a new understanding of today, time and space.

in reading about history, one sees the transitory nature of human life…

for you read about politicians trying to work out transitory answers to
transitory questions… for example, take one example in U.S history,
the Cuban missile crisis, want to know about it, read about in Wiki…

the Soviet Union makes an ad hoc decision to send nuclear missiles to
Cuba and the U.S makes an ad hoc decision to prevent this…

this is as close as we ever came to the use of nuclear weapons as a
means of war…but the important thing is that the choices weren’t made
because of some values or something considered to be lasting or permanent…

both the U.S and the USSR made their decisions ad hoc, or the spur of the moment,
the USSR simply saw an opportunity and took it and the U.S didn’t react with
any set values but spur of the moment actions… everyone simple reacted
with events, instead of reacting with values or even some long term plan…

to many times historical events are simply reactions to the events with
no understanding of any values which might be present within the events…

we too, as human beings, we simply react to events without any
large scale understanding involved in these events…

someone hits me, I hit them back… there is no reflection or thought
or recourse to any values… simple actions taken on a simple act…

on other words, we instinctually react to much in life, far to much…
I am punched and I react instinctually…no pause, no hestitation,
no reflection and no thought about any values I may or may not hold…

we spend too much making our decisions based on instincts and not
on reflection or on our values…we simply just react……………

now one might say in life and death decisions, we simply must react…
perhaps but exactly how many do we make life and death reactions…
I am 60 and I may have had two life and death decisions to make…
it simply doesn’t happen that often…and to some, it has never happened……

we must come to our actions and reactions from a standpoint of
pausing to understand and evaluate the act by, near or for or against us…
in the light of our values, in the light of conscience decisions taken
with reflection and deliberation…we must not react from
an instinctual reaction but from a higher level understanding……
our choices need to be made not from instincts but from
values…………

so what values are you going to have to make decision from?

Kropotkin

Right! The problem with reaction is that they activate on cue. Something sets off an automatic response, and that is also the case in accidental and faulty interpretations of cues, whereas instantaneously, in the course of a crucial moment, a wrong decision is made and interpreted as vengeance.

Vengeance is anger, raised to the level of madness, with a method, to avoid catastrophe of interpreting the signs of descent into oncoming total chaos.
It is an automatic system, built in to save mankind in the event when there is not enough time to react normally.
It is an overkill apparatus that can not distinguish between the real and the simulated.
This has happened a few times in history. Heaven help it will not happen again.

No one wants war, but there have been proven occurrences of painting too rosy pictures of the possibilities that human nature can deceive facts monumentally, and candy wrap them toward intentional purchase of industrial defensive technologies loaded with pork, and mistaken for superior value!

Nowedays it wouldn’t be surprising, if a ‘war’ were to occur for reasons behind procurement issues, for instance , about which best fail safe system was to be awarded to contract production.

Meno, I’ll get back to you later…

let us approach this from a different viewpoint…

I am a typical person who passes their day in a crappy job…
as I look at my life, I see that my days, my life is about surviving,
not living…

Millions upon millions of people spend their days surviving, not living…
but what does that mean?

surviving means you come home from work to tired to do anything but watch
TV…you get home and you have just enough energy to eat dinner and off to bed you
go… then spend tomorrow with the exact results as today…

you don’t have the time or energy or money to enjoy your life…
you are simply surviving it… not living it…

I live with pain because of my job and that is just surviving…

I get three weeks vacation from work to somehow recover from 11 months
of my high stress job… believe me, three weeks isn’t enough to recover
from the hell I suffer through every day…

my wife says it takes about the first 3 days of my vacation to become
a normal human being… and then one day after starting work, I revert
to survival mode…and I stand with millions of human beings who suffer
from the same fate… just surviving…not living their lives…

in regards to what I have been talking about, the transitory nature
of our lives and what does it mean to suffer life instead of living it…

I have spent 40+ years working… if there has been one thing that
hasn’t been temporary in my life, it has been the fact that I have
been in survival mode all those years…I have worked for 40 plus
years and all I have to show for it, is my constant and ongoing pain
in my hips and back and wrists and knees and…………

