Encounters with Evil: Steps on the Way to Man

Encounters with Evil: Steps on the Way to Man
A Semi-Autobiographical View
CONTENTS – Clicking on a Section # will take you directly to that Section – continuous scrolling through the complete document works as on other pages!
1 – Introduction: Love, Karma, Evil
2 – Evil and Biography
3 – Faust and Evil
4 – Faust Off-stage
5 – Beginning Community Life
6 – A Season in Dornach
7 – Substance Path
8 – Psychoanalysis
9 – The Earth, Black Magic
10 – A Later Step in Life

Introduction: Love, Karma, Evil
If we are to deal with evil, a certain orientation could be helpful. Our thematic discussions will take up love, karma and evil. Let me try to develop an orientation. Perhaps we can begin by looking at these three themes in the light of time, evolution, and spiritual being-ness.Let me begin with love and try to grasp love as a reality, a true dynamic in the history of our world. Let us consider that love was born in evolution by virtue of the Seraphim, the Spirits of Love, who were active on Old Saturn. Further, let us think of love as carrying Earth evolution from the end of Moon evolution through our present Earth into the future when Earth will unite with the Sun for Venus evolution. Wisdom was born into evolution on Old Moon as a carryover from Sun evolution by the deeds of the Kyriotetes, the Spirits of Wisdom. Needed is the gift from the Spirits of Love to carry Earth into the future, as wisdom anchors the past. Bestowal by the Seraphim on Earth and man is necessary. From my contempla­tions, I gather that the Spirits of Love are able to initiate from the present where there is no past. This means that original acts in time can be accompanied with love, but it also means that the Beings of Love, the Seraphim, are able to work from the sphere of Duration, out of the eternal. Here we can find the origin of totally new impulses to carry new directives for all of cosmic evolution. We can say that love carries the past and the future, as noted. We can contemplate the fact that love can bring totally new impulses out of duration. This is a second aspect of love. Finally, a third aspect is that love has the capacity to live in the future in such a way that an individual can live in freedom, can initiate out of freedom. Love is there for the world, also for men who through love can discover and then act out of freedom. Love becomes a central point for man and permits him to recreate or carry on the creative activity for the future out of duration.

Let us turn to karma. The capacity of man to be able to redeem the past can be attributed to the work of karma. Man’s potential for doing this, for the redemption of the past, lies in the gift of the Seraphim to man. World redemption is the task of the Seraphim themselves. If we now look at the birth of karma, we can consider its birth at the time of Lemuria. This is when man began his incarnations. Man begins to be able to carry one incarnation to another and needs the gift of the Seraphim in order to grow through the redemption of past deeds. Growth is then the karmic gift from the past. Past can be transformed. But the possibility of creating out of duration—out of eternity, as it were—bringing in new impulses, not out of the past through correcting error for the future, but bringing totally new dimensions of moral action for the future, this is another form of karma: a karma that is new. We might consider that man—as an individual, as a morally creative being— is able to create totally new karma, is able to do so by what flowed from the deeds of the Mystery of Golgotha. Here works the deed of the Seraphim which gives man the possibility of creating in freedom, out of duration, for the future. Through the Mystery of Golgotha many can find their relationship with eternity through the Beings of Love, the Seraphim. Beings that came to help us with our relation­ship to the past and to the future through a connection with eter­nity, we know as the Christ. The lowest member of the Christ we know are the Elohim.[(Editor). “Christ, the highest of the Elohim, is their ruler. However, he does not belong to the hierarchies, but to the Trinity.” Spiritual Hierarchies Q & A: Questions And Answers] The Christ can be considered as a name given to those spiritual beings who constitute the vehicle for the Being born in eternity. The Christ is born out of the lofty world of Duration, the world of our Godhead and is embodied in the beings of the Hierarchical world. He thereby can work for the redemption of the world, laying a basis for the future. But this Being of the Godhead, as Son, can work into man’s soul by becoming ensouled in man through the deeds of the Third Hierarchy. This permits man to have a relation with the eternal for the creation of new karma. By work­ing into man’s soul, as spirit, the spiritual essence of Christ and individual man can flow together as morality into man’s deeds for the redemption of the elemental world. With this view, we can say that love carries the Moon to the Sun through the Earth. Karma begins with Lemuria and can carry the past into the future, but since the Mystery of Golgotha new karma is possible. Now let us turn to evil. At first we might see that it is of most recent origin with the Fall. This occurred in the time of Atlantis. From this perspective, therefore, evil is of the shortest duration and is the central concern of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. It might then seem to be the easiest to deal with, with such a short history. However, if we look very carefully at evil, we will find that the seeds of its origin, its birth as germ, can be found on Old Saturn. Next we have to turn from time to space. We can then look for the tendency of spatiality on Saturn, the separation between the center and the periphery. True space was not yet. It lay there as germ and as such, the germ for evil. On Sun, space was born with light, out of the ether world. In this space, the germ of evil on Saturn became more real. The germ laid on Saturn was that which came about through renunciation giving rise to retardation. We generally speak of the coming into existence of the Luciferic beings in evolution in time. These are spiritual beings, at first of the rank of the Kyriotetes, who remained behind as Spirits of Movement on Old Moon. Other ranks of spiritual beings join to give rise to original sin. They joined with all these retarded beings. They became active with the Dynamis, retarded Spirits of Move­ment, to begin to work as independent agents in the cosmos, in the evolution in time. [(Editor). “Those Beings whom we describe as normal Spirits of Form work in conjunction with those Beings whom we have come to know as the abnormal Spirits of Form, but who are Spirits of Movement in reality, entrusted with the mission of Spirits of Form.” The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls: The inner Life of the Folk Spirits. Formation of the Races].This independent impulse became the potential for original sin. The Battle in Heaven refers to this event. 
For the actual birth of evil on our Earth, we have to turn to At­lantis, to the Fall. This is when into space, retarded Spirits of Form from Moon took hold of the original impulse of sin that is connected with man’s astral body. These retarded Spirits of Form entered space and transformed the original sin of the cosmos into evil upon our earth. The original impulse of retardation on Saturn, connected with the birth of time, gave rise to space on Sun. On Moon, the original sin was born out of Luciferic deeds. On Earth, the final step was made when Ahrimanic beings were born into space. By this means, man, in being born into space, became subject to Ahriman and evil. Again, in terms of spiritual realities, let us con-sider the name Ahriman as a being constituted and membered by numerous spiritual beings, a retarded Spirit of Form. Therefore, we can say that evil is actually a fundamental impulse in the whole of evolution. The reality of love, the work of the Seraphim, immediately follows the birth of time on Saturn, for the potential healing of evil. Healing is anticipated. Through karma man takes on and individuates the cosmic process. Through new karma and love, man, struggling with evil, can become a co-creator with the gods. This for the sake of eternity, so that the benefits of time and space are not lost. This is a need for the gods. Note should be made that Rudolf Steiner distinguishes the original act of sin from evil. As noted, it was actually the retarded spiritual Beings of Wisdom, working as Spirits of Movement (their own movement) that gave rise to the battle in heaven. It is they who gave rise to the element which we call the original sin. This is a deed of spiritual beings in the world, for the world. This makes it possible for man and his striving to be able to come to a new relationship with what has been created. This is a deed of the gods for man that has consequences in man’s further evolution. Let us continue our considerations of Original Sin and evil. Rudolf Steiner indicates that Original Sin is actually a Luciferic im­pulse. Evil is the birth of an impulse from Ahriman at the time of Atlantis with the fall of substance. What needs to be con­templated with this is that the original substance of Saturn has gone through an evolution. The original substance was given over into time and space. There, in time and space, substance could be taken hold of by Ahriman. Ahriman then becomes a being who lives intensely in relation to the physical, taking the original Luciferic impulse into the physical. Since Ahriman is a being who lives in the ether world, he works into and through the physical by means of helpers, by the aid of the elemental beings. It is they who are born at the time of Lemuria. It is they who are born to be able to mediate between the spiritual beings of the Third Hierarchy and the physical substance of the Earth. It is they who are born of the Archai, Archangels, Angels, man and animals. They gave and give rise to the solid, watery and airy conditions. The Salamander beings are not born until there is a working relationship between the animals and man. This means that there is actually a second creation that is going on at the end of Lemuria, the beginning of Atlantis. Beings are born who are children of the Third Hierarchy and then animals and man. It is they who are able to take hold of substantiality to bring substantiality into different forms. It is just these beings working in materiality who become the vehicle for the Ahrimanic spirits of the etheric and astral worlds to take hold of the physical material.With the Fall, which eventuates in Atlantis, there is then a transformation of these elemental beings into the forces of electricity, magnetism, gravity and what I like to call “information activity.” (I am not dogmatic about this fourth dynamic). This brings about the dead condition of substance. Substance was originally in a living state existing in the various states, in the various conditions of matter. Substance becomes subject to the forces of sub­-nature or the forces of electricity, magnetism, and gravity, as well as information processes. In a way this is a second creation; the first creation began on Saturn. The second creation is the birth of the elemental world and the subjugation of elemental beings to Ahriman, creating sub-nature beings, forces. Thus the element of evil takes us back to the beginning. It points to a germ birth on Saturn, an unfolding on Sun, an actual birth process on Moon and finally on the Earth there is the birth of a spiritual being known as Ahriman as a result of the birth of Lucifer. Notable is that the actual Fall is connected with substantiality and with the new birth of the elemental world which then becomes subjected to the workings of Ahriman. At this point, mat­ter passes from its living state into the state of dead materiality that we know it as today. This means that substance is subjected to the forces of the physical: world-electricity, magnetism, gravity and information. To recapitulate: we can look at love as being a reality that has been working from the beginning to heal what comes into existence. Karma has a shorter history and is an actual healing process. Evil, with the shortest history, has its origin in evolution. Evil becomes the central point of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. From the foregoing discussion, it can be thought that love is almost from the beginning. Evil is fashioned for the coming into existence of a second creation, that of the Fall and the birth of the elemental world. Karma is the process by which man can come into proper relationship with evil, to be able to bring forth something new. With this we then have to add that there is actually a third evolutionary birth. This birth occurs with the incarnation of the Christ into the world where evil has come into existence. This is a first birth, a new birth, a first-time event. This is the birthing of the loftiest of Being into the physical, substantial world where otherwise only man and elemental beings have incarnated. Thus, our considerations lead to three births; the birth as it were from God, the birth that can be considered with the Fall and the birth of the Christ. This third birth can bring about a resolution of the problem with the fall into materiality. Through the incarnation of Christ, man can work to transform evil, to become a co-creator in existence. This extensive background is required as oftentimes sin is not differentiated from evil. Error is also not differentiated from evil. Evil has its own distinctness in so far as it is related to materiality. The form in which the original sin appears in the world today is in heredity, so Rudolf Steiner indicates. Heredity is a direct metamorphosis of Original Sin. Evil is, as it were, a new creation. Evil comes into being through a fall and the birth of the elemental world with its potential for evolution. The incarnation of the Christ is a third creation, one that is connected not only with the redemption of evil, the transformation of sin, the care of indebtedness, but it is also connected with man’s being able to regain his connection with the Divine. That is, Christ becomes a mediator not only through karma, not only through love, but through the overcoming of incarnations. That is, He came to transform birth and death into a new form of existence. The transformation of birthing and dying into a new state brings man into a next form of creation: the overcoming of death. Thus we have enlarged our perspective on world creation from a single world creation to a second one with the birth of elemental beings. Next we have a third creation with the Being of the Christ God incarnating on Earth for the redemption of evil. We can then move on to a fourth creation with the overcoming of incarnations, with the overcoming of birth and death to form a new world. Thus, a single creation becomes four: love, karma, evil and the overcoming of birth and death. These are four creative events in evolution. We are connected with all four. Because of our common concern with illness, I will try to link evil with illness later on.

