Freud as the Harbinger of Sorat's Temporary Sovereignty

The power of doubt to undermine human spiritual development will best be addressed in the following way if that power can be grasped as emanating from Michael's greatest opponent when it is doubt directed towards human personality:

With the death of Rudolf Steiner on March 30, 1925, the Earth lost the individuality whose consciousness of spiritual realities had, for more than 25 years, permitted the forces flooding the etheric at the end of Kali Yuga to find a form for the unfolding of their impulses in social life in Europe, beginning with his work at the school for workers in Berlin, through his time in the leadership of Theosophical striving in the German-speaking world, to the activity that resulted in a General Anthroposophical Society with a School for Spiritual Science at its center in Dornach, Switzerland, and a Christian Community priesthood performing seven restored sacraments.

When a figure crosses the threshold whose capacities have permitted the central stream of human spiritual evolution to make its way forward, the urgent necessity for the emergence of a replacement is powerfully felt in the realms nearest the Earth where responsibility for control over the opposition forces governed by a power emanating from the center of the Earth puts the divine beings there in the position to experience the loss of such a figure's physicality from the planet as a threat to the fulfillment of their mission. From the standpoint of the protecting and guiding beings in these lower realms, what matters in the fulfillment of their task is that another individuality be discovered whose capacity to become a channel for the continuation of the work of the central stream as soon as possible after the death of his or her predecessor. Matters pertaining to the successor to Rudolf Steiner in this respect are addressed in "Twenty-First Century Initiation Science and the Idols of America"; L. Ron Hubbard is addressed, there, as this successor. Scientologists have declared psychiatry the ultimate expression of evil in the history of humanity. This work is to serve to illuminate the justification for their declaration, without, however, uniting itself with the impulse to condemn that, in the course of time, usurped Hubbard's work, much as it has usurped the work of Anthroposophy through works such as Sergei Prokofiev's "The Case of Tomberg."

The emergence of Freudian psychotherapeutic theory and practice needs to be grasped from a standpoint that can shed light on the role it played in the agenda of opposition powers to present a perspective on the human personality that would prevent the elevated conception anthroposophy offered of the soul from thwarting something these forces of opposition had begun to see realized with the advance of technology through the Industrial Revolution: The soul's descent into a quality of relationship to sexual affairs that trivialized the sexual organ in accordance with the mechanical perspective on the human body these forces had succeeded, more and more, in inspiring in leading thinkers and political leaders. The trivialization of the human sexual organ is the cutting edge of Ahriman's own effort to bring about a civilization of freedom from what he sees as unnecessary passion in the feeling life. L. Ron Hubbard succumbed, himself, to this impulse in certain respects that result in the power and beauty of his accomplishment having, in the course of time, been undermined by the power of Michael's greatest opponent, Sorat, to weaken Scientologists insofar as their capacity to become truly one in heart with one another and with humanity. This capacity depends upon a relationship to the physical body, including its sexual organ, that in no way, shape, or form participates in the impulse to trivialize it by thinking of it as a machine.

Who is Sorat? What has Freud's idea of the human being to do with the power, particularly, of this being to interfere with human love?

Sorat is referred to as the "Sun Demon" because, during the period of cosmic evolution referred to by occult science as that of "Old Sun", a competition, to address the matter in the crude terms human language makes necessary for subtle, transcendent phenomena, arose between certain Spirits of Personality (Archai) loyal to their superiors, the Spirits of Wisdom whose mission was the bestowing, through an awesome capacity for sacrifice, etheric bodies upon human beings, and others, led by Sorat, who sought to take a different path under different guidance. The Archai were in the phase of their own development during which they became possessed of a consciousness that gave them a direct perception of the phenomena of the cosmos in images that conveyed directly and with great feeling immediacy the true nature of the realities of which the images were a representation; they looked to the Spirits of Form and those of Motion as intermediary superiors who were to convey to them impulses from the Spirits of Wisdom whose creative task forms the center of Old Sun evolutionary life.

The Spirits of Form were attaining the level of evolutionary development involved in the capacity to grasp directly the language, so to speak, of the highest divine beings, from whom the eternal Word emanates. The Spirits of Motion had moved beyond this capacity and were in the midst of the attainment of qualities of love in consciousness that permit beings reaching this condition to unite themselves utterly with what they encounter as the creative product of this eternal Word.