I can’t retire but how many more years of just surviving must I do
before I can escape? Must I wait for death to take me before I am
free? and at this pace of being able to retire, I will be an old man,
an truly old man who can barely move and suffers…

perhaps that is the real theme of the Buddha… not the suffering
of birth, old age, sickness and death… but the life long suffering
of working my entire adult life… of working for a system that
grinds it’s workers down into a pulp and discards them when
they can no longer create a profit…for that is the workers
reason for existence… to maintain profits… and for that I
just survive my life and not live it…

but that has been the case since the beginning… people,
human beings have just been surviving their existence,
not living it, but surviving it… nothing more then
animals in that regards……… and I can’t even claim that
our suffering, our surviving has been for the greater good, no,
our existence has been nothing more then to line the bed
of those who own the means of production… be it the state or
the church or the business… workers have always been the
one’s who have suffered the brunt of the work which has built
the modern world and yet the workers certainly don’t benefit from
their centuries long suffering in building the modern world……

no, the workers, we just live in surviving mode, not living,
surviving… think of all of the workers who have lived before you…
the millions of unnamed and unknown workers that have created
the modern world and in which you also slave in…………….

and we cannot call the capitalistic system anything other then
a slave owning system…you cannot do anything other then
work and suffer and survive for 40 years in support of a system
that will discard you once you no longer create profits……

and what of those who we have rightly celebrated like
MLK and Jesus and Mohammed and Gandhi and the Buddha
and Socrates… what of them? what role do they play in
all this suffering because our lives is in simple survival mode
instead of living our lives?

why do we celebrate those famous names? Because by their words
and examples, they have shown us the way out of just survival mode…
those names and others, have shown us how to be more then just
people who only function is to survive, they show us how to live,
they show us the path to living our lives, not just surviving our lives…

that is their value, that is their message…Those hero’s are hero’s because
they pointed the way past just surviving… we can learn to live our lives
if we follow their path…………live our lives not just survive our lives……

and that is the message we must take from those Hero’s…………

how to become something more then someone whose only goal is to
create profit for other’s to benefit from…

you want to live your life instead of just surviving it?

then you must follow their path, MLK and Gandhi and the Buddha
and Jesus and Mohammed and Socrates and……… use their words
to guide you to living your life, not just surviving it…………

what other people do we celebrate that has taught us to live
life, not just suffer it?

and what was their message?

Hero’s are the one’s who don’t take the road well traveled…
and those hero’s were in active opposition to the society they
live in and those hero’s didn’t just fall in line and simply obeyed…

their opposition in several cases cost them their lives…
but they did something you aren’t doing, which is this, they lived
and you, you are suffering and you are just surviving the modern world…

do more by understanding what it takes to become more
then just surviving the world… learn to live life…

Kropotkin

as I exist only as a worker whose sole function is
to produce profits, I have no other value to society,
I am a cog in the machine, nothing more…

I am surviving, not living and as a cog in the machine,
do I have any value? as a cog, do I have any meaning
in the world? no, no I do not have any other value,
any other meaning in the world outside of producing profits…

How am I to find meaning in a meaningless world?

For this pursuit of profits is a negation of my value as
a human being because I only exists to create profits, nothing more……

I suffer by growing old and becoming infirmed with my duties
as a profit creation “cog in the machine” with no other discernible
value to society…and once I stop creating profits, my use is of
end to society……that is why we get to “retire”… we are no further
use to society because we can no longer “efficiently” create profits…

I have worked for 40 years and I have nothing to show for it…….

what is the point of working all those years and have nothing to show
for it? what is the point of just being a cog in the machine and suffer
for all those years because I am only valued as a cog and nothing more?

as I look back at all these years, I see them having no value……

but what could I have done? what do the Kantian/Kropotkin
questions tell me about what I could have done differently
all those 40 wasted years with nothing to show for it?

I could have listened to those who walked a different path,
the ones like MLK and Gandhi and Jesus and Mohammed
and Socrates and……………my 40 year mistake was not
taking their words seriously… I paid lip
service to their words and traveled my “own” path
and look at where that got me.

my life is an example, an warning to all who come afterwards
to note that I spend my life being a cog in the machine
with nothing to show for it………….

the question becomes how do I find meaning in a meaningless world,
given the empty values of the dominant ism/ideology of the land
is the nihilism of materialism? this ism of capitalism is about
stripping human beings of any value by making all, a cog in
the machine designed to be “efficient”……….as if efficiency
was the only value worth existing………….but the things that give
our lives value outside of being a cog in the machine
are the values offered by those like Gandhi and MLK
and Socrates and Jesus… and those values like love
and tolerance and justice and Satya………

values that aren’t efficient and values that don’t create profits
and values that put human beings front and center, not
materialism/capitalism which puts profits……

It is not enough to just be able to spout what these values
are, we must be human enough to live these values…….
and that is the part we/I missed… we must treat those values
as a way of life……

I am only a cog in the machine when I exists without values…

if I take those values as a way of life, then I
negate the negation…

if I live my life by the values of love and justice
and tolerance and Sayta, I am no longer efficient,
but I am on the path of becoming more human………

I have lived as a cog in the machine… all my life…

but the path to escape as the Buddha tells us is to
become aware of our status of being cogs…
and then, and then we can begin to see the question of
“What am I to do” in another light………

but the beginning is the hardest step of all,
become aware of where you are in life…
and I am aware of being a cog in the machine
and now I can begin to do something about it…
but the first step is awareness………….