2:Evil and Biography
Evil is no easy theme to deal with. It is such an integral part of life that a sharing of life seems to be a way to take up the subject. Without life, without heart’s blood, as it were, evil can remain an abstract subject, which can become the basis for superficial moralizing. With this said, let me take a few aspects of my own life’s course and try to deal with evil. Let me begin with the consciousness of a young soul, with my own early days. I was born in mid-America, in the middle of a triangle of three small cities. One of the towns, Lorain, Ohio, was dominated by the production of steel. The second, Amherst, was a small farming town of 1,500 souls. The third, Oberlin, is a college town of several thousand. The members of my family were college-bred. My father, an engineer, graduated from the Technical School of the University of Vienna, an Anthroposophist from 1918. My mother was a physician, devoted to patients. A third individual, a curative educator/eurythmist lived with us. All three were the adults in the family. These three lived to care for a seizure-ridden, retarded, handicapped brother, a soul who stayed behind. In this family no formal religious instruction took place. No formal religious training was demanded. Life was serious and a matter of devotion. Important was the absolute devotion to the tasks of life, the tasks at hand, a handicapped child and to living in a serious way. In that setting I was never exposed to any discussions of evil. My first conscious contact with the word evil was as it is presented in the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father, which art in Heaven Hallowed be Thy Name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors Lead us not into temptation Deliver us from evil. Many hearing or reading this expose on evil will have heard the same prayer. Rudolf Steiner has pointed to its seven-fold structure, corresponding to man’s seven-fold constitution. But this view of the Lord’s Prayer could not speak to the soul of a ten year-old boy who heard the prayer in the weekly assembly of a small school in a farming community. The association of the daily bread with evil was born in the soul in a very dreamy way as the farming community permitted a prolonged dream state to remain. Only later in life, could the Father be related to pure spiritual activity. Only after much effort could the Kingdom be associated with moral imagining, moral imagination. And finally only after strenuous effort could Name be perceived in the act of repre­senting existent creations. Only much later in life could I arrive at man’s capacity for creating moral life in relation to the Father, the Kingdom (Son) and Name (Holy Spirit). The soul of a young person had a long way to go! Certainly as a boy of ten, I could not relate the world of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to the problems of the daily bread, debts, temptations and evil, the evil which was presented in the Lord’s Prayer. How the daily bread is connected with debt, sin, temptation and evil— that I did not know. But I, like many, was attracted to this prayer. The fact that I met the problem of evil in the form of the Lord’s Prayer is something that I shared with many and took up in naive consciousness as did many others.

Faust and Evil
Another phase of life opened when I went off to college. The college I attended was a liberal arts college, Oberlin College. It is named after John Frederick Oberlin. He is an individual about whom Rudolf Steiner spoke in relation to future karma. Goethe and John Frederick Oberlin are, as far as I know at this time, the two individuals about whom Rudolf Steiner speaks in referring to future karma. Rudolf Steiner has given much to us about past karma; only slowly and in a few cases has he pointed to the mystery of the will and examples of future karma. In the case of John Frederick Oberlin, Rudolf Steiner singled out his work in a small community setting in Alsace, Lorraine. He has spoken of Oberlin’s direct working with the dead. Oberlin was in contact with his departed wife for nine years and this contact furnished revelations which he could share, as a minister, in a small community of human souls. This work in a small community, with intimate relationships, furnishes the basis for these souls to go out into the world in the next life, so indicates Rudolf Steiner. I could meet this impulse of world concern at Oberlin College. This world concern was, in fact, also present in the souls of teachers where I went to school in the small farming community. There in this small fanning community, intimacy was a part of life. Close relationships and ongoing social process were experienced. Evil was seldom addressed, if at all. However, at Oberlin College the student body delighted in the ills, the errors, the weaknesses and evils of man. Student activism was very much a part of life, decrying the evils in the world. I looked and listened, trying to discover the meaning of evil and moral, as used by classmates. I struggled to penetrate the depth of moral life which is spoken about by Rudolf Steiner in his Philosophy of Freedom. With Rudolf Steiner there was a different approach to evil and moral, difficult to grasp. College-mates could speak ad nauseum about the evils in the world. How could the obvious difficulties, errors, sins and evils be rectified by the moral life which Rudolf Steiner held could be grasped creatively, ethically by the individual? How can man be morally creative? This was a serious question. The academic standards at this college were considerable, especially for those who wanted to go to medical school. The result was that my health suffered from the purely intellectual demands. There was little nourishment for the soul. I completed college in a very delicate state of health. In 1952 as a gift after graduation, for my twenty-second birthday, I was given a ticket to go to Europe for a summer of travel. In addition, I was given a ticket to attend the first complete Faust performance at the Goetheanum. So I spent my twenty-second birthday in the eleventh row, on the left-hand side of the large auditorium of the Goetheanum, watching Faust. With Faust, Goethe places before the world the deeds and sufferings of the pagan-heretic soul on a path—the archetype of the striving human soul in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This is presented to the beholder. In this drama, the striving soul, Faust, is in constant contact and exchange with spiritual beings. There is intercourse with spiritual beings. The most significant spiritual being that Goethe places in juxtaposition with Faust is Mephistopheles. Faust is in continual conversation with this spiritual being. In fact, at times throughout the entire play there is an exchange between the man, Faust, and the lof­tiest of spiritual beings. On an esoteric path, this is one of the great demands: to be able to exchange with spiritual beings. It is the law and rule of the spiritual world that when an individual addresses a spiritual being in full consciousness, that spiritual being has to show his card, as it were, disclose his identity. All spiritual beings have to disclose their identity at the threshold of the spiritual world on man’s conscious entry into the supersensible-spiritual. This is a continual process in the drama of the life-course of Faust, the man of our cultural epoch.

