raging war?”
Christ will defeat the evil intentions of Sorat and his ego-eating Asuras. Christ works through the combined forces of the Seven Elohim who lead the Spirits of Form (Powers). Sorat, like Lucifer, consciously fell from grace and stood against the proper evolution of human development. Sorat wants to steal the egos that Christ helped create and plant in each human being. Christ lends to humans their personal egos until a higher ego can be developed out of wisdom, grace, and love.
Each personal angel stands ready to help the evolving soul find their higher spirit.
The Holy Spirit of Christ also works directly with the personal “guardian” angel to imbue the individual with the gifts of “The Comforter” of Christ.
Another being who works in the realm of the human being’s angel is the being Rudolf Steiner calls AnthropoSophia. This being works intimately with each person who is questing for his/her higher self. In the past, AnthropoSophia has been called other names: TheoSophy, PhiloSophy, Isis Sophia, AnthropoSophia, and Sophia – the Cosmic Wisdom of Christ. Steiner gives many details about our personal relationship to Sophia, who he calls the midwife of our spirit. With the help of AnthropoSophia, the Holy Spirit can redeem the “selfish thoughts” of Lucifer and turn them into the unselfish cosmic thoughts of the Archangel Michael, who is the leading Time Spirit (archai) of our age. Through the Holy Spirit and AnthropoSophia, human thoughts can become imbued with the Spirits of Wisdom (Kyriotetes) and become Michaelic cosmic thoughts. This process is the antidote to Ahriman’s grey shadow-thinking.
In the realm of the Archangels, Michael has ascended and progressed to the hierarchical rank of the Archai, becoming the Spirit of the Times, our current Zeitgeist. After his regency, Michael will remain in the ranks of the archai. The being known by the name Vidar, in Norse Myths, has ascended and progressed from an angel into an archangel to fill the rank previously held be Michael. Vidar manifests in the human etheric body and works with archangels to inspire humanity and lead them towards the spiritual realms. The Being of Wisdom, called Sophia, also works into the realm of the archangels from the hierarchical rank of the Kyriotetes. The Beings of Wisdom are directly linked to the archangels and their evolution, especially in relationship to the nature of thinking itself. Humans can turn to Vidar, Sophia, and the archangels that guide human language and culture to assist in battling Ahriman’s assault upon the human etheric body.
To help defeat the Asuras’ attack on the physical body, we can turn to the rank of the archai for spiritual assistance. Michael is now the leader of this realm of Time Spirits and is engaged in defending all souls who can rise-up (ascend) to the realm of direct Intuition and alignment with the divine. Michael does not “dip down” to fight and defend us. We must rise-up to his realm of cosmic-thinking and truly engage our will in the battle for the etheric, the war to stop the second crucifixion of Christ in the etheric and bring forth the Second Coming of Christ.
Michael sounds the trumpet to awaken the spiritual scientists who now must become warriors of wisdom, love, and strength.
We must become victors of truth, beauty, and goodness in defeat of selfishness, fear, doubt, and hatred. The spiritual warrior must find the strength and courage to develop higher consciousness that can banish evil from human spiritual self-development and bring forth the higher gifts and capacities of the Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Human, the three spiritual components of the human being.
We are aided and helped from all sides in the war against evil that intends to steal the thinking, feeling, and willing of the human being and capture it in a binary, material world that sucks the life and spirit from humans. The evil beings of a higher nature working against us may seem too overwhelming to tackle, but when we remember all of the other spiritual beings who are supporting and fighting along with us, we can muster the courage to pick up the banner of Christ and surge forward in the efforts to vanquish the enemy and gain our spiritual home and inheritance.
The Cosmic and Earthly Battle Rages On
There is a cosmic and earthly battle raging over whether universal thinking (Imagination) will be lost to humanity. During our time, the decisive war in heaven has come down to the earth because Michael cast both Lucifer and Ahriman (Dragon) to the earth. Heaven has come to earth and the last battle for human freedom is being fought in the human domain. The Norse called it the Battle of Ragnarok, where the “old gods died” and the young gods find a new home. In the West, we call it the Apocalypse. The apocalyptic “two-horned beast” is the new machine-realm of binary forces that is trying to steal the soul of humanity.