I am just surviving my life, not living it……

Kropotkin

Well thats right there why you will always lose.
Thinking music isn’t part of the solution.

Especially to so called “racial inequality”
(as if people within one race are equal)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFOtRrFH3z0[/youtube]

These black guys would find it pretty fun if you thought of them as inferior or less privileged than yourself

The world is more complex than race, Kropodile Dundee.

I think poor white people want to see the black man as underprivileged, because otherwise they would fall prey to envy. The black American man has overcome slavery. The white American man is still on the plantation. Slaving for the man with hardly any reward, and voting for him as a thank-you on top.

i remember sitting in the holding cell waiting for court and talking to a nigerian about the ‘westernized negro’. the conversation started when i caught him watching in disgust some young black dude rapping to himself and pacing back and forth in front of the stainless steel mirror. he too was waiting for court… he was getting his mind right, getting ready to fight the evil white man for charging him with murder because his dumbass followed the instructions of some rapper and shot another black dude over a drug deal.

i finally sold the nigerian on the idea that the image of freedom and success the westernized negro has gained as a result of his integration into western-capitalist society is a complete farce, and that now, rather than being a citizen from a third-world civilization with any modicum of integrity, honesty and dignity, he’s now become the gimp of capitalist consumerism with an overblown sense of exceptionalism, entitlement and power. he agreed, and we both came to the conclusion that this was a disaster created by the white man, so we didn’t blame the dipshit pacing in front of the mirror fixing his dreads and practicing his tough guy gangsta stare.

this is what happens when you suddenly thrust a primitive culture into the capitalist-west. three stages; goes from bad to worse… this lasts for about four hundred years… then the negro fully integrates, normalizes his intelligence, and becomes able to identify with the white working classes the oncoming necessity of a complete paradigm shift and the restructuring of capitalism.

this idiot pacing in front of the mirror was only a relatively temporary phenomena, see. i give em maybe another fifty or so years. we can hear and see the first signs of this change now; white and black culture is homogenizing through the blending of the consumer semiotics that are adopted by the herd to establish the sense of identity. not only are black people becoming white, but even the whiggers are turning back into white people and listening to lady gaga and driving little neon blue hybrid cars to the club where they can thrown their hands in the air to the sound of un-tss, un-tss, un-tss, un-tss, un-tss, un-tss, ad nauseam.

basically the millennial negro stock is being slowly whitified. and this will have adverse effects for capitalism, because whenever formerly conflicting classes are merged into a single unified culture, a single class consciousness and awareness pervades over the new, whole class. now, or i should say ‘soon’, the gun toting lower class criminal negro conditioned by the toxic rap semiotic will become obsolete, replaced by a more educated and politically aware dipshit that is no longer as subject to the forces of consumerism that had previously kept his attention off the disease of capitalism and kept him focused on the various ways he could commodify his identity so he could feel complete in his personal war against the conflicting class ‘whitey’, the other class of commodified dipshits.

now they’re together, see, and much less distracted by media forces. when you get these knuckleheads together, they stop fighting each other and turn toward the thing that had kept them so divided before through the propagating multiplicity of all the cultural trends they were once involved in maintaining to fill that identity void (which is first created by capitalism so that it can then sell you all the shit you need to fill it).

yeah but that nigerian was a cool dude. black as fuck, too. so black he was purple. had a strong, aristocratic and imposing demeanor. i could use a fella like this in my revolution. i’d put him in charge of the eastern front. he’d be the guy organizing the resistance against all the european capitalist imperialists trying to squirm their way onto the continent to start building walmarts.

Yeah since Obama the American blacks have largely seemed to be turned into white girls.
Ive seen these dorks-of-hiphop pacing around the locker room of my gym, coming in with earplugs and rapping in some inane voice some inane lyrics under the impression people are impressed by him rather than seeing him as a dork, which is what everyone sees as clear as day. A dork.

Black people have been dorkified under Obama-Biden. Now Biden will become president with a 12 year old Vice he fucks in public to install confidence in Democracy.

Also these dorks are so in-dorktrinated that they think all white men are in fearful baffled awe of rap music. They come in the locker room thinking no white man there has ever heard a black man utter these rhythmic words.