In our time, mankind is at the threshold of the spiritual world and, in fact, crosses the threshold, but largely unbeknown to himself. Portrayed in the Faust drama are the trials of a man at the threshold in contact with spiritual beings. Slowly awakening, Faust has to meet the trials of thinking, feeling and willing at this threshold. The drama opens with Faust having reached the abyss, having come to soul-void space where time’s annihilating stream meets thinking. Faust stands at the threshold, undergoing trials because ordinary thinking cannot give wings to cross the abyss. It is at this point that the soul can be seized in such a way that an individual may seek to commit suicide. It is just at this point in Faust’s life that the spiritual world intercedes. The spiritual world intones Faust’s soul; he experiences the Easter Bells, the sound­ing, ringing of the spiritual world in the soul graced by new inspiration. This is a gift from the spiritual world. With this Faust can continue his strivings. His trials in thinking lead him to the abyss. The spiritual world intercedes. Resurrecting experiences from the domain of the spiritual world permit him to go on.

Faust next meets the trials of feeling as an aesthetician. This is an elusive quest for pure beauty, seeking the beauty of Helena. However, lust awakens in his soul instead of a pure beauty quest. Lust is born in his soul. He then finds himself enamored with Gretchen. Through Faust, she conceives a child. In the process, Gretchen’s mother and her brother die. The death of the brother is caused by the hand of Faust. In the end, Gretchen is committed to jail to be executed for her errors. Faust seeks to rescue her from physical death. However, she will not go that path; her con­science demands that she makes her next step through the door of death. She seeks death to rectify her sins. In death she is received by the spiritual world. Through her, from the other side of the threshold, Faust can make his next step. The world of death begins to play into his soul. The spiritual world, the world of the dead, the being of Gretchen, all enter into the soul of Faust. He thereby can go on. His trials of feeling, his aesthetic soul-search puts him in touch with the departed. At every step Mephistopheles is at his side. Faust is continually in conversation with this spiritual being. Faust’s continual contact with Mephistopheles leads him to his trials of thinking and feeling. As a striving in­dividual, he has to go through horrendous experiences to be saved, first by the spiritual world of the resurrected and then by the living dead.

Next Faust is lead to the real trials of the will. This is largely portrayed in the second part of the drama. In the second part of Faust, it seems to me that one can almost sense how the course of events unfolds as events guided by metabolism. The intertwining of events, the arising and falling away of life experiences—all dif­ficult to follow—all are impossible to reason out logically. For me, following the second part of Faust is like the attempt at following metabolic processes, metabolic pathways.

In this second part of Faust, we come to find the trials of deeds, deeds guided by Mephistopheles, guided through metabolism. Faust’s will, Faust’s deeds, are destructive. One can see Faust as a social planner, as a man connected with economics, as an industrialist, as a man of war. He becomes a man of will. Destruction and death follow in the wake of his deeds that lead to the death of an elderly couple. It seems to me that after the death of this couple, his conscience begins to awake, despite continual struggles with Mephistopheles, that is Lucifer and Ahriman.

All through the second part of Faust, there is a continual interweaving of Faust’s soul with nature, with all the kingdoms of nature. Mineral, plant and animal are significant in relation to his trials and struggles. The illusions of his aesthetic trials be­come struggles of will, struggles with evil. At the same time, na­ture is ever-present. His will continually works evil. With the two older souls on the other side of the threshold and the continual weaving into nature, Faust slowly, but surely rises in a con­tinuous process of purification. Purification is brought about by nature and those who have departed. Finally, Faust can be redeemed in death. He rises gradually, slowly. First he is carried into the light of glory, the same light that works in the plant world. He further ascends into the glory of refined matter, Mater Gloriosa. His soul goes through purification in order to enter the light of glory and then glorified matter, or redeemed matter, mother sub­stance. I think of this mother substance as pure spiritual substance, warmth, spirit fire. In the end, we see Faust entering into the realms of the hierarchical world as a soul who has been striving, ready to continue his journey to redeem the evil of his life. He enters the domain of pure light and spiritual fire-substance. This follows the continual exchange with Mephistopheles.

Before Faust’s death we find continual encounters with evil. As we can learn from Rudolf Steiner, Goethe mixed Lucifer and Ahriman in Mephistopheles. At the outset we see Faust tempted by Ahriman to commit suicide. Next, Faust, through aesthetics, is misguided by Lucifer into illusory experiences of beauty; others suffer death. Finally, as a man of action he continually brings destruction. However, through these trials—in relation to the dead, nature and the spiritual world—he is lead, lead to a purification so that in death he can ascend in the spiritual world to redeem his most evil deeds of will (Ahriman-Asuras). Inherent in the core of Faust’s soul is a true striving. This leads through evil to redemption and unfolding of the soul. The soul is transformed through evil. The soul grows, unfolds, awakens.

Faust’s continual weaving into nature and then into his own soul depicts a path, a path not only in relation to evil, but also through nature. In the process, he comes to a type of wedding, with his higher self weaving in his soul and in nature. For one familiar with the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, such a process is not new. The path where thinking, feeling and willing lead to trials—to a higher communion through nature and a new basis for social relations—this stands out in the drama as well as in the Chymical Wedding. Rudolf Steiner has spoken of the social aspect of this process in the cycle Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms, August-September 1920. In this cycle he says that man’s relation to the mineral world gives rise to the striving for freedom. Through the plant world, man comes to seek human rights. By virtue of man’s relation to the animal kingdom, man aspires to fellowship, fraternity. Thinking, feeling and willing—man’s soul— becomes divided into threefold workings which in relation to nature come to be reflected in the social process. Man at the threshold—modern Faust—is led to a separation of soul-forces through his relation with nature. He is thereby led into the social process in order to live out his life as a seeker in relation to his fellow man. The fundamental and continual encounter with nature and the soul requires the struggle with evil. The consequence of this struggle leads to death, at which time the soul is prepared to ascend in the spiritual world. It can appear that something of the fundamental impulse from Christian Rosenkreutz weaves into Faust’s striving. In this way it is possible to consider that the beholder of this drama is delicately introduced to modern Rosicrucian experiences. It is quite possible to consider the purification of Faust’s soul. We can look at the plant as it unfolds in its purely vegetative state. Slowly— but with a metamorphic jump— the plant unfolds its beauty, its higher life in the bud and blossom. Through the working of warmth, but mostly light, higher states of substance and ever-refined substances are evolved in oils, smell, substances and colors. The phantom of the plant is carried into the atmosphere, into the light and air. The bees and butterflies live in the finer states of matter. It is as well that man in his glory, in the working of his higher states of consciousness, weaves into the finer light workings and substance-processes of nature. Through the vertical, ascending plant process, through the spiraling activity, through the refining of life and substance in the plant, Faust can ascend and unite as a seeking, striving soul in the struggle with evil. The second part of Faust is full of such plant depictions. The plant thereby becomes a ladder, a staff with a spiraling, entwining of branches— like a staff of Mercury. The plant becomes the path by which purification can take place for the soul to find its life in the glory of light and the glory of refined matter. This relation of man with the plant, I—as an individual of twenty-two years of age, as a part of a large audience in the Goetheanum—did not then realize. However, seeds were planted for later life. Anyone partaking for a week, witnessing such a drama for a week, cannot but be touched in his very depths.