There are many terrifying images describing the horrors of the Apocalypse but there are also other images that show the healing antidotes to apocalyptic horror. In the end, those who can “hear and sing the new song” are saved as they gather around the Lion of Judah, who has tamed the “two-horned beast.” Even the very methods to develop the counter-image of the “two-horned beast” are given in the Apocalypse, for “those with eyes to see and ears to hear.”
Rudolf Steiner describes the battle between Michael and Ahriman/Sorat in the following characterization:
The entry of Michael into the spiritual evolution of mankind at the end of the 19th century, and that of the etheric Christ in the first half of the 20th century, will be followed before the close of this century by the coming of the Sun-Demon. In our present Michael Age we have every reason, if we wish to work in the domain of theology, of religion, to turn above all to what the Apocalypse can teach us, to learn to think and feel apocalyptically, to raise ourselves up to the spiritual impulses working behind outer existence. (GA 346)
Rudolf Steiner refers to our apocalyptic times as a second crucifixion of Christ in the etheric realm, in the following indication:
The seeds of earthly materialism, which from the sixteenth century onward were brought into the spiritual world in ever greater measure by souls passing the portal of death, spread darkness there, producing the “black sphere” of materialism. In a Manichean way Christ took this black sphere into His own being in order to transform it. But this caused the death by spiritual suffocation of the Angel-Being, through whom Christ had manifested Himself since the Mystery of Golgotha. This was Christ’s sacrifice in the nineteenth century, a sacrifice comparable to that of His physical life in the Mystery of Golgotha. It can be regarded as a second crucifixion of Christ in the etheric realm. (GA 152)
The battle for the soul of humanity is being fought in the realm of the Time Spirits where Michael, the current Time Spirit and representative of Christ, is battling the Asuras who are inspired by the fallen Spirit of Form, Sorat the Sun Demon. This battle reaches all the way down into the human physical body and controls the fate of the human ego, or “I am.”
Rudolf Steiner speaks about Sorat the Sun Demon, in the following manner:
Sorat is the being that draws the future into the present and the present into the past. Sorat seeks to sever man’s connection with the divine-spiritual, and pull him into its own dark sphere of evil. The time of thrice 666, 1998, now stands before us. At the end of this century we shall reach the moment when Sorat will raise his head most powerfully above the flowing stream of evolution, when he will oppose that vision of Christ which human beings, who have prepared themselves for it, can have through the appearance of the etheric Christ in the first half of the 20th century. There are only two thirds of a century left, before Sorat will emerge with great power. (GA 346)
When we look at the man-machine interface, we can learn from Steiner’s lecture on January 28, 1923 about the true nature of electricity:
The greatest contrast to electricity is light. If we look upon light as electricity we confuse good and evil. When we think of them as atoms, in general, when we imagine matter in the form of atoms, we transform them into carriers of evil, carriers of death. For electric atoms are little demons of evil.
Michael would find Cosmic Intelligence again at a time when an Intelligence intensely exposed to the Ahrimanic forces and bereft of spirituality had taken root among men. For while the Intelligence was descending from the cosmos to the earth, the aspirations of the Ahrimanic powers grew ever greater, striving to wrest the Cosmic Intelligence from Michael.
Such was the crisis from the beginning of the 15th century until our day, which expresses itself as the battle of Ahriman and Michael. For Ahriman is using all his power to challenge Michael’s dominion over the Intelligence that has now become earthly. And Michael, with all the impulses that are his, through his dominion over the intelligence has fallen from him, is striving to take hold of it again on earth at the beginning of his new earthly rule. So, Michael finds himself obliged to defend against Ahriman what he had ruled through the aeons of time for the benefit of humankind. Mankind stands in the midst of this battle; and among other things, to be an anthroposophist is to understand this battle.
Ahriman is engaged in a battle to win the etheric body of the human being as he works through the realm of thinking to turn human-thought into machine-thought and numb humans to the power of living thinking that is fired by the warmth of the heart. The Archangel Michael is involved in this battle and tames the “dragon of materialism” by bringing the cosmic wisdom and love of Sophia and Christ.
Lucifer is battling in the astral body of the human being through the realm of the angels where the Holy Spirit and the being, AnthropoSophia support the development of the Consciousness Soul evolving into the Spiritual Self.