But instead thats not the case.
vocaroo.com/i/s0gahA7s5F3Q

I can endlessly share stories about anti white racism here in this country, but I will get in trouble for it.

this is a step in the right direction, though. you can’t imagine the burden that has been lifted from the working class tax payer to sustain the welfare state by turning irresponsible misogynistic wanna-be gangstas who ‘don’t lud (love) them hos’ and leave single unemployable black women with four kids to support, into manageable and domesticated dipshits who are proud to have a job and be exploited by the capitalists who are responsible for marketing the shit that made them such trash to begin with.

first you gotta take the negro out of em. next you gotta turn them into passive, backward working class white people. then you can start working on em.

that’s because he didn’t have the whole gangsta ensemble going. i’ll compile a short list for things he’ll need to do to impress all the guys in the locker room. please give it to him:

  1. get a tattoo of some fearsome animal and/or a weapon and/or some religious symbol. i always go with a dragon, tech-9 and a yin-yang. if you get a good artist he’ll intertwine all three so you get the dragon holding the tech-9 inside of a yin yang.

  2. lift weights and get all cut up. that way you’ll be ready for the fight you’ll never actually get in.

  3. buy an over-sized watch with all kinds of depth gauges and shit that you’ll never use. having one of these is essential to looking like one of those special ops assassins you see in the action movies. also jewelry. a large gold necklace that it took you five months to save up for at your $11.50 an hr. job, can’t be emphasized enough. nobody knows how much you make or how long it took you to save up to buy the crap; just seeing it automatically means ‘this guy has wealth’.

  4. work on the lingo. tough guy speech is critically important, and you can’t sound too intelligent. a real man is laconic and ‘of few words’. this one’s easy to do because you don’t have to make much effort in appearing unintelligent. you’re already equipped with this super-power.

  5. either get a hot girlfriend, or download some pics of hot girls you can pretend is your girlfriend and show to the other fellas. be sure to provide detailed report of how you ‘tore that shit up’.

  6. come up with a way to take some minor struggle you’ve had to endure in your life and turn the story into something magnificent and shakespearean. this will earn the respect of the other fellas, and they won’t be able to check the accuracy of the story to find out your lying.

  7. ALWAYS claim to be a man of ‘god’. duddin’t matter which one… any will do. this will work with your ‘struggle’ story to further enhance your upstanding nature; now you’re a guy who has the strength to keep your faith even during the hardest of trials and tribulations.

these tips will provide a basic foundation for completing the facade of being someone unique and worthy of respect.

fuck i forgot one of the most important ones:

  1. learn to be able to sustain a technical conversation about mixed martial arts and/or the UFC. even though you really don’t know how any of that shit works, none of the others do either, so a collective bluff can ensure without disruption, and everyone will be impressed.

neither one of you have a clue as to what I was talking about…

what you two (barbarian and 75) are talking about is style
and style is just like fame and fortune and power, transitory/temporary/impermanent

Your “rules” are useful for about 5 minutes and then styles change
and your “rules” are useless… rap is just another style in music
and styles change… for I have lived through disco and that was just
another style…

(as a baby boomer, I still feel the need to apologize
for disco, sorry human race… our bad)

your “theories” about whites and blacks is just nonsense badly written…

or said differently, full of sound and fury……… signifying nothing…….

you two have taken the transient and temporary and made it into
something worthwhile… it isn’t…

in ten years, I hope you recall these posts and feel ashamed…
for I too had such strong feelings about some things in my youth
and was later embarrassed for even thinking about such nonsense…

barbarianhorde: well that’s right there why you will always lose…
thinking music isn’t part of the solution…

these comments in particular need some understanding… life isn’t
about winning or losing… for in the end, we all die, there is no winning there…
we are transitory creatures, living transitory lives, where everything
we do and believe and hope for is transitory…the best we can hope
for is to rise above being just animals, like you two, for your beliefs are
merely base instincts at work…well, I guess in your defense I could
say that you are still young and leave it at that………

rarely do the lies we tell ourselves while young last into old age…

Kropotkin

occasionally, newspapers or magazines will offer up pictures
of aging stars like Sean Connery and we see this one time movie
star and heartthrob, is old… the looks are gone and quite often,
the mind is gone too, what we see is a shell of a human being…

and to think that this person was at one time, at the pinnacle of
human society… rich, famous, beloved, sought after…

and we see one of the Buddha’s suffering here in old age…

what we are and what we do and what we have accomplished
are all temporary, transitory…dust in the wind… to recall
a song…now many will throw their hands up and take to
temporary fixes to forget our transitory nature, temporary
fixes like booze and drugs and sex but these too are transitory
and led us nowhere…once the highs fade and reality
sets in, we are still left with the puzzling problem of our
transitory lives…

if we reject, as we must, any metaphysical answers to our
transitory lives, metaphysical answers like reincarnation
and heaven and hell and god and the eternal soul, we are left with,
what exactly?

we are left with this moment, the here and now…
and that is the only value in our lives, not the past or future,
because they either never existed or are transient in nature…

so each moment of existence is what we have and that is all
we have…

and yet we insist on wasting our moments on such useless matters
as work and hate and violence and despair and greed…

we have but one moment and isn’t that one single moment best
spent on positive values like love and tolerence and peace
and justice… for love begats love and peace begats peace
and tolerence begats tolerence and justice begats justice…

so how shall we spend our single individual moments is really
the only question in life… spend them wisely…….