Faust Off-Stage
The next step in life was to return home, to become married and begin working with a partner in life. Four years of medical school were completed. Then, to complete my service requirements I joined the United States Public Heath Service. I was assigned to the largest bureau in the United States Government, the Bureau of Old Age and Survivors’ Insurance. In this bureau I was further assigned to the Division of Disability Operations where claims for disability were reviewed. The claims came from human beings all over the United States. The process of adjudication, that is, the judging whether or not a person was disabled, had to take place there. Two responsibilities were mine. The first was to consult with the lawyers or trained laymen who were doing the adjudication and had medical questions. Second, I had the task of trying to work out, to establish, some form of standards for judging a person as disabled. The division to which I was assigned was located on two floors. Each floor was the size of the Goetheanum stage and auditorium. The rooms were filled with desks in rows. The chief adjudicator sat at the head of each row of desks. There in the heads of men, not hearts, decisions concerning the life and well-being of others were being made. After six months, I was transferred to a small group of lawyers, who were beginning to prepare a bill for legislation for the United States Congress. The legislation was to provide for medical care for all older individuals in the United States, individuals above 63 years of age. There were seventeen lawyers when I began with this work. The number grew with amazing rapidity. The task of drafting a bill for presentation to Congress was not at all easy. The shocking experience was finding individuals who were not only planning for an entire nation, but also were planning for their own advance­ment. Many were busiest planning their own advancement in government service. This self-seeking seemed to me to outstrip the concern for human welfare. The method of planning appeared to be intellectual, without a real sense for illness or how to care for those who were ill. The cold-minded planner was exceedingly evident. The bill which was being initiated at that time was enacted seven years later. It is known as the Medicare Health Bill in the United States. It oversees the funding of medical care to the sum of approximately one hundred billion dollars per year. In the last several years, Diagnostic Related Groups (DRG) have been established, as a result of this law. The DRG establishes the basis for funding for health care. Here illness is defined in terms of how it is diagnosed, how it is cared for, the length of time for which the illness will be funded and the amount of money allocated for the illness. The mechanical cool-headed process becomes evident as an almost bestial revelation in the DRG. Because of these shocking circumstances thirty-four years ago, I requested a transfer. A somewhat visionary view of the care of millions of sick human beings in the land of the United States arose before my soul.My request for transfer was granted. I was sent to be in charge of a small prison hospital. This prison was the only federal, maximum security institution for women in the United States. It was located in the more remote hills of West Virginia on a six hundred acre tract of land. At that time, there were 650 inmates. There were dormitories, workshops and a large two hundred-acre dairy farm, as well as a small hospital. Soon after my arrival a troubled prisoner was sent to the hospital. She was sent there because she was quite feared by the prison inmates, as well as the staff. All were frightened because this individual had murdered her husband in cold blood. She had murdered him and cut him into seventeen parts. She then threw the parts into the cold waters of the North Pacific Ocean. The story of her deed preceded her and caused unrest among the prison population. The administration felt that she should first enter the hospital for evaluation. When I first saw her, I witnessed a smallish, well-configured woman. Her gaze was a stare with a degree of absence; she carried an aura of coldness. When I spoke to her of her deeds, of what had happened, she denied everything. No conscience was present. Before me, there sat a human being lacking individuality and warmth of soul. Within a short period of time, she had to be sent out into the prison again. She caused no problems, but was much feared, even by other prisoners.In this prison a second circumstance unfolded with another set of experiences. I was called to see a prisoner in solitary confinement. She was ill with a temperature. I felt that she was ill enough to be brought to the hospital unit. There she was placed into a room of maximum security. I quickly discoveredthat she was one of the most troublesome prisoners in the institution. She was a short woman in her mid-twenties, husky, muscled and semi-obese. She told me that she began stealing and prostituting herself at ten years of age. For the most part, she was homosexually inclined.She was disturbing to any setting in which she lived. In her teens she began to take drugs. She stole automobiles going across state lines and stole mail, both federal offenses. She did anything she could to get money for her drug addiction. In her late teens, she was sent to a psychiatric institution where she was a major problem. The method of handling her there was to submit her to shock therapy without anesthesia. She managed to get out of the psychiatric institution and returned to the public domain. She was repeatedly incarcerated and was finally sent to the federal institution at hand. She was thoroughly upsetting for everyone in the prison. That I took her out of solitary confinement was dis­turbing to the administration, as well as the hospital personnel. I did whatever I could to keep her confined to her own space. How­ever, she did manage to get out of her maximum security room in the hospital. She managed to get out of her room, claiming that she could smell another prisoner on another floor of the hospital. She had to make her way to that individual. She was able to get out of the room in which she was confined. She was a handful, to say the least. I was deeply troubled by her and did not know quite what to do. Slowly her febrile state disappeared, but she remained a tremendous problem. I decided to hold conversations with her on a regular basis, for at least a half-hour each day. One day I entered her room and noted a tremendous change. She was quiet, composed and quite open. She asked me to sit down. She had a question. Why did the carpenter Jesus, who obviously had to have been able to do carpentry, had to do physical labor, appear so delicate and frail, so deathlike when placed on the cross? This question laid the basis for a lengthy discussion of the incarnation of the Christ in Jesus. I placed before her soul what Rudolf Steiner has given in the lecture cycle From Jesus to Christ. Towards the end of the conversation she stated that she too was an incarnated spirit. She, like the pupa wrapped in the chrysalis, would at death be released into the light, like the imago of the butterfly. Her soul would enact the same process as can be witnessed with the butterfly She soon left the hospital and mingled with the prison population; I never heard from her again. With these experiences, Faust came off the stage and became evident in life itself. I was witnessing the real theater, the real revelation of man at the threshold. I could witness man in one-sided, cool-headed social planning. I could meet someone who enacted cold and heartless murder. I could suffer a prisoner driven by lust-filled instinctual impelling will. The semi-bestial, potentially evil nature of the human soul could be witnessed from three different aspects. Man standing at the threshold could enact dramatic deeds. Remarkable for me was that even with such evil in the human soul, there was still room for questions concerning Christ to arise. In such human depravity, I could still hear about the triumph of the spirit. Again and again the thought came, “All but for the grace of God, there go I.”

Beginning Community Life
After the prison service, our small family—a newborn son, my wife and I— moved to Spring Valley, New York. We moved to join the working of an Anthroposophical community. We had visited different centers of Anthroposophical activity on the East Coast of the United States. We wanted to join a community effort. There was a Waldorf School in Spring Valley. Ehrenfried Preiffer had his laboratory work there. There was a significant artist, Richard Kroth, who lived and worked there. Ralph Courtney, who had been given the task by Rudolf Steiner to carry a responsibility for the Threefold Social Order in the United States, lived there. There was no physician in the community, but Christoph Linder was not far away. He was the first Anthroposophical physician in the United States, sent by Ita Wegman. He lived thirty miles away in New York City. Because Rudolf Steiner called psychiatry internal medicine, I felt it would be important to pursue a training in this field. I anticipated that I would later go into a training in general internal medicine. Rudolf Steiner pointed to physical organic problems as the basis for psychiatric illness. He further indicated that soul-spirit activity produced the usual physical illnesses. This is just the reverse of the general view and therefore, I thought this should be followed up. I began my psychiatric training in a hospital with 12,000patients. The academic training took place at the Psychiatric Institute of the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. At that time the Psychiatric Institute was the mecca for psychoanalytic training. Because of this, I came into a most intimate contact with the psychoanalytic movement. At the Institute I was introduced to the view of infantile sexuality, libidinal instincts, thanototic (death) instincts, as well as ego-syntonic defense mechanisms. The Oedipus complex was central. The human spirit was reduced to ego defense mechanisms. To view man and the human soul in this way appeared grotesque. In no way did it furnish a basis for comprehending severe psychoses, deep seated personality disorders or flagrant sociopathic behavior. The import of the psychoanalytic movement I will address a little later.For the first year and a half at this hospital, I had an office opposite a main dining room. Sixty to eighty severely disturbed human beings were brought there for meals. The consuming of the daily bread presented the most horrible scene one can imagine. Human beings were there in straight-jackets, being fed or gobbling their food. Food was smeared. There was an almost atrocious din; noise was always present. Smells were almost unbearable. For a year and a half I lived with this horror of the daily bread. Then came an experience which seems to be significant, not only for myself, but for many others approaching death. I was called for an emergency on the eve before Christmas Eve, towards midnight. I was called to the admission unit for women. I was called because there appeared to be a problem. They needed help. As I entered and progressed through the ward, I came to a room where numerous nurses were gathered. I entered the room and as I entered the room, from within arose an intense inner light. I was almost overcome. I walked to the end of the bed, stood next to a black nurse and saw, lying on the bed, a silver-white-haired woman with black-brown skin. Her physiognomy was that of an American Indian. She was obviously nearing her last breath. As she gave forth her last breath, like the sound of a gentle summer zephyr, the inner light grew even more intense and then disappeared. The black nurse next to me watched carefully. Inwardly I felt that I could easily fall to my knees in prayer. I felt I stood in the light and glory of this dying soul. The black nurse and I walked to the nurses’ station. She said she wanted to share with me what was significant in this circumstance; she thought I would understand. She then told me about the individual who had just crossed the threshold. This individual was a leader among the black Indians of the East Coast. She was a leader who in the last phase of her life had become disturbed. Someone had called the police and she had been brought to the hospital. This nurse said that this leader could speak of the Great White Spirit, of the coming forth of the world, and the future of the world. This leader knew the being-ness of plants and how to use plants in therapeutics. She was known and beloved by many; her passing would be mourned by many. I stood in absolute awe before the circumstance. I realized the seriousness and significance of the problems. At the end of life very significant souls might be totally lost because of the lack of understanding of the realities of life. Then as before, I felt the great need to make provision for the care of human beings at the end of their lives. Rudolf Steiner had spoken of such matters; this I knew.