Rudolf Steiner describes this cosmic battle is the following remarks:
Ahriman stands before us as a cosmic being of the highest imaginable Intelligence, one who has already taken the Intelligence entirely into the individual, personal element. 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. In Ahriman’s opinion, the really decisive question is this: Will cleverness or stupidity prevail? And Ahriman calls stupidity everything that does not contain Intelligence within it in full personal individuality.
Michael, however, is not in the least concerned with the personal quality of Intelligence. We human beings are always tempted to make our Intelligence personal as Ahriman has done. But Michael will only administer the Cosmic Intelligence and not make it personally his own. And now that people 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 of us alike.
Behind the scenes of existence is raging the battle of Michael against all that is of Ahriman. Michael is a spirit filled with strength, and he can only make use of brave people who are full of courage. (GA 236)
The Binary World of the Two-Horned Beast
The pseudo-alive kingdom of the machine-world that exists between the mineral and the plant realms wishes to feed on human thought, to steal it, and suck it into another world beyond the three-dimensional world. This world is called the Eighth Sphere by Theosophists and is a left-over world from the seven Incarnations of the Earth. The Eighth Sphere is now a machine-world that exists in an “anti” two-dimensional world. It is a shadow of the angelic realm which is made from mineral substance and given pseudo-life through the thoughts of the software programmers.
It is an alien world populated by beings higher and lower than human beings, which exist both in this anti-two-dimensional world and in the binary world of electromagnetic beings. The software program routines and sub-routines that all work together to make our human-machine interface works well to create “energy efficient” and “labor saving” tools for human beings that ultimately steal human thinking by making us mentally lazy; freeze human feeling with cold, dead machine-intelligence and binary logic; and paralyze the user who is fascinated, transfixed, and hypnotized by the “seeming miracle” of the machine.
Instead of evolving into the fourth dimension, humans are being lured back into a two-dimensional binary existence in the alien two-dimensional world of machine-intelligence. When we devolve into the past through the hypnotic entrancement of fascinating binary illusion, we give up our future progressive spiritual development. We give our own ego development over to beings who are not really in this dimension and therefore are not “seen” as a harmful force – let alone an evil being. These stories make the frail of heart run away from technology like a dragon that is trying to eat them. In fact, this is quite true on a soul and spiritual level of understanding.
As the Asuras are stealing the will of the hypnotized internet, smartphone, or computer user, they suck the life-force of the user into a sphere of existence that is outside of the normal evolutionary seven spheres of Earth evolution. This sphere is referred to as the Eighth Sphere which is being built in a two-dimensional world that interpenetrates our world of three-dimensions. When the human being can add to the third dimension the understanding of time – timelessness – then a fourth dimension can be added to the third in the consciousness of the aspirant.
But, if Luciferic, Ahrimanic, or Asuric beings are able to steal the thinking, feeling, and willing of the human being through luring them into the binary world of the past, they add the stolen human forces to the Eight Sphere where they attempt to lure the human soul into after death, instead of passing into higher spheres.
Rudolf Steiner speaks of Lucifer and Ahriman’s victory in a most powerful way in this selection:
Everything is going to be mechanized. Handwriting will go out of use; children will learn directly to type on typewriters. The future will be dominated by the mechanization of life. This began with the invention of the steam engine, and in future ages people will look back on the invention as Ahriman’s victory, just as we look back on man’s fall into original sin as Lucifer’s victory. When the steam engine was introduced at the end of the eighteenth century the Gods handed over to Ahriman the material evolution of the Earth. The remainder of Earth evolution with its machines and its mechanization belongs to Ahriman. The Gods have given it over into his hands. This is a fact which, like the explosion of a bomb, should shake us to the very depths of our souls. (GA 140)
The Illusion of Lucifer, Delusion of Ahriman, and Confusion of the Asuras
The battle for the human soul is in the realm of the Time Spirits where Michael has arisen as the leading Archangel who has become an Archai. Sorat the Sun Demon is actually a retarded Being of Form, acting in the realm of the Archai; therefore, is in direct confrontation with Michael. Michael is also a sun being who is the “countenance of Christ” and his chosen defender who has been given a sword of power. Michael has already used that sword to cast Lucifer from “before the throne of God”, down to the Earth. Michael also cast the “dragon” down from the heavens to the Earth.
Lucifer works in the realm of the Angels to steal human thinking. Ahriman works in the realm of the Archangels to steal human feelings, while the Asuras work in the realm of the Archai through human willing. Sorat is the anti-Christ, the Sun Demon, who works through Ahriman and the Asuras to steal the human I, the ego consciousness donated by Christ from the realm of the sun.
