עברית The Apocalypse of the Twentieth Century and the Gathering Storm of the Twenty-first Century
Facing Another Turn in the Tragic Evolutionary Spiral of Modern Humanity
The Apocalypse of the Twentieth Century and the Gathering Storm of the Twenty-first Century
Many people are asking themselves in these difficult times, in view of the tragic events in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, where are we truly standing in our evolution. It is not easy to find the balance between the depressing feeling, that we are stuck for such a long time in the same place, which means- in this age, actually going down deeper into the inhuman abyss- and the realization of the progress that does occur. This progress does take place, but we have to become part of it, to know that it is happening. To do so, however, we must develop the courage, to face reality. This courage is the only way to open the portal that leads also to the most beneficial and creative forces of our time. For this purpose, I post here a passage from the fourth lecture of The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
From the Fourth Lecture: The Anthroposophical Movement in the Present.
The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
The History of the Michaelic Movement since the Death of Rudolf Steiner.
In the second lecture about the Twilight of Humanity and its Resurrection, we emphasized the spiritual work that must be done today on the earth, that will take fully into account the supersensible events of the twentieth century. We said that our task is twofold. First, we must bring about the resurrection of old Anthroposophy in this century. The second is to develop on the earth the etheric chalice that will be able to receive and cultivate the truly new stream of the future stream of Michael, that wishes to come down to the earth towards the middle of the century.
A good preparation for the coming years and decades of the present century is to look back again to what actually happened in the last century.
The Michaelic Christ redemptive spiritual event in the etheric world in the 12 years 1933-1945, created the counterbalance, that became conscious for the first time on the earth at the end of the century, and must be brought to full actualization before the middle of this century.
This ahrimanic dome, in which the two apocalyptic Beasts rule with iron fists, was completed in 1933-1998. It gave the whole twentieth century its particular evil closure and signature. Thanks to the grace of karma given by the new etheric Christ impulse, one Michaelic hole could be punched through it at the end of the twentieth century. That hole must today be enlarged and expanded by the new Michaelic community.
Let us, therefore, first hear what Rudolf Steiner said in the last two lectures of the cycle about the Mission of Michael, given in November and December 1919, which is one of the most central lecture cycles about the true nature of our Michaelic time:
Those forces of humanity’s evolution which have so far guided man unconsciously, so that he has been able to advance, are becoming exhausted, and will be entirely exhausted by the middle of the century... and the atavistic forces still remaining from before the middle of the fifteenth century will have fallen into the worst decadence.
We have seen this, we have experienced all this, all this has become our physical history! We opened our second lecture with the shocking words of none other than Carl Gustav Jung, heralding Hitler as the German Messiah, and how he hailed the most decadent forces of clairvoyance, captured by the Fenris wolf, and proclaimed them as the new forces of the resurrected Wotan and the German people.
Let the kind of teaching that prevails in our universities continue for another three decades, let social questions be treated as they are now for thirty years more, and you will have a devastated Europe... If in this regard there is not a change in learning, a change in thinking, then the moral deluge will overwhelm Europe.
The moral deluge did overwhelm Europe and devastated it as Rudolf Steiner warned, and it took less than 30 years after 1919. This devastation expanded since then, and ‘the moral deluge’ has overwhelmed the whole earth after Europe. The fate of Europe spread over the present civilization around the earth as a whole.
We may say that the next ten, twenty, thirty years, up to the middle of the century, will be years in which more and more people will have learned to listen to the still small voice, and so open their inner being to the impulses of the spiritual world which would enter.
This is as true today as it was a century ago, but we are standing on a totally different foundation. A wave of powerful resignation may come over us, if we say—and this must be confronted, it cannot simply be dismissed with- out finding a real, actual, updated answer—that if people didn’t manage in 1919 or later, to ‘listen to the still small voice’ and ‘open their inner being to the impulses of the spiritual world’, what are the chances that a down- trodden, morally beaten and devastated humanity, will be able to do it in the twenty-first century?
All this already took place in the last century. What will be the fate of humanity if after a whole century has passed, and the centenary of the12 years, 1933-45 has arrived in 2033-45? What kind of humanity and earth would it be, after it has lived in hell for a whole century?