A Season in Dornach
I spent four years in psychiatric training while trying to help with a growing family and a private practice in the middle of the Threefold Community in Spring Valley. I tried to unfold a practice out of an Anthroposophical view of therapeutics. After these four years. I decided to spend a season in Dornach and arrived there in the fall of 1964. Alex LeRoi was good enough to invite me into his afternoon office hours at the Ita Wegman Clinic once or twice a week. Rita LeRoi invited me to join her in working with the Medical Students’ Course. While spending this season in Dornach, three experiences came my way. They were significant in the further unfolding of life and bear on the problem of evil. The first experience came about on a morning when I was studying The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. I was intense in thought. Suddenly the wall in front of me fell away. I stood with a bestial configuration in another world. The beast was gray-silverish, scaled like an alligator with intense eyes and a totally distorted physiognomy. I was sufficiently shaken that my hands grew cold and the blood rushed to the heart. Within a moment there was a knock at the door. There stood my good friend, Georg Unger, who saw my pallor and suggested that we go together to have a bite to eat. Later I shall try to further develop the problem of the beast. The seriousness of pursuing a spiritual path stood immediately before the soul.

A second experience unfolded. Because of night terrors, I sought the advice of Gunther Schubert. I repeatedly had the experience of terror in going into sleep while staying in Ober-Dornach. Again and again I seemed to meet horrible events that had taken place in the environment. In dreams the landscape was filled with terrible events, not clear to my perception. Gunther Schubert then told me of the historic events, of the battle on the Dornach Hill. He told me that Rudolf Steiner had in fact talked to others about the events that came to them in sleep. Rudolf Steiner had given a few helpful prayers and verses. At the same time, I had other experiences during waking life, while walking in the small valley of the Hermitage in Arlesheim. There, at times, in walking at midday, I could encounter a sun that arose from within the earth, a golden glow. To me this indicated that something of significance had happened in the environment. Only in later years did I discover the history of very significant events with St. Odelia and Schionatulander with Sigune in the Parsifal initiation. My two experiences suggested to me that in reality the Earth has a soul and a memory. This ensouled Earth could and can be loved as one loves another human being, but it is a very pure love. I will try to say more about the Earth and its being-ness a little later.

A third experience took place. Again, I was busily studying one morning. I heard a knock at the door and got up and opened the door to meet an errand boy with a telegram in hand. It was a telegram from my neighbor, Nancy Laughlin. This individual, this neighbor, had been left as a baby on the steps of a church. She was taken up as a foundling by a wealthy banker in upstate New York. She was raised and when the step-father died, his fortune fell to her. She became a millionaire, but she knew not her origin. She later became a philanthropist who over a period of time gave several millions to worthwhile efforts. She supported the Waldorf School Movement; the Waldorf Fund in the United States has its origin with this human being. In the situation I am relating, she had sent a telegram asking me to come home to help found a communityShe wanted to support a community effort around the care of the older person, a community which included the young and included care for the Earth. She said that she would set aside 1800 shares of Texaco in order to provide the first $200,000 to unfold the work. This gift gave rise to what is now the work of the Fellowship Community.

Substance Path
After a season in Dornach, I returned to my family in Spring Valley. Intense work began with the unfolding of the Fellowship Community. At the same time, I went back into training in internal medicine with an emphasis on metabolic disorders. I went to work under a leading figure in the field of metabolic illness. This individual was considered to be one of the fathers of clinical biochemistry in the Unites States. His name is Rachmiel Levine. While trying to unfold the community, the Fellowship Community, one of the first problems to present itself was the intermittent “hell” at meal times. I was tremendously troubled as to how this could come about. At times unseemly scenes and problems arose from souls gathered at the meal time. This caused me—really, all of us—great consternation and soul searching. The theme, the problem of the daily bread, presented itself in this circumstance in trying to unfold a “care” community. From the time of the founding of the community in 1966 to the present, there has probably been no circumstance that has had to be given more thought than the events that surround the common meal. Many problems have had to be wrestled with in community work, but the common meal has been one of the central ones. Not so long after the founding of the community, I came across the lecture that had been placed in the Foundation Stone of Hill Top House, the central building in the community. The house had been built by Henry and Lisa Monges. Henry Monges was the first general secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America. He had placed a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in the foundation stone; this lecture was delivered on April 22, 1922 and is called “The Teachings of the Resurrected Christ.” In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner reveals how the Christ is the teacher of the nature of substance. Christ was the Being, the only spiritual Being who incarnated on the earth and by incarnating on the earth came to know the nature of substance. Christ reveals to man the nature and working of substance in human life. Rudolf Steiner quotes the Christ directly. Further in this lecture, Dr. Steiner points to the misuse of substances, particularly poisonous substances. In this lecture, he speaks of Friedrich Nietzsche and the fact that he used poisons which affected his behavior and permitted Ahriman to work through him. In this context, Rudolf Steiner noted the use of hashish as an example. He did not directly say that Nietzsche used hashish. I, however, tend to assume that it may have been this substance that Nietzsche used. From this lecture it appeared to me that what is essential is to try to understand the nature of substance in order to try to understand what can occur at the time when the daily bread is being consumed. Let me now digress a bit to develop one aspect that is so connected with this subject, that is, the problem of the meal time and its relation to substance. To do so, let us for a moment follow the activities of the consumption of the daily bread. We know that that which is taken in by the human being in eating is first broken down in its form. The states of matter are altered. This begins in the mouth and continues as substance is swallowed. At the same time, there is a chemism that acts on the substance taken in. By the alteration in substance states and chemical change, substance is removed from its origin. There is a further step in substance transformation indicated by Rudolf Steiner that is not often considered, As the state and chemical make-up of substance is transformed, some of the substance—not all—is totally destroyed. This does not mean that all substance is destroyed, but a portion is. In this destruction, there is an inner stimulation, an inner process of gathering activities from within. The person who consumes food and destroys its substance gains the possibility of re-creating what has been destroyed. The process by which there is a destruction and by which there is an inner re-creation, I have come to term creative identification. I believe that Rudolf Steiner has referred to this point of destruction from many different perspectives. One way of describing it is when the soul in medita­tion comes to void space of soul and time’s annihilation of thinking. Here soul-life and thinking enter into the domain where there is the potential for the re-creation of matter.This point of substance creation is spoken to by Rudolf Steiner in The Inner Realities of Evolution. Here he begins with Saturn. He says that if one approaches Saturn in thinking, one can have the experiences as depicted by the philosopher Karl Rosenkrantz. Rudolf Steiner also says that we can approach this domain carried by the Christ. In arriving at Saturn, we can be carried to witness and participate in the process of the creation of substance. In the depth of man’s being, in relation to the core of his ego-organization, man is embedded in the Divine world where new substance can be created. Man as an eternal being is embedded in the Divine world. In this new creation, man comes to the inner Word. Here we find the working of the micro Logos. Man as an eternal being participates in this process. With this view, we can come to the realization that man in his digestive process recapitulates evolution in relationship to matter. There can then ensue a re-creation of substance by the Divine and man. This is the point where the law of the conservation of matter and energy no longer remains true. Here the past is laid aside. Here is a totally new creation for the future. In this act of creation, a creation out of nothing, a creation out of the all takes place. To develop a consciousness for this process is one of the strivings of the human soul for the depth of existence, for the mystery of creation and substances. This is a solemn journey of the soul in relationship to the Divine hierarchical world, which, as it were, consumes the past and can in a creative involutional act make a step into the future. At this juncture, the existence of the ever-present, the Eternal, can appear in the act of creation out of nothing. A few more words might be spoken about substance, the newly created substance. If we turn to Saturn, the early stages of Saturn evolution, we find the activities of the Spirits of Courage. Through the evolution of Saturn and the birth of the Archai Beings, the Spirits of Courage give of their own substance, thereby their substance becomes the substance of will.These lofty beings can then be called Spirits of Will. Their activity of will is actually sacrificial. Their active will is world creative. Will-substance comes into being on Saturn within man. This will-substance can then be transformed through all of the evolutions so that it becomes the basis for human activity of will. Will-substance forms the basis for the secret and the magic of the human will, a soul faculty. 
On Saturn, what took place—but still takes place in man— was the sacrifice of the Thrones. There also began the first germ of resignation by other lofty spirits. Some lofty spirits, the Cherubim, did not accept the sacrifice, one that is mirrored in the deeds of Abraham with Isaac. This permits the coming into being of retarded substance, retarded Spirits of Time, the Asuras. Retarded will-substance is then carried through evolution. With the actual coming forth of the solid material state on Earth, this will-substance was incorporated into the Earth process itself. At the same time, this retarded will-substance was and can still be penetrated by the lower sub-nature forces of the elemental world. This will-substance was and continues to be penetrated by electricity, magnetism, gravity and the potential for information processes. By this means the retarded will-substance enters the realm of Ahriman who lives in the domain of sub-nature forces in Earth and man. I contemplate that this retarded will-substance becomes the basis for the incarnating of the Asuric Beings. As Ahriman gives rise to evil, these Asuric Beings give rise to black magic. The working of this will-substance as the result of the renunciation of substance by the Cherubim, this will-substance and its working is carefully presented by Rudolf Steiner in the fourth lecture of The Inner Realities of Evolution. I will briefly speak to this working of the will- substance, as best as I can comprehend it at this time. Speaking about this will-substance leads us directly to evil and the problem of our daily bread. The retarded will-substance can be revealed by the human soul today. When this will-sub­stance penetrates into the physical body, affecting the soul, the inclination for murder and suicide is laid. When this will-substance enters into the domain of the human etheric body, then boredom supervenes in the soul. When the will-substance enters into the astral organization of man, affecting the human soul, then longing, unendurable longing results. Finally, with retarded will-substance entering the human ego, a continual picture formation process can take place. It is so important to address this latter process. In the soul activity of free association carried out by the psychoanalyst, this picture formation process comes to consciousness. Here Ahrimanic and Asuric impulses can enter the soul. Thus it becomes comprehensible how very problematic im­pulses can arise in relation to our daily bread. It becomes quite reasonable that a protecting prayer should be given to mankind by the Christ, just in relation to our bread. Serious impulses can also surface from our analytic methods. 
To follow the path of substance, to consider meal times and the daily bread can then lead to rather profound aspects of creativity and existence. The paths of substance have to be considered by those who are interested in metabolism, the human will and the common event of the daily meal. All of this was my concern, our concern, when we founded the Fellowship Community in 1966. However, there are several other aspects that I would like to share along these same lines of contemplation. As we all gather at meal times to renew life, it is also true that at the end of life, we gather to celebrate the transition for a given soul from the earthly into the soul-spirit world. In our community work, care for the ill and dying is extremely important. At the end of life there comes the question once again of substance. When man dies, he leaves his corpse. The corpse can be given to the Earth as is, while the soul begins its soul-spirit journey. Or, the corpse can be burned so that the volatile substances can be dis­persed into the cosmos while at the same time a small amount of ash falls out of process. We in the community have come to tend this ash in a considered way. We have evolved a brief memorial service as we give the human ashes back to our good Earth. Here the love for the Earth becomes pertinent. If we consider that even a small fraction of this ash is newly created substance, then in giving the Earth this ash, our Earth is receiving new substance. Our Earth as a living entity needs our new substance for its future. From the researches of Rudolf Steiner, we can learn that these ashes, our human ashes, are needed to maintain life for the Earth, for the Earth to be carried into the future. With this view, with the view that every human being can make this contribution, we can consider how each is equal in the sight of God, each can contribute to God’s creation, each can contribute to Mother Earth. This view that each human being participates in the creation of new substance, that each human being can contribute this substance for the life of our beloved Earth, such a perspective can form a basis for a healthy and selfless perspective of life. We, with this view, do not only live for ourselves. We can in fact serve this Earth—our Earth—by our journey here. We contribute to our Father’s creation, to sustain our Mother Earth, for the continued birth of a Son. In death we all serve this task. This is a different perspective. Therefore, we in the Fellowship try to honor this view with an ash ceremony.