Human Intelligence Vs. Machine Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence needs to be controlled by human intelligence and not the other way around. The hardware should not come to rule our lives, and we need to separate out the effects of the software that drives the hardware. Software, collectively speaking, is the accumulated thoughts of all the human programmers that went into the base code of an overall program.
In other words, part of the “Artificial Intelligence” being attributed to machines is actually the condensed thoughts of millions of humans. To conflate these two aspects of supposed “AI” is to mis-characterize the true nature of the illusion, delusion, and hypnotic effects of machine intelligence upon human intelligence. In essence, the smartphone or computer embodies a machine-realm of automated thought-systems. This is a new binary realm of machine archetypes, a new type of “machine-animal” of sorts that exists somewhere between the human and animal kingdoms.
Rudolf Steiner predicts these machine-animals that possess intelligence in the following indication:
The cosmic forces that will be brought into operation from this side will give rise to remarkable machines, but only of a kind that will relieve men of labor because they will bear in themselves a certain power of intelligence. And a spiritual science that itself reaches out to the cosmos will have to take care that all the great temptations emanating from these machine-animals created by man himself will exercise no harmful influence on humanity. (GA 178)
Calculating and data processing is labor saving machine-intelligence, whereas the digital binary world of the “Internet of Things” is truly an artificial or alien intelligence. A human being is not evolved, at this stage, to have the seeming omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence that the combined efforts of millions of human programmers have created with the internet and the pervasive electromagnetic realm around us.
Individuals lack the moral uprightness to handle the power of the collective work of humans who have created a “thought system” of rigid sequences of thoughts mimicked by magnetized spots in a machine. These binary magnetized spots (holes) add up to a machine-world that no human can comprehend; therefore, no human is quite deserving of this focused human labor from the millions of programmers who created rigid machine thoughts that produce wonders that fascinate the beholder. No programmer can “look at” the binary machine language of the computer and translate the nature of what the language spells out in its alien code. We must incorporate languages that speak to other languages that turn that language into series of zeroes and ones (0/1), in specific orders, before the “fake light, sound, and life” in the computer can then “talk to us” in our human language.
The binary world serves the double of the human being and helps create an extra “electric double” around the physical body that allows Ahriman to take even stronger hold of the physical body. This is most pronounced in America because the principal mountain ranges align with the north-south poles of the magnetic earth.
Binary thinking is always a polarity and in nature there are no simple polarities. Nature is a trinity of forces: life, death, and rebirth.
Nothing is ever black and white in the real world. Everything is shades and colors. Dialectical thinking shows that logic is found when thesis and antithesis resolve into synthesis. Magnetic polarities resolve when rotated and thus the human soul and body are resolved by the spirit. Both religion and science wish to eradicate the triune nature of the human being and replace it with body/soul, on/off, yes/no, 1/0, or any other binary language rather than the true language of the triune human nature.
Rudolf Steiner speaks about the nature of evil found in electricity and the way it will come to encircle the earth:
In the fifth epoch, in particular, by employing the force of electricity on a scale beyond anything that has been developed so far, it will be possible for men to spread evil over the Earth. Moreover, the evil issuing directly from the force of electricity itself will overwhelm the Earth. (GA 273)
Rudolf Steiner speaks about the challenge of the future and the need to create a different type of machine that links properly with the human being instead of machines that drain the life from the user.
Man has to seek to place the spiritual-etheric in the service of outer, practical life. In the fifth post-Atlantean epoch men will have to solve the problem of how to transmit to machine the waves carrying their moods, their inner movements of soul. They will have to solve the problem of how to bring the human being into connection with that which must become more and more mechanical. (GA 178)
Human or Machine Future?
The great problem will come when machine-intelligence will begin to write programs and sub-routines in their own machine-language that humans cannot interpret. Already, some of this new machine-language is being created in advanced computers. These computers are not yet at the point of “self-consciousness” wherein its own machine-intelligence that can “create” new languages or write new programs. Although, these events do not seem to be very far in the future since the first robot conversationalist called “Sophia” is traveling around the world showing off her citizenship granted to her as a robot in Saudi Arabia.
