עברית ‘Death has become the well-spring of a new life and new sun!’
The Confrontation with Ahriman
‘Death has become the well-spring of a new life and new sun!’
(Rudolf Steiner)
In the second volume of the new edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible, I describe the first part of the knowldge drama of the Second Coming. I tried to show that the bridge of spiritual memory and continuity of consciousness must be anchored firmly in the physical world and cognition. Therefore, its first part must be constructed from the spiritualized forces of thinking and perception, centered in the nerve-senses system in the brain. To do so, the death forces of Ahriman must be confronted and overcome, because they control our ordinary thinking and perception. I tried to describe this process as exactly as I could, before describing the construction of the first, etheric-cognitive layer of the bridge from head to heart.
Below I post a short extract from this section.
Thus far, we have described how the true ‘I’ becomes an active threefold being, using the two petalled lotus flower as his hands, wheels, and wings, and how he is spiritualized into Spirit Self when it unites with the macrocosmic spiritual power of the higher self that streams in through the pineal. This being and activity of the true ‘I’ is the builder of the bridge. In creating the builder we also actualized the strongest foundation not only of the first etheric-cognitive layer of the bridge, but also of the being that will lead and direct, on ever higher levels, the construction of the second and third layers. The consolidation of the threefold ‘I’ as Spirit Self, makes it possible to meet consciously also other spiritual beings. The first spiritual being that we meet is, however, our Spirit Self and through it, our guardian Angel. As Rudolf Steiner often pointed out, the Spirit Self is the central member of the Angels, and the guardian Angels carry and nourish this part for us, until we can take care of it ourselves. Therefore, when we individualize the Spirit Self, our Angel gives over some of his work to us, and we must be ready to assume this responsibility in full imaginative consciousness
This is the reason why this meeting must take place as a result of our free activity, to become cognitively and morally productive. And with the individuation of Spirit Self and meeting our Angel, we also enter the world in which, beside the etheric Christ, Ahriman lives and works too. Until this moment, however, we could only see and experience the etheric Christ, and were occupied by the investigation of his appearance, words, and deeds. From the moment in which our Angel gives us, through the Spirit Self, some of the responsibilities for our spiritual development, our enhanced imaginative cognition grasp how we are also exposed to Ahriman’s influences, which previously we could only experience indirectly. One of the significant consequences of this stage is that the true ‘I’, as Spirit Self, can enter consciously through the ‘portal of death’ opened in the head. This portal was guarded and hidden from us by our guardian Angel, and by still higher beings working through him, and in a very real sense, the Angel now gives us the key to this portal.
This means that we are up against formidable foes, and we had better arm ourselves appropriately, as we join Michael’s army, with the best intel about our enemy, and in the present age of Michael, only spiritual science provides the necessary knowledge. The most important aspect of this enemy who faces us in the present stage of the knowledge drama, was described by Rudolf Steiner as follows:
The dragon has the most manifold forms; he has all possible forms. Those springing from human emotions are damaging enough, but they are not so damaging as the form that the dragon assumes through the dead, deadening knowledge of the present. There the dragon becomes absolutely, especially abominable. [1]
And further:
It will be nothing else but this misguided understanding, this misguided intelligence, which can prevent man from coming to the Christ-principle. And if those who finally succumb to the two-horned beast could look back on what has dealt them the worst blow they would say: the tendency to descend into the abyss only came later, but what darkened the Christ-principle for me was my intellect. [2]
In the age of the Consciousness Soul, the actualization and spiritualization of the human ‘I’, becomes truly real and practical through the fully conscious confrontation with Ahriman. As Rudolf Steiner pointed out, ‘we do not gain a sight of the real “I” before we can observe... this death process, the process of inner decomposition. And the one who has grasped that the “I” is a tireless fighter against this death process has grasped that the “I” is a being that, as such, has nothing to do with death...Man enters a realm where death has no significance... So we come to the “I” when we study death,’ [3] And further, ‘This “I”, how is it created? Because the human being can delve into the chaos of destruction, this “I” can be shaped and build itself. This “I” must be steeled and condensed in that world that exists in man as a world of destructive forces.’ [4] But what is more, death must be not only confronted and overcome, but also intimately ‘befriended’. If we strive to make true Rudolf Steiner’s words, spoken two weeks before his last address, this becomes for us a fundamental task of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming in its entirety: ‘To develop in oneself the forces of eternal soul awakening means: To experience death next to you as a good friend and constant companion.’[5] This may naturally seem as a daunting, even frightful task. But help is also given in the present time, that wasn’t available a century ago. If we are active and courageous and are infinitely enthusiastic about the fact that we can serve Michael and the Christ, the newly released etheric forces, through which the etheric Christ is perceived, offer the greatest help. Let us experience the vital and empowering forces of this help, as we report the next stage of our spiritual practice, in which we must confront Ahriman’s forces face to face.