Psychoanalysis
I would like to share another consideration in regard to digestion, substance destruction and de novo creation. Here I would like to touch on psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis has come to play a most intense role in the cultural life of the Western world. It is, as well, an incredible force to be reckoned with since human souls are touched in their depths by this method of approaching soul life. In America, and in an increasing degree in Europe, this practice affects education, therapeutics, social work and govern­ing practices. An American in a larger city is hardly considered normal without a psychoanalyst at his side. I find the following quote most revealing of the psycho­analytic method. It can be found in the Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud. The quote speaks to the method of “free-association.” The self-observer, on the other hand, need only take the trouble to suppress his critical faculty. If he succeeds in doing that, innumerable ideas come into his consciousness of which he could otherwise never have got hold. The material which is in this way freshly obtained for his self-perception makes it possible to interpret both his pathological ideas and his dream structures. What is in question, evidently, is the establishment of a psychical state which, in its distribution of psychical energy (that is, of mobile attention), bears some analogy to the state before falling asleep, and no doubt also to hypnosis. As we fall asleep, involun­tary ideas emerge, owing to the relaxation of a certain deliberate (and no doubt also critical) activity which we allow to influence the course of our ideas while we are awake. (We usually attribute this relaxation to ‘fatigue’.) As the involuntary ideas emerge, they change into visual and acoustic images. (Cf. the remarks by Schleiermacher and others quoted above on pp.49 f. (and 7lf.].)

In the state used for the analysis of dreams and pathological ideas, the patient purposely and deliberately abandons this activity and employs the psychical energy thus saved (or a portion of it) in attentively following the involuntary thoughts which now emerge, and which—-and here the situation differs from that of falling asleep—retain the character of ideas. In this way, the involuntary ideas are transformed into voluntary ones. The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge of their own free will and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard to achieve for some people. The involuntary thoughts are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude. In a passage in his correspondence with Komer-we have to thank Otto Rank for unearthing it—Schiller (writing on December l, 1788) replies to his friend’s complaint of insufficient productivity: The ground for your complaint seems to me to lie in the constraint imposed by your reason upon your imagination. I will make my idea more concrete by a simile. It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the creative work of the mind if reason makes too close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in—at the very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may become more important by another thought that comes after it, and, in conjunction with other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may turn out to form a most effective link. Reason can­not form any opinion upon all this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a creative mind, reason—so it seems to me—relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pellmell, and only then does it look them through and examine them in a mass. You critics, or whatever else you may call yourselves, are ashamed or frightened of the momentary and transient extravagances which are to be found in all truly creative minds and whose longer or shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. You complain of your unfruitfulness because you reject too soon and discriminate too severely…
(Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretations of Dreams, Basic Books, Inc. pp.102-103.) A careful perusal of this quote will show that we have been presented by Freud a method of slightly falling asleep. It is not a method of awakening to the spirit. Freud shows here his incapacity to comprehend Schiller as a thinking artist. He likens the awakening to ideas­—the thinking art of Schiller—with the falling asleep of his free as­sociation method. The misunderstanding is significant. It was Rudolf Steiner who pointed to Schiller’s method of thinking in order to comprehend Goethe’s perceptive capacities. Rudolf Steiner elaborates this in chapter two of The Theory of Knowledge. This chapter is entitled “Goethe’s Science Considered According to the Method of Schiller.” Schiller’s method leads to the world of ideas; Freud’s method leads to the domain of substance destruc­tion and recreation where not only the highest, where the all can be found (Lucifer), but also the lowest, the nothing (Ahriman-Asuras). Rudolf Steiner speaks of this region of existence for the human soul as the “abysmal-bestial slime of the soul.” This region of the soul is directly addressed in the cycle The Karma of Vocation. In the will, vocational life, we touch on the depths of metabolism. It would appear that just at this point in human physiology, on a path of knowledge we can come to meet the abyss and the bestial. Assuredly for this we need the assist of a guardian. Rudolf Steiner investigated this region of human physiology in a very careful way. This can be found in his writings on Nietzsche. Rudolf Steiner published two articles—the only ones of his articles ever published in a medical publication—in the “Wiener Klinische Rundschau,” Nov. 30, 1900. Here he speaks of Nietzsche’s illness. As we know from Rudolf Steiner’s other indications, Ahriman was able to use the body of Friedrich Nietzsche to become an author, the author of Ecce Homo and The Anti-Christ. Nietzsche’s use of poison led to the circumstance that spiritual beings, Ahrimanic beings, could indwell human metabolic activity to present to mankind the will-to-power and the Christ as anti-Christ. Out of the “abysmal-bestial slime of the soul” there arose the force of Ahriman-Asuras in Nietzsche’s organism to enter mankind through the written word. He who seeks self-analysis in free associational dreaming, draws near to this domain of human metabolism.I wish to add one more perspective to this discussion of sub­stance destruction and creation, the challenges of the human soul with evil. The problem of psychoanalysis arose in the community of Anthroposophists in Dornach in 1915. The episode is carefully presented in the volume Community Life, Inner Development, Sexuality and the Spiritual Teacher. In this volume we are told about a Dr. Goesch who was a psychoanalyst busy in the Anthroposophical community. This doctor, psychoanalytically oriented, wrote a letter to Rudolf Steiner. In the letter he accused Rudolf Steiner of the following:1) self-aggrandizement while belittling others, 2) challenging followers with goals that are totally unattainable, 3) giving the impression of support while undermining, 4) instigating worship of his person, 5) misleading innocent souls and 6) exerting undue influence on others. Rudolf Steiner read the letter to the members in Dornach, indicating that the letter was symptomatic of the inability of members to make distinctions and perceive illness in such matters. In reviewing the letter, Rudolf Steiner is 1) critically perceptive, 2) thoughtfully considerate, 3) challenging the members, 4) asking for the perception of illness, 5) modest and 6) respectful of the freedom of his listeners. In this circumstance he had to try once again to distinguish between drives, desires, sexual appetites, and bodily urges —the domain of Ahriman— and the urge to know—the region of Luciferic stirrings. The “subterranean chamber of the soul” as previously noted, is well discussed in The Karma of Vocation. The point of departure for a Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is the “urge to know.” Man’s task is to find his balance between these two types of urges. In the book Riddles of the Soul, further spiritual scientific research can be found pertaining to such distinctions. Many in our society to this day have to struggle with such problems.