Kropotkin

Why do I always feel like I’m at an alcoholic’s anonymous meeting waiting in line with a small styrofoam cup to get a cup of coffee from a coffee pot that hasn’t been washed in three weeks, when I read your posts, pete?

Like we’ve already made our introductions.

‘Hi my name’s joe and I’m an alcoholic’

‘Hi joe. Thanks for coming’

… and now I’ve left my folding plastic chair and am standing in the coffee line with six or seven chain smokers.

K: I wouldn’t know why you feel as you do… I have never been to an AA meeting…

Kropotkin

the Buddhist quest to negate suffering is doomed because
we cannot end suffering… we’re born, we grow old,
we do have diseases and we die…simple statements of facts
which cannot be denied or changed………

we suffer… and there is not a dam thing we can do about it…

so we can either accept that or we can live in denial…

as denial isn’t really a life choice, we must somehow come to terms
with suffering… but I believe that places suffering as a key
part of life and I don’t think of suffering as a key part of life…

as we grow old and suffer, we learn to adapt, we learn to live
with suffering… I have suffered my entire life from my hearing loss,
and yet I adapt as I must and simply make it a part of my life,
my hearing loss doesn’t define who I am… it is simply a part of me…

just as suffering is a part of my life, but it doesn’t define who I am…
yes, I was born and I will grow old and I have suffered from diseases
and yes, I will die… but the so fuck what? Every single living being
ever, has suffered, it is simply part of the gig of being alive…
be alive, suffer…

so why make a natural and unavoidable part of life, the significant
part of life… why not make the here and now, the significant part of life…

we don’t need to begin with suffering as our base cause from which our
life acts or reacts from… we can make our begining point a different
point then suffering… we can begin with doubt, not wonder as
the Greeks believed in…

yes, we suffer but to devolop an entire way of life to avoid suffering
is foolish… suffering doesn’t take up that much of my life to make
it the focal point of my philosophy… doubt, doubt does make a
focal point of my life and thus I can begin my philosophy with doubt,
not suffering, not wonder, but doubt…

the goal is to make everything a part of life… sex is a part of life,
doubt is a part of life, suffering is a part of life, drugs are a part of life,
simply accept things as a part of life, not the whole life, but
as a part of life……….

in other words, we can choose moderation in all things…
and accept everything that comes along as simply a part of
life… for in fact, everything is a part of life…….
we are life and life is us and everything we see and hear
and touch and taste and feel is a part of us and we are a part of all
that matter and energy, for we too are just matter and energy
and we too are time and space……. for everything in the universe
is part of us and we are a part of it………

no need to make something like suffering as a key focal point in our life
as there is no need to make sex or drugs or god or anything else the
focal point of our life…………….

we are everything and everything is us……

Kropotkin

let us work with an example…

let us say, for argument sake, that my wife died…
(and I really, really, really hope not)
but let us say she dies…

I would be suffering, no doubt about it,
I have been with my wife for 27 years and married
for 23 years… I would be in a great deal of pain
and naturally so… but that suffering, that pain
isn’t what defines me or will it define my relationship
with my wife… wifes die and husbands die and children die
and parents die and those wifes and husbands and children
and parents suffer and grow old have diseases…
it is the way of life… I can rail against what is or
I can deny or I can simply accept the fact that birth,
disease, old age and death are the price of life…

but with my wife I can hold onto all the wonderful moments
we had and the quiet moments in which we express our love
without saying a word and the occasional fight…

it is all part of this matter we call life… and suffering
and old age and disease and death is a part of life…

I can do no other then to accept the fact… because
I can’t change birth or disease or old age or death,
anymore then I can stop the sun from moving or the stars
from revolving…….