After arming ourselves with the due preparations, described above from various points of view, we enter Ahriman’s kingdom through the Portal of Death. Now, practically speaking, if you want to catch a certain fish in the sea, you must create a net that fits the size of the fish you want to catch. As we are the new ‘fishermen’ of Christ in his second coming, and the ‘sea of Galilee’ in which we fish is the etheric world, the net we weave is made not from physical but from etheric fibers. And therefore, we must adapt the etheric web to its task, which is to catch the ahrimanic beings that swarm in the subterranean elemental worlds. We know that if we get a sufficient number of them, they must perforce lead us to their headmaster. So we set out to spin the required etheric fibers and weave the etheric net in the following way. We activate the spiritual eyes, arms, and hands of the two petalled lotus flower, empowered by the spiritual forces of the higher self, flowing into the Spirit Self and true ‘I’ via the pineal, and connect it to the stream of freshly etherized blood forces from the heart. We gather these vibrant etheric forces in the two petalled lotus flower, spin the fibers in the twofold vortex described above, and weave from them a highly refined etheric web. When the web extends from the etheric head to the etheric heart, and from the head to a certain distance in the external etheric world, we ‘throw’ or project it into the subterranean elemental sea, which is not a life-giving sea but rather a murky swamp. There, the net forces Ahriman’s beings and activities into visibility and catches them in their activity. This activity consist of, to begin with, robbing the cosmic-sun intelligence from Michael and subjugating it to Ahriman’s sinister goals. When this activity becomes etherically visible, we discover some of the hidden, and truly alarming, aspects of Ahriman’s kingdom and activity.
To begin with, this observation leads us to discover what makes everything on earth a finished and dead work, in nature and in human life alike. We realize that Ahriman constantly freezes, condenses, and preserves the living creations of the cosmic spirit. And this applies first and foremost to the creations of human thinking and intelligence on earth. This is the reason why Michael must find human beings that would spiritualize in their hearts this frozen Ahrimanized, cosmic intelligence, that Michael offered freely to humans on the earth, for their development, and was taken hold of by Ahriman. Therefore, if man strives to become Michael’s active coworker, he must create his individualized drama of knowledge in which he constantly spiritualizes these finished earthly results and returns their creative force to Michael. This means to enter consciously into our disintegrating brain and nervous system, which, spiritually speaking, is located in the subterranean kingdom of Ahriman, where he established his anti-Michaelic school in the 15th century, while the school Michael in the sun remained above ‘in all loneliness’. [6] The anti-Michaelic school’s function is to teach humanity the art of mechanization and materialization of cosmic intelligence and the entire modern culture and society.
The formation process of the etheric net is greatly supported if we add to it specific meditations, arranged in such a way, as to allow us to confront the ahrimanic beings from the start. The great achievements of technology provide one with ample opportunities to practice this art. An example of such training is given by Rudolf Steiner, when he mentions that strong forces are developed if we meditate in a train or steamship,[7] an indication which I often also use to great benefit when flying in airplanes. More inwardly, one can train oneself to assimilate and spiritualize the immense quantities of subsensible radiations produced in recent times, to strengthen one’s etheric immune system and develop and sharpen the cognitive faculties required to grasp and overcome the ahrimanic forces active in the sub-natural elemental regions of the external world.
When the net is cast and is firmly anchored, the Portal of Death is secured, and we can path through it safely. We continue to consolidate its supporting beams and posts, by constantly intensifying our meditations, concentrated between the two petals of the two petalled lotus flower and repeatedly let the forces of the higher self come to our aid via the pineal. The seemingly horizontal path between the two petaled lotus flower and the pineal is in reality also the vertical path that leads to the depths of the brain, body and earth. The outlines of the path that descend to the subterranean depths of Ahriman’s kingdom are illuminated by the radiating knots of the etheric web, that also delimit the spiritual path that connects the two petalled lotus flower with the higher self in the pineal. To begin with, this path is experienced as a shaky mountain bridge stretched rather precariously over a bottomless abyss. We must hold ourselves fast and fully awake on this bridge over the steep abyss, between the eyes and pineal. As Olaf Åsteson dreamt in the 12 holy nights, but in awakened spiritual cognition, we must dare to experience what lies below it. From this bridge, we look - first from above - into Ahriman’s hidden subterranean mills underneath the brain, where he enslaves countless human souls, using the misguided, brain- and senses-bound thinking, as a powerful temptation and trap. We observe at close range how he uses the brain to grasp, capture, intellectualize and materialize, the free-flowing cosmic intelligence. His imminent attack, for which he is always lurking ‘in the grey spirit abyss’, occurs in each moment of ordinary human thinking.