The Earth, Black Magic
Let us now turn to the Earth. I have referred to our Earth several times. From Rudolf Steiner’s researches we can discover the etheric configuration of the Earth. Life-ether working is domi­nant in the Americas. Tone formative- ether activity predominates in the Atlantic region and Western Europe. The rising light-ether is very active in Eastern Europe and South-West Asia. Eastern Asia and the Pacific is penetrated by warmth-ether. Notable is that the major mountain chains in the domain of light- and warmth-ether regions run east and west. Where life-ether dominates, there the mountain chains run north and south.

It is in this latter region that the sub-earthly forces of our earth are concentrated. The sub-earthly forces—gravity, magnetism, electricity and information—we can consider Ahriman’s transfor­mation of life-ether, tone-ether, light-ether and warmth-ether. I often wonder if it is just these sub-earthly forces which help “move” the mountains into a north-south orientation. Whatever the case, in the Western world sub-earthly forces have to be dealt with. In his two lectures on Geographic Medicine, Rudolf Steiner speaks to these important and determinative forces in the Earth, in man and civilization today. This I would now like to address as best I can. From Spiritual Science, we can go back to Atlantean times; in fact, we can also say we bear these times in our physiology. Every time we eat something and digest, we take substance back to these times. Our physiology carries world history as process. At the time of Atlantis, the great Sun initiate, The Great White Spirit, was supreme. From the Mystery centers went out impulses to the East which brought forth Mysteries. These Mysteries permitted the incarnation of Lucifer in 3,000 BC. In the westerly direc­tion unfolded Mystery culture which in our third millennium is to give rise to the incarnation of Ahriman. This is our immediate fu­ture. We do not yet know much about this post-Atlantean western migration from 6,000-10,000 BC. In the last twenty-five years, we are beginning to hear that the Western United States was inhabited by millions of Red Indians with highly differentiated groups and clans. Our previous conception about the Americas will have to change. The entire civilization, as well as the South American migrations, have existed and then died out under the influence of these intense sub-earthly forces. In fact, the question has to be asked if it is not just these forces which lead to the extinction of these peoples, these tribes, more so than the coming of the white man to the Americas. We also know that numerous Mystery im­pulses were born into this Western civilization from very ancient times. Rudolf Steiner has enlightened us about the Taotl Mysteries of Mexico. 
There is much confusion about the Taotl Mysteries. As best as I can determine, Rudolf Steiner speaks of them and their working at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Important in our con­siderations here is to contemplate that our Earth carries the memory of these Mysteries and their working streams into all mankind from that time on. This is the function of Mystery centers, to create impulses that can go out into the world, as exemplified by the Mystery of Golgotha. Impulses play into the ether of Earth memory. However, here we have to consider Mysteries connected with evil and black magic. 
The Taotl Mysteries were an outgrowth of the western-Ah­rimanic influenced migrations from Atlantis. They flourished in Mexico, as indicated, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Sig­nificant in this Mystery impulse was ritual murder, the cultic murder of man. We know that taking life was very much a part of the Mysteries in the past, as for example in the Mysteries of Northern Europe. War can be seen as an outgrowth of this. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, the taking of life, the overcoming of Abel at the hand of Cain, is to change. This is central in our New Mysteries. However, in the Taotl Mysteries, life was taken. The victim to be murdered was stretched on a frame, face up. The trained initiate was to have gained the skill to excise the stomach of the victim with one gesture. The victim’s soul was in this way given to Lucifer. The initiate, with stomach in hand, could be led by Ahrimanic beings to the Asuras active in substance. We hear from other sources that human flesh was also consumed. The usual literature tells that the heart of the victim was excised, differing from Rudolf Steiner’s indications. My considerations unite both indications. This means that the initiator had to have his hand— probably left—on the heart of the victim, while with the right hand the stomach had to be removed. A study of the physiology of digestion and the heart in circulation could support this. With the Mystery of Golgotha, just this Mystery enactment had to be counteracted. This is a very complicated story. As the initiator followed the Ahrimanic beings, he was led to the Asuric will-nature of substance, the destructive will, the murderous, suicidal will-nature of fallen substance. This taking hold of this substance, I gather is true black magic. We are told that the greatest black magician known to mankind worked in the Taotl Mysteries. We can learn that the impulse for this black magic lies in the center of our Earth. This was served and or created by this black magician. We learn further from Rudolf Steiner that the work in the ether world of a lofty spiritual being, called Vitzliputzli, led to the crucifixion of the Black Magician (Kozlik?) in 33 AD. Vitzliputzli worked to serve the Mystery of Golgotha, to help that the deeds of Christ should surmount those of the Black Magician. 
Through his researches Rudolf Steiner has revealed a further, and to me, a very significant aspect of these Mysteries. He tells us that a “Jehovah-like” being, Tezcatlipoca, again working from the etheric world, struggled against the Taotl black magic impulses for man’s sake. From this indication I am inclined to ask if it is not this being who then fashioned the double of man, the double con­stituted by the forces of gravity, magnetism and electricity. As Jehovah worked to give rise to man in the image of the Godhead, can it not be that the task of this Jehovah-like being is to carve for man a resemblance from the Earth so that man can work with Christ for the future evolution of the Earth? In this way man can retain a connection with the Earth and Ahriman. My question be­comes concrete when we ask about the only substance on Earth not transformed by the Christ; that is gold. In the rush for gold — all connected with the unfolding of Western culture — we come to deal with a substance wherein lies the mysterious working of Ahriman-Asuras. We might consider that man can create true gold. Man in his digestive-re-creative process can bring forth a gold which I would liken to the gold of the golden vessels of the four Archangels. The Jehovah-like being could be thought of molding our ether double of electricity and magnetism which leads us to this domain of existence, the existence of fallen gold. Gold is just so precious because we have to win and transform our double—our earthly bestial nature—to make true gold. This could be considered to be a true alchemy, the making of gold. The Black Magician worked to use gold to win the elemental make-up for the Ahrimanic-Asuric sub-Earthly domain. Man needs to work in relation to Ahriman. Not to be overcome by Ahriman, but in a way work to redeem Ahriman.Let us contemplate the possibility that from these Mysteries, even with the conquest of the Black Magician, that man’s double became a reality here. This double then began to radiate into all men as an archetype. We might contemplate the Homunculus of Faust. At the time of the height of the school at Gondishapur in 666 AD, this double, through the work of Ahriman in this school, was brought to man. It is this Ahrimanic working that brings atheism and illness to man. Ahriman plants the seed for the reaction to Lucifer and the seed for freedom in the physical world. There is a hint from Rudolf Steiner that the early, pre-Christian culture of the Romans was an Ahrimanic reaction to the Luciferic East, but it was connected with the early American-Mexican Mysteries. The working of the Mexican Mysteries into Gondishapur is my own questioning contemplation. Rudolf Steiner very directly relates a Luciferic reaction to these black magic Mysteries in the birth of the Templar movement in Europe. We know that the Templars in turn were murdered, as it were, but we then hear that the murdered souls worked back into mankind to give rise to new cultural impulses. The departed souls worked into the soul of Sir Thomas Moore, the mathematics of Leibnitz, the works of Defoe, the Sun-oriented astronomy of Anthroposophy and became the source of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily through Goethe. Rudolf Steiner further tells that these Ahrimanic impulses worked into the creations of writers in the 19th century. The work of Ernst Renan (1823-1892) who wrote about the “simple” man Jesus was one such. David Strauss (1804-1874) who wrote the Life of Jesus and The Old Faith and the New, transforming every historical event into symbolism and mythology, was another. These two authors were influenced by these Mysteries. Finally we have to contemplate these Mysteries in relation to the Ecce Homo and the Anti-Christ of Nietzsche. I worry that these Mysteries are now surfacing in psychoanalytic work and the renewed interest in the Satanic cults. I have a colleague who works with patients who have been drawn into present-day cults where human flesh is consumed and ritual murder takes place. Individuals working with the handicapped are struck by the evil impulses in some children. Our search for comfort, welfare, prosperity and power of will all seem influenced from this source. The total materialization of our science (Arabization) can be thus considered. The abduction and ritual murder of children in Brazil is thought by some to be con­nected with Satanic cults. I have wondered if our TV shows and games like “Dungeons and Dragons” are not connected. Our recent struggles in the Middle East, the Iraqi war, seems to be a manifes­tation of the work of nothing but destructive impulses, almost a battle between Lucifer and Ahriman with men as pawns. In our wrestling with these evil Mysteries so active in our day, what lies at stake is the integrity of the human soul and the future of our Earth.

