Oriphiel and the Rise of Scientology, Part II

To grasp the role of the archangel Oriphiel in what has proceeded throughout the Earth since May 9, 1950--the date of the publication of Dianetics--we must begin by seeking to gain a perception of the relationship among Gabriel, Michael, and Oriphiel as the representatives, respectively, of past, present, and future development in our time.

In anthroposophical understanding, we stand in the age of Michael.  His age, in the repeating cycle of ages wherein human spiritual evolution falls under the guidance of seven different archangelic beings, always follows upon Gabriel’s and precedes Oriphiel’s.  In an earlier chapter we discussed the relationship between Gabriel’s influence upon the Hebrew people during the age leading up to their being carried away into Babylon, and Michael’s subsequent influence upon Greek civilization, an influence that had its pinnacle in what occurred through Alexander the Great’s mission as conqueror of an empire that disseminated Greek culture throughout the ancient world.

Christ’s life and death transpired under Oriphiel.

Scientologists reckon historical time from May 9th, 1950; what is before that date is of a different epoch, in their thinking and feeling.  That they do so can be seen as an expression of the deluded tendency cult members have of ascribing ultimate significance to their own activity; here it is necessary to indicate, however, another inspiration than that which characterizes delusion.  It is due to the fact that, on May 9, 1950, Oriphiel, whose rulership is always characterized by great cultural change and turmoil, gained ascendancy prematurely in the guidance of human spiritual evolution in a limited but no less concrete respect.  It was in service to Michael, not in opposition to him, that Oriphiel took the reigns, so to speak, of the chariot of man’s forward development in the sphere of consciousness of the role of the unconscious in all human life.

This was necessary because the abstract theorization that had begun with Wundt and Freud, who founded the form of “scientific” rumination upon the phenomena of the psyche that prevails to this day in academic life, is itself the direct emanation of the very opposition forces that seek to penetrate the soul with elements foreign to it and inimical to its Bridegroom.  Oriphiel’s impulse is one of judgement:  of the “separating of the sheep from the goats”, the “wheat from the chaff.”  He works to bring about the conditions under which the cycles of human spiritual evolution may move forward with new impulses that can further “those who have washed their robes”, the ones who have preserved “oil in their lamps” along the path upward towards Manas, Buddhi, Atman, and under which, indeed, those who have rejected truth and its representatives are put on the path they must go to make up for this, or perish.  This “perishing”, we know from spiritual science, is no eternal hellfire, but the downward progression away from the blessed condition of the new humanity whose emergence is in preparation, a downward progression that can only turn upward again through repentance and change.

When we deal with the impulse of Oriphiel, we are compelled to speak in the terms of evangelical religion.  His taking on a central influence during the reign of the Sun-being, Michael, whose role it is to prepare human souls for this judgement by helping them in their advancement, in freedom, along paths that can lift them, out of the capacity for the spiritual activity found in thinking, into spheres whence radiate impulses that lead to the highest forms of art, science, and philosophy, has resulted in the politicization of thought, especially on the continent where his presence, through Hubbard‘s impulse, is felt most strongly:  since 1950 it has more and more come to be the case, especially in America, that the slightest intimation of thought about worldview results in the inspiration to categorize the person whose thought is in question as belonging to this or that “camp” in an ever more vehement cultural war between “Left” and “Right”--those who honor the freedom of the individual in the individual moral life but want government intervention in economic matters, and those who trumpet the freedom of entrepreneurship but insist that government has a responsibility to protect against moral decay.  The parties on these opposing “sides” are inspired to feel that the other has failed to grasp what is essentially good.

Psychosophy was meant to arrive within mainstream social life in a form that did not have to address the will of the individual human being, but left the individual free to come to his or her own conclusions about all matters while simultaneously aiding them to become free of the influence of forces arising in unconsciousness.  The vacuum created by the absence of such an approach to the mental life was filled with theories and approaches to therapy based upon a materialism that destroys the soul when the soul comes in contact with it.  By 1950--mid-century--the “mighty concentration of forces” Steiner predicted would be necessary to lift man out of his malaise found a central form of expression in the powerful inspiration that descended upon readers of Dianetics when they encountered a worldview in which man, as a spiritual being, is placed at the center of considerations about the macrocosm, and in which his well-being in freedom from the ailments that arise by the work of forces springing from the unconscious is addressed in evangelical terms.  From that time forward, any individual who opposed Hubbard‘s work found themselves in the position to be judged, in accordance with Oriphiel‘s impulse, an adherent of the enemy.

Many objections can arise to the idea that the inspiration of Oriphiel in the work of a cult maligned by mainstream science and academia can account for the politicization of cultural life that proceeds apace in circles outwardly untouched by its activities.  Such objections are easy to overcome if one considers, simply, the force of the spiritual powers that can manifest themselves wherever individuals gather who commit themselves, in true earnestness of spirit, to fathoming the working of their inner lives.  Such karmic communities have always been the source of impulses working out in the broadest and most thorough ways into the culture beyond their immediate outer influence.

For those with ears to hear:  Scientology’s adherents bear the keys to a future epoch, one in which the mechanic occultism--the capacity to put machines into motion by human vibrations purely--will flourish, according to Steiner’s predictions.  Its emergence in the West fulfills this prediction as precisely as that of the Moon movement in the East fulfills the one about the eugenic occultism.  And here it is also essential to recognize the following:

The followers of Hubbard see him as the Maitreya Buddha.  For them, the hope of the East has emerged in the West.

The followers of Moon see him as the Second Coming of Christ (not the Sun-being who incarnated in Jesus, but an incorporation of Jesus sent to fulfill the mission of bringing the Bride--“True Mother”--to humanity.)  For them, the hope of the West has emerged in the East.

Where is the Center?

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