I can simply accept these matter as matters I cannot control
and work with the matters I can control…

I can control this moment, the here and now… I have the day off,
I can watch TV or I can read or I can write here on ILP or I can eat
lunch… this moment… this here and now, I can control…
and I can see this moment for what it is, a moment in which
I can learn something… I can see this moment as a beautiful moment,
no different then sitting on the beach and watching the sun set
or high in the mountains looking down on some meadow……

we create the context of each moment and it can be beautiful or
evil or wrong or boring…….

all you have to do to see each moment is to distance yourself
from your life and take each moment separately… escape from
the flow of life and understand those moments apart from the natural
flow of our lives…….

we see life as one constant flow from birth to death but life is
really a series of moments that connect us from birth to death…
each moment is a separate moment and in our minds we connect
those moments together to create a story about our lives,
life is a series of still photo’s in which we turn into a movie
in our heads…stop the flow of the movie in your head and
separate out one moment and be with that moment, right now……

I will take a moment with my wife… we are sitting on the couch
and she is watching some real housewives of someplace show and
I am reading… we don’t say anything to each other, but I look up
and she is looking at me and we smile at each other, I say hi and she
says hi…… and we have that moment of love and it is enough…
we have no need for grand dramatic emotionalism or big
pronouncements of love for each other… hi was enough…….

and yes, yes I may suffer in the past and in the future, but it
doesn’t matter because I got a hi from my wife……
and that is of more value then any suffering I might get
before or after……….and it is a moment I can hold onto for the
rest of my life… that moment can be the focal point of my life,
not any suffering or any grand wonderous moment that may come
in the future……… sometimes hi is enough to carry us over a lifetime…
regardless of any possible suffering of birth, disease, old age and death…

a simple hi…

Kropotkin

This sounds interesting.
When taken to the max, what benefites are there for this idea?

when taken to max, he’d probably ask something like ‘where did you get this stuff… out of a fortune cookie?’

oh you mean taken to the maximum, like the limit. okay i thought you meant stirner, max.

Or at least Count St. Germain

the Count of St. Germain,
One of the most enigmatic and controversial personalities of the eighteenth century. His birth date and the date of his death, as well as his true name cannot be established with any certainty. According to a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Neuchatel on 27th September 1911 (translated in Anthroposophical Quarterly, winter, 1960), the name does not only refer to one personality, but to others too. In the true bearer of this name lives the individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz. See also lecture 5 given on 4th November 1904, which is included in this volume and the notes thereto.

my Atlantis lectures …
This refers to lectures given in January 1904, of which, however, there are no notes.

To find our bearings,
The notes of Vegelahn express this in the following way: ‘To find our bearings, we must get a little insight into two currents of the present day which are hidden in the souls of men of the fifth Root Race and are often in conflict with one another. The one current is best represented in the Indian and South European confessions and also in the outlook on life of the Jewish peoples and the Babylonians — and the other is contained in the confessions and outlook of the Persians, westward of Persia to the regions of the Teutons.’

Of these two currents …outlook on life of the peoples of the Southern Zone … basic tendency of the Northern peoples.
See: The East in the Light of the West, fifth lecture, Munich, 27th August 1909.

Devas.
The Indian name for the gods of Devachan, the heavenly world.

Asuras,
Indian — Suras = gods (from Asu = breath) became non-gods = A-suras. In the old Oriental religions and also later by Rudolf Steiner used as the name for satanic beings. In connection with this lecture, however, it is used in the sense of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, (‘On the Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its various aspects’) p.500. ‘Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil spirits and lower gods, who are eternally at war with the great deities — are the gods of the Secret Wisdom. In the oldest portions of the Rig Veda, they are the spiritual and the divine, the term Asura being used for the Supreme Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the Zoroastrians. There was a time when the gods Indra, Angi, and Varuna themselves belonged to the Asuras.’ Only in Atlantean times, at the transition from Lemuria to Atlantis, were these originally high gods transformed into non-gods.

In the notes of a hitherto unpublished lecture by Rudolf Steiner, given in Berlin, 17th October 1904, the following is said: ‘If we wish to understand the point of view of spiritual evolution we must be clear about an important event of the Atlantean epoch. Those beings which had originally been spiritual, now appeared as revolutionaries striving for independence. Suras now became Asuras. Until this time they had taken no part in evolution. They are those powers which, just as in our day, represent the intellectual and spiritual side of human nature. This side of Lucifer’s nature is that which also stood for Christianity during the first centuries. There are two documents referring to that, one is in the Vatican and a copy of it is in the possession of the most thoroughly initiated Christian of the western world: The Count of St. Germain.’

We learn particulars about it …
It is to be noted that the text of the paragraph beginning with these words is defective. See in this respect Blavatsky’s TheSecret Doctrine, Book 2, ‘The History of the Fourth Race,’ also lecture by Dr. Steiner, Dornach, 18th January 1920 (not yet translated) [Yes it is!], in which the date of the cessation of physical incarnation is given as 6th. Millenium, A.D.