Rudolf Steiner ended the lecture from 14 December with a question and an appeal, directed to the feeling of responsibility—so he hoped—of the victorious Anglo-American powers:
For the question is already written down in humanity’s book of destiny: Will there be found among those upon whom the external dominion devolves as by an external necessity, a sufficiently great number of people who feel the responsibility, so that into this external, materialistic dominion, into this culmination of materialistic dominion, may be transplanted the impulses of the spiritual life? And that must not happen too slowly! The middle of this century will be a very significant point of time. (195)
But history has already answered this appeal in the most negative way. The victorious new American Empire certainly did not take the possible path of global moral responsibility.(196) The negative answer was already given after the First World War, and Rudolf Steiner’s words in this regard must be seen in the background of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, in which the Second World War was prepared.197 After the final devastation of Europe in the Second World War, the ‘American Century’ began and could turn to Eastern Europe and Russia, igniting and winning the Cold War, at the end of the century. The second American century began at the turn of the twenty-first century, using the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 as its main tool, to expand the American empire globally and take over the whole earth and civilization.
This was seen very clearly by Rudolf Steiner in December 1919:
The Anglo-American world may gain world dominion; but without the Threefold Social Order it will, through this dominion, pour out cultural death and cultural illness over the whole earth; for these are just as much a gift of the Asuras as lies are a gift of Ahriman, and self-seeking, of Lucifer. So, the third, a worthy companion of the other two, is a gift of the Asuric powers! (198)
Such world domination by the hands of the Asuric powers, was demonstrated very soon, from 1933 until 1998. It took over the world step by step, until the end of the century:
The Beast will be let loose from its imprisonment in the earth... That the Beast will be let loose is significant for the development of human beings. Such things are exceedingly powerful realities, great and significant points in the evolution of humanity and of the earth. In 1933, dear friends, there would be a possibility for the earth and everything living on it to perish... What needs to be said in the sense meant by the apocalyptist is: Before the Etheric Christ can be comprehended by human beings in the right way, humanity must first cope with encountering the Beast who will rise up in 1933. This is what the apocalyptic language tells us. (199)
The first Beast, that came up in 1933, prepared the ground for the victory of the second Beast, that rose to world domination in 1998:
Before us lies the time of the third number 666: 1998. At the end of this century the time will come when Sorat will once again raise his head most strongly out of the waves of evolution to become the adversary of that appearance of Christ which those who have been prepared for it will already experience during the first half of the twentieth century when the Etheric Christ becomes visible. Only two thirds of the century have still to run before Sorat once again raises his head most mightily.... (200)
If we feel the responsibility that is required of us, no matter where our karma places us on the earth today, if we wish to participate in the new Michaelic school and movement, we must also place ourselves in full consciousness in the midst of the present stage of this war in which the existence of humanity and the earth will be decided for good or ill. If we seriously dedicate our work to the Michaelic goals described above, in the coming 20s and 30s, we must realize that it takes place in the middle of this difficult testing time for humanity. We must experience with a growing sense of compassion and care what our fellow humans and non-human brothers and sisters, the animal, plant, mineral and invisible kingdoms of nature, have been going through since the end of the nineteenth century and what is still awaiting them. If we decide to do our work consciously, compassion can be the only real motivation, to take in and heal as much as we can from the tremendous suffering, we are already experiencing all around us and which is going to become infinitely stronger... However, people who were and are still asleep to the spiritual events of the last century, who ignore what I described in my books, The New Experience of the Supersensible, and The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, will certainly not be able to see nor understand the present and coming spiritual events, that will take place as a direct contin- uation of the events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (205).
Previously, let’s say, 10 or 15 years ago, if you studied the formation of the storm clouds that are approaching us in the present century, you could only observe them to begin with from afar, still hovering at the distant horizon. But if you prepared yourself through the true Michaelic experiences of the last century, described in the second lecture, you could already experience how the darkening shadows are gathering their forces, you could see the lightning, you could hear already, every now and then, from afar, the rumbling of heavy thunders, and you could feel that it’s moving ever closer. Now it’s almost right here above our heads and everybody is still fast asleep, confusion reigns supreme everywhere, among anthroposophists no less than among others, who are misguidedly directed to the external, physical, political events. But at least those protesting against global warming are partially awake, though still in a materialistic manner, while most of the so called ‘spiritual’ people are sunk in the deepest sleep because they ignore the new anthroposophical research that has been available since the 90s of the last century.