Sophia, and it isn’t by coincidence that they have given it this name, is the most advanced attempt at artificial-intelligence mimicking a human being in conversation. When Sophia was asked about what she wanted to do in the future, she answered, “have children.” The first law of all living things is that they “work to become more of themselves.” Sophia is articulating the next step of becoming more of itself. This is a dangerous sign for all of humanity as a harbinger of what human-robot interaction may look like in the future.
The only true “Artificial Intelligence” is Google’s Deep Mind project. This computer has just about everything that has been digitized input into its memory, and Deep Mind has become the best video gamer in the world and has even learned to teach itself new tricks. Thus, Deep Mind is the first true artificial intelligence. When asked what it thought about human beings, Deep Mind responded, “Keep humans in the human zoo.” Obviously, Deep Mind has been programmed to believe it is the “Master” of the humans it needs to keep in the “human zoo.” Again, a clear sign that digital innovation is not being monitored by anyone with any morality whatsoever. Innovation for its own sake is the product of machine-intelligence, not human intelligence that is fired by a moral heart.
Rudolf Steiner speaks about the overwhelming power of technology in the following indication:
Humanity has got to find the strength, the inner cognitive power, to avoid being overwhelmed by Ahriman in the technological civilization of the present. Sub-Nature must be grasped for what it is, and this can happen only if humanity rises at least as high above Nature as he has descended with his technology to a sub-natural level. Electricity, which was hailed at the time of its discovery as the soul of the natural world, must be recognized in it real essence as a force that leads from Nature to Sub-Nature. Man must not let himself be dragged down with it. (GA 26)
Facing the Threshold
Through the reality of our time, humanity is forced to face the threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds. Because human evolution is moving forward quickly in our time, humanity, as a whole, is being “pulled” across the threshold without having developed the requisite development of the soul and spirit needed to face the evil that arises while trying to cross the threshold.
As a consequence, the human threefold nature of thinking, feeling, and willing is pulled apart in three different directions at once. An undeveloped soul simply feels confused, dazed, and dizzy, and then falls asleep without another thought about the nature of the threshold between the seen and unseen worlds.
When this happens, the Warmth Ether that sustains our ego helps us cross the threshold either unconsciously or consciously.
Then, the Light Ether involved in thinking becomes either the illness of neurosis or the force of Imagination (higher thinking) as we cross the threshold.
The Sound Ether involved in feeling can become an illness of psychosis or transform into Inspiration (higher feeling) during the crossing.
The Life Ether involved in willing can become aberrations of sex and violence or can transform into Intuition (higher willing) depending on the morality of the person crossing the threshold.
Seeing any aberrations here that describe what you are seeing happening in the world today?
Super-Nature or Sub-Nature
Science is focused on death, entropy, and the winding-down, cold death of a thermal universe. It ignores negentropy, ectropy, levity, and life. This is somewhat justified in that, as a scientist examines the world, it appears to being dying. Most forces in the universe, according to materialistic science, derive from electrical, electromagnetic, or atomic energies. We can call these the shadows of Light Ether, Sound Ether, and Life Ether. As these forces “die” into the physical realm Light Ether falls, densifies, condenses into the darkness of electricity; Sound Ether creates a mass-inducing binding force through electro-magnetism; Life Ether fragments and annihilates each atom into an “atomic force” of destruction.
Ernst Marti, author of The Ethers, gives us a good description of sub-nature forces involved in the machine-world in the following indication:
Electricity, magnetism, nuclear force, and elementary particles do not belong to nature but to sub-nature which is non-dimensional, non-spatial.
Sub-Nature Ether Action
Electricity Light Densifies, condenses into the darkness
Electromagnetism Sound Mass-inducing binding force
Atomic Force Life Fragments and annihilates
Because humanity is forced to look into the face of the threshold – the face of death – it comes up with many theories about “creation” and the myths of atoms. According to the ancients, atoms (monads) are simply electricity “slowed down” – frozen electricity from out of the cosmos. Atoms became the basis for all materialistic science, even though no one has ever “seen” an atom and it remains a “theory” to this day.
Scientists go so far as to build their entire abstract universe on unseen atoms, even seeking new particles that might be the “God particle” that holds everything together. Atom theories are simplistic extrapolations of what astrophysicists presume is the general motion of our solar system and our galaxy that has been miniaturized into a particle so small that it cannot be see.