‘The Sons of God saw the daughters of men’ …
Genesis 6, 1–2. See also Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, Part 2, ‘On the Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its various aspects.’ In the story of Noah from The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine it says of this event: ‘… this time men began to multiply on the earth, and the children of God, that is to say, of Seth … saw the daughters of men, that is to say, of Cain, and were overcome by concupiscence and took them to their wives.’

the saga of Prometheus.
This is also linked by Rudolf Steiner to Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2.

‘In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.’
Genesis 3:16.

‘dying and becoming’ … ‘gloomy guest’

‘Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und werde!
Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.

Concluding verse of a poem by Goethe calledSelige Sehnsucht (‘Holy Longing’).

‘And there are three that bear witness in earth,’
First Epistle of John, v. 7. Rudolf Steiner had already explained this passage from the Epistle in detail in his lecture on 29th April 1904. According to that, the present-day materialistic concepts of blood and water must not be applied here. When it is said: ‘There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.’

This means in theosophical terminology: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, the three higher principles. And when it is said later on: ‘And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood,’ it means the three lower principles, the three soul attributes. The astral body, as well as the blood, (not our physical blood), are the lowest parts of the soul. Jewish esotericism believes that movement of the blood is caused by the astral body and that is correct. All influences which do not directly pass through the soul, but still have an effect on the body are called the ‘blood’ in Jewish esoteric teaching. It is the active principle, the motivator. We call only the red liquid which flows through the body ‘blood.’ By water is signified ‘Kama’ in every occult language — feelings, emotions, passions, etc: ‘And now I shall tell you why this is called water. You must get acquainted with the concept that humanity today has grown accustomed to visualising everything in a much more materialistic way than he did formerly. If you picture to yourself an old cabbalist, he did not regard water as just a flowing element, but as an image and he arrived at that in the following way. He said to himself; the water is inhabited by those animals which we reckon as the most primitive. Animals evolved originally out of the liquid element: sea animals, jellyfish, amphibians. These then came out of the water onto the land. It was only out of water that emotions and feelings came about … We distinguish the lower part of the soul, which stirs the blood and makes it pulsate and causes pleasure and dislike and all such other painful experiences. And that he calls water because from water is derived that element of soul. And then we have the thinking part of the soul which is Spirit.’

hidden manuscripts …
See note 6.

the great masters … the founders of our spiritual movement — not our society.’ …
Rudolf Steiner expressed himself in a similar way on the 2nd January 1905, in a letter to a Member who was about to be accepted into the Esoteric School: ‘You know that behind the whole theosophical movement there are highly evolved beings whom we call “Masters” or “Mahatmas”. These sublime beings have already completed the path which the rest of humanity still has to tread. They are now active as the great “Teachers of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Human Perception”. They are already engaged in work on higher planes to which the rest of mankind will evolve during the course of the next periods of development (so-called “Rounds”). They do their work on the physical plane through their “messengers”, the first of whom was H.P. Blavatsky — I mean the first as regards the theosophical movement. The Masters never found an outer Organisation of society, nor would they administer one. The Theosophical Society was formed by its founder Members. (H.P. Blavatsky, Olcott and others) in order to promote the work of the Masters on the physical plane, but these Masters themselves have never exerted any influence on the Society as such. It is in its whole character and leadership purely and simply the work of men living on the earth.’ See in this context also lecture 16, given on 22nd October 1905 (contained in this volume).

Lecture 2, Berlin, 10th June 1904

Source for the text.
Shorthand notes by Franz Seiler and Walter Vegelahn and short notes in longhand by Marie Steiner von Sivers.

I mentioned already …
At the end of his lecture given on 27th May 1904 with the words: ‘Next time I shall deal with one of the most important legends, which is one you have often heard, but whose inner meaning is so profound that there is hardly anything to match it: the legend of Cain and Abel.’

an allegory for very profound mysteries
See in this connection: Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, ‘The Divine Hermaphrodite.’ p.124, but also Rudolf Steiner’s later cycle:The Effects of Occult Development Upon the Sheaths of Man, ten lectures given in the Hague, 20th–29th March 1913 (London and New York, 1945).

Enoch,
Apocryphal Book of the Old Testament.

Take the first sentence from the fifth chapter of Genesis:
This is a free rendering by Rudolf Steiner of the words of the Old Testament. Instead of ‘male and female created he them,’ Rudolf Steiner substituted: ‘male-female created he him,’ with subsequent corrections of ‘them,’ ‘their,’ etc., into ‘him,’ ‘his,’ etc. On later occasions, Rudolf Steiner often stressed the fact that this first creation of man was a male-female creation. Compare also:Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, eighth lecture and Genesis, Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation, eleventh lecture.