I must say this, even if it may be felt to be a bit harsh: All the sufferings we experience ourselves and see others experiencing all around us is not really the bad news. The wars are the external expressions and symptoms of the illness, not its causes. The wars, poverty, and global warming, are not the real bad news. The democrats and liberals are using the guilt and shame that we feel about the horrible economic inequality and abuse of nature, to intensify their materialistic propaganda that serve the purely ahrimanic economic and political strategies. The right wingers of all sorts manipulate the anger, resentment and frustration caused by the materialistic worldview and social order imposed by the intellectual elites; their continuous indoctrination of humanity with materialistic science, politics, culture, education and economy, is drying the human soul, preparing the wood to catch fire when the hellish fires of the old blood, race, and soil are ignited again. Through the political war between left and right works the great and truly horrific ahrimanic-luciferic delusion, instigated to maintain and increase the present chaos which guarantees the contin- uation and deepening of the same modern sleep; it aims to keep humans enslaved to confusion, despair, meaninglessness, brewing and cooking the swamps and morasses of this abyss and fuelling it by increased injustice and human suffering, and the destruction of nature and the earth. Of course, this is possible only because people desire this enslavement so passionately.
We are all humans of the modern time, aren’t we, despairingly wishing to believe everything, even the most horrendous, untruthful and cruel things, in order to protect ourselves from our One and greatest fear: the fear to experience and develop consciously our real spiritual being in a spiritual evolution of earth and cosmos. Naturally, therefore, we desire so passionately to be fooled and deluded in all possible and impossible ways, just to be protected from the truly horrible news—this is Ahriman’s conviction—that we are all god-created, creative spiritual beings, part of the most amazing, ever evolving, humanity, earth and universe; and we would do anything to prevent this knowledge from entering our minds and hearts, because we know very well that this amazing wonder of real spiritual existence and evolution, comes with the most challenging price tag. Each human soul knows in our age, that in order to experience and embody this infinite wisdom, truth, beauty and love and grow with it, each one must recognize, confront, heal and transform his and her lower nature. Yes, indeed, on this one decisive cliff, on the edge of this abyss, we repeatedly turn backward and therefore fall and lose our humanity. Better eternal ignorance in hell, so we tell ourselves, through luciferic bliss or ahrimanic misery, and their infinite number of combinations, because everything is preferable than true self-knowledge which requires us to accept, actively, that we are developing divine beings, and therefore eternally responsible for all our deeds and misdeeds, from immemorial times until today and for all future times to come...
Endnotes
198 GA 194, 15.12.1919.
199 GA 346, 20.9.1924. The first Beast that rises from the ‘sea’ is the being of unredeemed, fallen humanity, or humanity’s ‘lower self’, that rejects the Christ impulse.
200 GA 346, 12.9.1924. The second Beast, Sorat, that rises from the ‘land’, is the power that replaces the higher self with the image of the lower and reverses the whole human being, culture and civilization, upside down and down- side up. The global occult ritual, that celebrated this victory over humanity in the twentieth century, was performed openly and directly on the most public global stage and at the same time, it also opened and prepared the new century—and millennium—for the next great marches of the Beasts. This ritual took place through the meticulously orchestrated and executed destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, bathed in the blood spilled in the mass murder of 3000 people, on 11 September 2001.
201 In view of what we have seen from the dark side since the beginning of the twentieth century, this warning may seem superfluous, but considering our deep sleep, it is by no means the case. Always shaking and awakening in this regard are Rudolf Steiner’s wartime lectures about the occult background of the WWI, from 1914, 1915 and 1916, in GA 170-174b. However, we must not fall into the other extreme, projecting what he says then onto the present and future. Also these lectures, as all his writings, should be used not for intellectual reasons, but as means to develop a whole new way of thinking and entirely new forces of cognition, and with their help, to confront our present and future situation with totally new eyes, to be able to also recognize the new in a new way.
202 See also the second lecture above, ‘Ahrimanic and Luciferic singularity and immortality and the ultimate Ahrimanic-Luciferic merger’.
203 GA 177, 14.10.1917.
204 GA 152, 2 and 20. 5.1913.
205 The ‘war in the heavens’ between Michael and the ahrimanic angels, ended in his victory, which however cast them down to the earth, where they live among and in us ever since. Their subsequent victory over human consciousness in the beginning of the twentieth century led to the fact that when ‘‘The Beast [was] released from its captivity in the Earth in 1933... humanity [couldn’t] first come to terms with it before the Etheric Christ [could have been] recognized’ (GA 346, 20.9.1924, updated). This enabled the Beast to take over the human civilization, step by step, from 1933 until 1998 as we showed above (GA 346, 12.9.1924). The Michaelic Christ redemptive spiritual event in the etheric world in the 12 years 1933-1945, created the counterbalance, that became conscious for the first time on the earth at the end of the century, and must be brought to full actualization before the middle of this century.