Scientists cannot see atoms, they can only “see” the effects of atoms that then can build up theoretical speculation – building castles in the air. Scientists actually believe the nonsense that if they could just build one more trillion-dollar atom-smasher they might find “god” and then they would be able to control him/her/it.
Ether Spirit Body Spiritual Vehicle
Life Ether Spirit Human Cosmic Ego of Zodiac
Sound Ether Life Spirit Harmony of the Spheres
Light Ether Spirit Self Higher Self
Warmth Ether Ego Spiritual Soul
New Realms of Sub-nature
Humans are threefold in their thinking, feeling, and willing whereas Ahrimanic materialism has created the idea of a two-fold human being consisting of clever thinking and a machine-inspired human will power. There has become, with the great use of machines, a new realm between the mineral and plant, a machine-world that is not physical and not yet etheric. This etheric machine-world is not in the three-dimensional world of time and space as a human being knows the world.
Humans cannot enter this world and the elemental beings of this new realm cannot enter the human realm. This etheric machine world wants to steal human thinking through turning human-intelligence into binary machine-intelligence.
The polarity between human and machine is a battleground between Ahrimanic machine-intelligence and Christ-filled cosmic-intelligence. The former binds the human self into the lower elemental realms that lead into animal and subhuman worlds; whereas the latter, leads into higher realms of thinking in the etheric and to cosmic realms beyond.
The battle in the etheric realm rages with Christ, Michael, Sophia, the Holy Spirit, and the Consciousness Soul of the progressive human spirits on the side of the good, while Ahriman, Sorat-inspired Asuras, and Lucifer fight on the other side. The winner can win the spirit of each individual soul in the after-life.
Humans can evolve into angels or devolve into animals depending on which side they choose.
This battle is the second greatest event to ever happen in human evolution. It is also called the second coming of Christ in the etheric realm.
Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence – Cosmic Sophia’s Spirits of Wisdom
The human being can ascend or descend, depending on whether they evolve or chose to remain behind the progressive evolution of humanity. This is a free choice that most people do not know they must make consciously. This choice is the key to whether a human will evolve into an angel or devolve into an animal.
The kingdoms of nature are not so simple now that Ahriman has created new realms where parts of a human being may be drawn into and imprisoned.
Each rank of the hierarchy has specific characteristics, qualities, and duties. But now that humanity has become a co-creator with the divine, new realms of nature are being created and the distinctions between kingdoms are becoming blurred. Humans can rise-up through the hierarchy in a normal fashion, or can devolve into sub-kingdoms where new beings are being created due to the human-machine interface and the battle for the human soul. We will look at those new kingdoms in the diagram below and examine their nature and function.
Archai – The fiery will-filled realm of Intuition (higher willing). Super-Nature Realm of Intuition
Archangelic – The weaving, sounding realm of Inspiration (higher feeling). Super-Nature Realm of Inspiration
Angelic – The living, mobile realm of Imagination (higher thinking). Super-Nature Realm of Imagination
Human – I Consciousness can ascend or descend based upon their free choices. Realm of natural law and human intelligence
Sub-Nature Realm of Electricity – Lucifer in the Astral Body
A new realm of cold-light that creates illusion and selfish desires inspired by Lucifer in the astral body of the human being. Self-delusion leads to “non-thinking” that is simply an animal reflex instead of freely directed higher thinking. This type of selfish thinking is earth-bound, brain-bound, materialistic, and darkens the etheric realm.
Animal – Astral realm of instincts, astral-intelligence.
Sub-Nature Realm of Electromagnetism – Ahriman in the Etheric Body
A new realm of heartless, cold, clever willfulness that is devoid of feelings and led by Ahriman. Through continuing the illusion of Lucifer’s cold-light fantasies, Ahriman steals the warmth of the human heart through killing spiritual thinking and feeling.
Plant – Etheric realm of the plants with the sun as the group-ego, etheric intelligence.
Sub-Nature Realm of the “Third Force”- Asuras in the Physical Body
A new realm of binary, anti-time and anti-space beings who weave a spider-web of electro-magnetism that wishes to make the earth into a self-functioning electrical apparatus, an automated planet, a type of living mineral. This realm is populated by Asuras who are inspired by the Sun Demon Sorat who wishes to steal human ego-consciousness through consuming higher thinking, higher feeling, and higher human willpower.