A Later Step in Life
Now let me take up a later step to grapple with evil. To do this, I would again point to my own experiences in Dornach with the bestial element. This gave rise to my very significant concern for the beast in the domain of esoteric life. The searching for a deeper life, the struggle with evil requires— it seems to me—a real active consideration of the beast or beasts in esoteric life. In order to do this, I would like to turn to 1961. At Michaelmas in 1961 a medical conference was held in New York City. It was an attempt at a celebration of the Michaël Festival within the Anthroposophical Society. It was Christoph Linder who organized the conference­ festival. As already noted, Christoph Linder was the first Anthroposophical physician sent to this country by Ita Wegman. He felt that a Michaelmas Conference which presented the work­ing and efforts of the medical impulse should surface at this meet­ing. Present at this meeting were Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Hal Williams, Anna Wannamaker, myself and a few others. The intention was to share content arising from the effort to transform the practice of medicine through Anthroposophy. Notable is that the day after the meeting, Christoph Linder had a stroke. For the next four years, he remained essentially an invalid. He died just prior to the founding of the Fellowship Community, but he had helped to initiate the Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Foundation which was needed in order to give birth to this work. Important was that at the time of his death, he spoke of his own failure, his inability to introduce an Anthroposophical medical impulse into the United States. With his last words, his last breath, he stated without any question he was bestowing this responsibility upon me. Important here is to consider what it means when an individual dies, and in the process gives over responsibilities which bear significant karmic impulses. What does it mean for the departed? What does it mean for the living? What are the responsibilities of the living?

Next to be shared is that Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, who had always been very much connected with the medical movement, the medical work in the United States, had a heart attack and died on Nov. 30, 1961, two months following the Michaelmas festival. At the time of death, Ehrenfrled Pfeiffer also spoke about his inabilities to bring forth what was needed from the scientific side for therapeutics. He felt that he had worked hard, but had not succeeded. He spoke particularly of the need for the continuation of his laboratory work. He saw no possibility for the future of his laboratory at the time of his death. However, his overriding concern at death was his concern for the School of Michaël. Some of my first conversations with him, now forty years ago, had to do with the absolute necessity of this School. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer saw Aristotle’s incapacity to found a Mystery School. He shared Rudolf Steiner’s success in being able to do so. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer pointed to the great need to tend and care for this School. Many are unaware of the depth and extent in which he worked so that the School could continue. He not only worked as a Reader, but furnished deeper material for esoteric considerations that would support the work of a modem Mystery School. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, as is well known, did much for the Biodynamic agricultural movement. He did much for the stimulation of the Anthroposophical Society work, but in the core of his heart was the concern for the School of Michaël. This he also shared in our meetings in the 1950s.

It is in the nature of life that when individuals die and give over their unfulfilled karma to others, those who remain on earth sense a responsibility. This is particularly the case when on the death bed the dying speak of their unfulfilled tasks of life. The question becomes how to take up such responsibilities. To this end, almost from the time of the dedication of the Fellowship Community, I have tried to found and support group working which would be of help to the School of Michaël and the Medical Section. Nearly twelve years ago, we formed a circle at the Fellowship Community, the Therapies Circle. This circle started with a coming together of Gerald Karnow and myself to consider deeper aspects of spiritual life and therapeutics. Slowly this group grew from two to seven, then ten and now twelve. Out of a single circle, we have created two working groups. The one group is the Class Work Group; the other is the Medical Section Work Group. Once a week, there is a meeting, alternatively the Class Work Group and the Medical Section Work Group gather. In our Class Work Group, we try to fathom the life of Rudolf Steiner and his work with Michaël. The significance of meeting spiritual beings—be they hierarchical, human or elemental—is a constant striving as a basis for esotericism. Bestial beings have to be included. Great care is given to fostering spiritual life in the immediate community while supporting the Class work in the larger community. Some members of this circle work to help plan Class meetings for all Class members in the area. For the evolution of this group work, we have taken the seventeen themes of the 1986 Class Members’ meeting as common thematic material. We work through the themes with each new member of the circle. The con­cern for our departed friend, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, lives with us in our gatherings. There is a continual effort to work to comprehend the beasts of the soul, the evil that has to be met as our thinking, feeling and willing separate at the threshold on a path of knowledge. Our search is to find our way to the New Mysteries of the will. In our Medical Section Group work we try to focus on the life of Ita Wegman. We ask our friend Christoph Linder to gaze on us. Slowly we try to take our way to Raphael. In this group work, we also have thematic material to create a common ground. We share these themes whenever a newcomer joins the group. These themes, ten in number, try to address life activities for the health of a com­munity where there is an ongoing effort to evolve a therapeutic work. The concern for life-style in the local circumstance, as well as on a larger scale is again and again addressed. We try to be mindful of and have a concern for Medical Section work else­where. We make every effort to keep in contact with the Medical Section activity at the Goetheanum. As a closing sharing, I would mention our continual effort in the foregoing groups, as in all working groups within the Fellow­ship Community, to find a new approach to vocational life. Over the last years we have striven more and more to take up the in­dications to be found in Lecture 10 of The Karma of Vocation. These indications support the renewal of vocation. As many know, in the last lecture of this cycle, Rudolf Steiner points to the evolving of a religious life as a part of a vocation. He points to the unfolding of 1) the reality of spiritual communion, 2) the enacting of baptism for the developing of the human being and 3) the grounding of sacramentalism in all of life’s deeds. Communing in the idea world, communing in the spirit as an act in knowledge, is a need for new vocational life. Man needs to commune in spirit. This is essential for a path of knowledge and life. Through this communion, the love of wisdom can be lead to a love of deeds. A second step is needed. The second step is to be responsible to the unfolding of the human soul through the course of life. The effort to establish the possibility for the unfolding of the human being, from birth to death, to permit each to be baptized in, through life in the light of the Christ—this is a striving. The “Not I but the Christ in Me” is a second central task. We have tried to ad­dress this baptism by considering the rhythmic staging of life in order to seek a healing rhythm in life’s unfolding. We try to support the unfolding individuality and humanity of each child, but in relation to the beginning and ending of life. In this way, the soul is served.

In addition and as a third striving, we have been working since the founding of the community to find a way to deal with nearly all aspects of life in such a way that they can be carried on with devotion. We make a continual quest to find a way towards a devoted taking up of whatever is presented. In this way, life itself can be an ongoing sacramental process. In this way, we can seek service to God, that is “Gottes Dienst.” In the striving for communion in idea, we know we can say that we seek the Holy Spirit, the Holy Sophia. This is wisdom striving for the good; we rise to seek the spirit. In baptismal striving our love is turned to the Son. Through service to whatever stands before us, we stand in awe before the Father. With such considerations, with such aspirations and with such efforts, we, as others, try to find our way to the New Mysteries of the will.Rudolf Steiner has given us a gift, a prayer to help on this long journey, on this new Mystery path. It is:

At the turning-point of Time
The Spirit-Light of the World
Entered the stream of Earthly evolution.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway;
Day-radiant Light
Pored into the souls of men:
Light that gave warmth
To simple shepherds’ hearts,
Light That enlightened
The wise heads of Kings.
O Light Divine!
O Sun of Christ!
Warm Thou our hearts,
Enlighten Thou our heads,
That good may become
What from our hearts we would found
And from our heads direct
With single purpose.
(Editor: we are using the translation by George and Mary Adams)

Paul W. Scharff, M.D. Michaelmas 1991