Enjoy the special selections and images of A. E. compiled by Douglas Gabriel.
It takes faith to develop the capacities to believe that there is a spiritual world or that there is life after death, let alone the belief in repeated human earth incarnations, or what is generally called reincarnation. It takes a willingness to believe that human karma and reincarnation exist. The modern materialistic thinker has no proof that an after-life exists or that spiritual beings populate a realm where human beings can live after death.
Modern science does not recognize the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth. The solid, liquid, and gaseous forms of matter are not elements. The Greek concept of nature was based on the recognition of the four elements. Somewhat as a fifth, ether was added. Aristotle said of ether: “It is that which is different from earth, water, air, and fire; it is eternal and eternally revolves in a circle.” The elements have their origin in the center, the ethers in the periphery. The former are central, the latter peripheral; the former are point-like, individual; the latter universal, comprehensive. Mathematically speaking, one could say they relate to each other like plus and minus, positive and negative.
“The time will come…when quite different tendencies will come up … and people will say: It is pathological for people to even think in terms of spirit and soul. ‘Sound’ people will speak of nothing but the body. It will be considered a sign of illness for anyone to arrive at the idea of any such thing as a spirit or a soul. People who think like that will be considered to be sick and – you can be quite sure of it – a medicine will be found for this. . . . The soul will be made non-existent with the aid of a drug.
This post is an amazing collection of quotes from Steiner about electricity, Ahriman, and the effects of machines upon the human spirit.
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.
According to Steiner, Novalis can write about the most profound foundations of life because he was there when those foundations were laid. The most important moments in Christian history can be understood through Novalis because of his central role in the enactment of the mysteries of Christianity. Of course, the reader is free to surmise what you will out of pure study of Novalis’ work, but it is often found that an inner question about the works of this author arises, “From what source can such wisdom flow?”