More precisely, Ahriman is always on the alert, and awaits the moment in which we grasp anything with our senses and represent it in the human brain. In the moment when the metal picture, ‘this is a tree’, is formed, the otherwise freely flowing cosmic intelligence is severed from its living connection to the spiritual world and Michael. And this bit of cosmic intelligence, separated from Michael in each mental picture, is his new prey, which his beings immediately captures and traps, with their spider-like tentacles and cobwebs. He then sucks eagerly the cosmic life forces that remained in the representation and nourishes himself and his hosts with its previously cosmic prana. In this way, he has killed in the human brain a certain quota of living cosmic intelligence. He sucked its cosmic life blood and now holds its dead corpse in his claws. Then he separates the corpse also from the threads that connect it to the etheric and physical brain. In Ahriman’s view, it is apparent that the human brain is simply the most efficient trap in the whole universe to catch and capture, cut to pieces, and kill the cosmic intelligence. This is possible because in the brain - as Rudolf Steiner often said - the matter of the nerves in the present stage of evolution has grown old and its natural death is progressing rapidly. The brain has entered the latter day phase of disintegration. Ahriman can take control of the cosmic and human intelligence because he also controls the disintegration of etheric and physical forces and matter, in which this intelligence is entangled.
What we described above is the real workshop of Ahriman in the brain. But man can unmask its hidden machinations only after acquiring some skills in forging and handling Christ’s given ‘key of death’. He must demonstrate that he can use it to overcome death consciously.
In this way, we can closely observe, in imaginative perception, how Ahriman is using his forces to achieve a two-stage plan. First, he must control the etheric and physical forces of the brain, in which the cosmic intelligence is trapped and captured. The brain bound and mineralized cosmic intelligence, is his prey. It is now de-formed and sub-formed into his intelligence. This is the first stage of his plan and the means to achieve his real goal. But his most desired prize is not only to make the cosmic intelligence and substance his own, but to use it to make humanity and the earth his own and lead them into his cosmic goals. And he accomplishes this by implementing what Rudolf Steiner termed, ‘Ahrimanic immortality’, which is a gigantic cosmic strategy and method, to achieve total de-formation and sub-substantiation of humanity and earth. [8] Through this method, therefore, Ahriman first separates the cosmic intelligence from its cosmic Michaelic source and captures it, and with it he also separates and captures the human souls that succumb to this separated and captured intelligence.
In order to rescue and retrieve the fallen Michaelic intelligence and the human souls bound to it, and connect it again to Michael, the source of formative and creative cosmic intelligence, man has to be consciously present in the very moment in which Ahriman succeeds to capture this intelligence in the brain. We must watch how he transmutes it, imbues it with his own ‘life’, makes it his own, and uses it to multiply his hosts and enslave humanity. And this happens precisely in the place in which we concentrated our activity from the start of the knowledge drama, in ‘the empty and soulless physical space’, whose soul was depleted by Ahriman, and in Ahriman’s ‘time's annihilation stream’, indicated in the call for self-knowledge in opening verse of the first esoteric class. In this situation and event we intervene and oppose this process. We uncover Ahriman’s activity in his own kingdom and bring it to light, and in each moment we do so, he must let go of his cosmic prey. This must take place in each conscious act of the spiritualization of thinking and perception through imaginative cognition, as we also showed in chapter 5 of Cognitive Yoga, ‘Etherization of Thinking’, in which ‘the spiritual lessons of death’ are described in detail.
This deed must be accomplished in Ahriman’s kingdom, implanted as a seed in his being. And our service to the time spirt, Michael, consists in this, that we plant a highly potent spiritual seed of resurrection- formed in our previous work- in which pure, virgin, god given life stream, that we have before our birth, dies in our earthly, ahrimanized consciousness, and is resurrected through Christ to new life. This is the seed formed in the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, in which life becomes death and death becomes new life. This seed consists of the immortalized forces of the etheric body, active in the free etheric heart, becoming the forces of spiritual cognition between the two petaled lotus flower and the pineal. Its substance is made of the life forces circulating in Christ’s imbued etheric ring around the earth, and in planting it in Ahriman’s kingdom, Ahriman’s project can be inversed.
If we accomplish this deed, Ahriman must relinquish this piece of intelligence, and we bring it back as an offer to Michael. This is how we overcome him. We can return the stolen cosmic intelligence to the cosmic sun heart of Michaelic.
The Michaelic deed accomplished in this stage of the knowledge drama is described by Rudolf Steiner in this way:
That is why man must be able to fructify the earthly realm, the realm wholly permeated by death, in such a way that death becomes the seed of an Ego principle in the eternal realm, the spiritual realm. But this possibility of transforming death, which would otherwise mean annihilation, into the seed of eternal egoity was provided by the Christ impulse. On Golgotha the true aspect of death was manifested to all mankind for the first time; and as a result of Christ's having espoused death... death became the well-spring of a new life - and... of a new sun. [9]
[1] Lecture of 16 October 1923 (GA 302a).
[2] Lecture of 30 June 1908 (GA 104).
[3] Lecture of 20 August 1921 (GA 206).
[4] Lecture of 23 September 1921 (GA 207).
[5] Lecture of 9 September 1924 (GA 346).
[6] Lecture of 20 July 1924 (GA 240).
[7] Lecture of 28 December 1914 (GA 275).
[8] The project of Ahrimanic immortality and its overcoming is described in detail in my forthcoming book, The Time is at Hand! Ahrimanic and Michaelic Immortality and the Apocalypse of the Age of Michael (Temple Lodge 2024).
[9] Lecture of 7 July 1909 (GA 112). My italics.