Abel is the same as ‘pneuma’ in Greek,
See in this connection Rudolf Steiner’s The Gospel of St. Matthew, lecture 5.

The brain became male,
This passage appears to have been imperfectly preserved. One can compare it with passages from lectures 17, 18, 19 and 20, given on 23rd October 1905, and 2nd January 1906, in the present volume.

It was a sin when ‘The Sons of God’ …
See note 15 of the previous lecture.

From this union resulted a race of men…
Genesis 6, 4. ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the Sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown.’

It is called ‘Rakshasas’ in occult language …
According to H.P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, there are many explanations for this race of the Rakshasas in Oriental esoteric philosophy. See, for instance: The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, p. 288, where it speaks of ‘Rakshasas’ (giant demons) and Daityas (Titans).

A German translation of C.G. Harrison’s The Transcendental Universe, which was among the books in Rudolf Steiner’s library, may have been used by him in preparing this lecture. In the fifth lecture of the above it speaks of: ‘These semi-human creatures, the progeny of the fallen angels, are known in the Hindu Scriptures as the “Asuras” and are sometimes called “Rakshasas” or demons.’ This makes it plain that, in lecture 2 held on 10th June 1904, Rudolf Steiner conferred a different meaning on the term ‘Asuras’ to the one he had in mind when he lectured on 23rd May 1904 (lecture 1).

It is not for nothing that the Bible expresses it thus:
An account of Christ’s entry into Hell can be read in the Apocryphal Book of ‘The Acts of Pilate.’

The Rakshasa beings were brought thereby into a state of paralysis and lethargy.
This passage appears in the notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers in the following form: ‘The Rakshasas were brought into a state of paralysis because they were being opposed from two sides: by the old Chela, who was deeply connected with the physical plane and by a purely spiritual being, the Christ. Their power was thus paralysed from two sides. Something cosmic was effected. This tension, this bottled-up energy, had to be prevented from becoming effective energy. That is the Christ principle in action against the Antichrist.’

C.G. Harrison has the following to say on this subject in the aforementioned book: ‘The Asuras are igneous, or dynamic, in their nature, and their power for evil was terrific. It was destroyed for ever by the advent of Jesus Christ, and they are now, as St. Jude puts it, “reserved in everlasting chains until the judgment of the great day.” (St. Jude evidently derived his knowledge of the subject from the “Book of Enoch”.) Stated in scientific terms, they are held in check, unable to move backwards or forwards, between the earth and the Eighth Sphere at the point of latency, where the attraction of both is equal on all planes, until the “great day” or axidal coincidence, when they will be drawn irresistibly into the vortex of the latter. This text in St. Jude has been unfortunately misunderstood, and supposed to apply to Lucifer and the first fall of the angels; hence the Miltonic and medieval myths.’

Nostradamus,
Actually Michel de Notre Dame (1503–1566). French astronomer and medical doctor. Famous on account of his Prophesies, written in French verse.

Marie-Antoinette
1755–1793: daughter of the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa; became Queen of France in 1774 and ended her life on the scaffold, not heeding the warning of the Count of St. Germain.

You know that Jesus Christ remained on the earth for ten years after his death.
Rudolf Steiner assumed that his audience was familiar with the work of the English theosophist, G.R.S. Mead Pistis Sophia, A Gnostic Gospel, London, 1896, which begins with the words: ‘It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years speaking with his disciples …’

Pistis Sophia
The title of a work assumed to be the same as The Apocalypse of Sophia, composed by Velentius, the most learned doctor of the Gnosis who lived for thirty years in Egypt in the latter half of the second century.

The only MS of thePistis Sophia known to exist is the Askew manuscript, bought by the British Museum from the heirs of Dr. Askew at the end of the eighteenth century.

Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism.
Published in 1883. See also, The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century and its Relation to Modern Culture.

‘Nifelheim’ or ‘Ymir the Giant’
Refer to notes for lecture 3 given on 30th September 1904, (included in this volume) and also the first and thirty-first lectures inFoundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.

because it was the intention to involve man thoroughly in Kama-Manas
See twenty-third lecture inFoundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.

Lecture 3, Berlin, 30th September 1904

Voltaire, the 18th Century philosopher, described Saint-Germain as “a man who never dies, and who knows everything.” … The only thing that accounts for his death though is a local record that states Count de Saint-Germain deceased, February 27, 1784.

The Count is NOT fiction, he was a true historical figure. … Saint-Germain may have been the son of Hungarian Prince Ferenc Rakoczi, …