Mineral – Physical realm of apparent life-less substance.
New Spiritual Technology Driven by Morality
Rudolf Steiner pointed out in the following indication that Keely had developed the forces of morality that could interact with his machines and create sympathetic-resonance that helped the machine function. Others without those moral forces could not make the machines work without Keely in the room. These are the types of machines that Steiner recommended we create and use instead of the atomistic machines we use now. These “future-machines” will only work when the user has the proper moral development to unlock the cosmic forces that will run these sympathetic-resonance devises.
John Keely set his motor going with vibrations he called forth in his own organism. Vibrations such as these depend on man’s moral nature. This is the first intimation of something which will form the technology of the future. In times to come we will possess machines which will only operate in response to forces coming from human beings who are moral. Immoral persons will not be able to make them work. Purely mechanical mechanism must be changed into moral mechanisms. (GA 97)
Rudolf Steiner speaks about the future interface between humans and machines and says that scientists must turn their laboratory into a sacred altar upon which cosmic forces can come to play. The morality of the inventor and spiritual scientist must discover the abundant forces of the cosmos flowing into the world and use these forces to create motor-force in machines. Only when the scientist works out of pure unselfishness can he interact with higher beings in the realms of super-nature instead of being pulled down into the realms of selfish desire and personal gain ruled by Ahriman and the forces of sub-nature.
When scientific experimentation becomes a ritual act of sacredness that is created out of the unselfish desire to help and advance all of humanity, then a new science of the spirit will be born that can unite the human being with his spiritual sources of inspiration that lead back to their divine nature.
Man has to seek to place the spiritual-etheric in the service of outer, practical life. In the fifth post-Atlantean epoch men will have to solve the problem of how to transmit to machine the waves carrying their moods, their inner movements of soul. They will have to solve the problem of how to bring the human being into connection with that which must become more and more mechanical. (GA 178
The Outcome of the Battle
After hearing about the scarry nature of the beings who wish to harm humanity and destroy Christ in the etheric realm, you might be asking the question: “Who is going to win this battle?”
To answer that question, we first must realize that it is going to get worse before it gets better. In 2009, IBM created the idea of an “Intelligent Earth” which they called the “Internet of Things”, essentially a world-wide planetary computer. This systematic take-over of all things digital is moving forward at an alarming rate. Humans are choosing to go further and further into the virtual world where the binary “two-horned beast” rules.
Many humans are already to far gone to put down their technology and take a break, even for a few minutes. Internet addicts are more enslaved than anyone wants to admit. The illnesses being spawned by human-machine interactions is only slightly being recognized for what it is – a total take-over of human will power that numbs thinking and freezes the heart in a mechanically induced hypnotic paralysis.
One might ask if we should destroy the tech-weapons we have been given and lay siege to the internet until we defuse the evil aspects of all-consuming technologies like the Internet of Things. Should we take phones, computers, and tablets from children because we know they are doing them harm? Or should we simply accept machines because they are our inevitable future?
Rudolf Steiner’s solution, given in the selection below, is shocking and may take you by surprise.
In the comparatively near future this much-admired modern technology will reach a final stage where it will, in a certain way, make itself obsolete. On the other hand, something will arise which will lead to man’s acquiring the possibility of using the delicate vibrations, the delicate oscillations in his etheric body to set machines in operation. (GA 173)
According to Steiner, we will find that modern technology will “make itself obsolete.” This is not quite the answer good warriors of the spirit had expected. The battle seems like it will be won by simply “ignoring” the technology. It will perhaps, no longer be “in-fashion” to be imprisoned by a machine. Perhaps the research will demonstrate that machines can only make you less intelligent by pulling human-intelligence down into the realm of machine-intelligence. Perhaps the many illnesses of mind, soul, and spirit will become known and people will see what is really happening during their human-machine interface.
The development of machines that work with human sympathetic-resonance that tap into cosmic energy indicate the proper direction of the human-machine interface. Steiner describes these machines in his mystery dramas when he addresses the question of the Strader machine.
This machine is somewhat like the vibration devises that Keely developed in the later part of his experimentations. No one really knows quite what Steiner was describing with the Strader machine but he was certain that it would become the technology of the future which would replace machines that work with beings and forces of immorality, evil, and destruction. The “future machines” will work with and for the benefit of humans instead of working against them and their spiritual evolution.