Directly "below" the Archai in the ranks of development and attendant responsibility referred to as "Hierarchies" were the Archangels, who were going through their human phase. To grasp the nature of the being referred to in this text as "Michael's greatest opponent", one must recognize the special relationship between the Archai and the Archangels in Old Sun development, which parallels the relationship presently existing between the Angels and human beings: It is a relationship governed by the way in which beings of a hierarchical rank directly superior to those of another bear responsibility, at a certain stage of their evolution, for the direct, individual guidance of their subordinates, through which the guiding beings develop certain capacities that can only be developed in this fashion. During evolution on Old Sun, the Spirits of Personality (Archai) were to guide the unfolding capacity of their "younger brothers", the Archangels, as mentors, one might say, of the unique kind of "human" development possible for these Archangels in the context of what was proceeding, centered, as we have said, on the work of the Spirits of Wisdom, as an ultimate focus of all cosmic beings upon Man, who would become "human" only upon receiving his "I" from the Spirits of Form on the Earth. The Archangels receipt of their "I" during Old Sun came from the Spirits of Wisdom.

Grasping the relationship between the Archangels receipt of their "I" from the Spirits of Wisdom on Old Sun, the role they then played in the work upon the unfolding etheric bodies of Man there, and the way in which a number of the Archai began to take an "alternative path" in their guidance of the Archangels will be aided if we refer to words of Rudolf Steiner, in his essays published in 1904 as "From the Akasha Chronicle", regarding the Archangels' nature and their work on Old Sun:

"The 'Sons of Fire' [Archangels] are, in their nature, beings who pour out the warmth of their soul into their environment. The physical human body [given, in a foundational sense, by the Thrones on Old Saturn] has reached the point [at a certain stage of Old Sun evolution] where they can now do this through it. Their warmth has approximately the effect of the brooding of a chicken on her egg: it has the power to awaken life. Everything in Man and his comrades that has to do with such life-awakening power was planted into the etheric body at that time through the Sons of Fire. That is to say, one is dealing here with the origin of that warmth that all living beings have as the condition for their procreation..."

When the etheric bodies being given humanity by the Spirits of Wisdom on Old Sun began, through the work of the archangels upon them, to take on the characteristics that transformed them into sources of life, certain of the Archai found themselves faced with the following circumstance:

They themselves had developed their human "nature" on Old Saturn, having received their "I" from the Thrones, who were laying the foundation on that incarnation of our planetary home for human physicality. Now, perceiving, at this stage of their own evolution, in full-blooded pictures the nature of what their "subordinates", the Archangels, were about--perceiving, that is to say, its import in ways that transcended the Archangels' own capacity to do so--certain of the Archai began to make use of their own dawning sense of independence from the influence of their superiors to come to independent ideas about what the life-forces of the etheric might be able to accomplish for human spiritual evolution. Specifically, a number of these Spirits of Personality gave themselves over to a feeling that, if it could have been expressed as clear thought, would say: "As an 'I' myself, I am destined to create certain capacities, in the future, needed by humanity. I have the right to shape the work of my own subordinates, the Sons of Fire, in a direction that suits my thinking, for it is this freedom in creativity that I shall inspire in a future time."

This feeling of independence from the cosmic weaving being guided by the highest divine powers arose within these representatives of the Spirits of Personality through the inspirative faculty within them being governed, at that stage of their development, by Spirits of Form who were themselves going paths divergent from the will of their own superiors. This was the origin of Ahrimanic substantiality in the cosmos.

These essays characterizes Sorat as Michael's greatest opponent not because he is more powerful than Michael--Ahriman, as a fallen Spirit of Form, brings forces to bear in his efforts that far exceed what Michael alone can meet--but because, as a being from the rank of the Hierarchies to which Michael is only now ascending in his own development, he presents challenges, at every turn, to the Michaelic will that meet this will with the force of direct competitive confrontation. The Soratic influence is one that affects the feeling life of the etheric in just the way that these Archai, from the beginning of their rebellion against the Spirits of Wisdom and of Motion on Old Sun, sought to misdirect the work of Michael and his compatriots as they poured out the warmth of their own being into Man's budding etheric body. The consequence for Man is the impulse to experience sexual impulses, whose origin is in the etheric, as less than an emanation from the highest divine powers of love.

A demonstration of this principle of degradation of the etheric and the sexual powers emanating from that cosmic sphere of existence, and the way in which Freud's mission must be seen as one that came to its unfolding on behalf of Sorat's impulses, can be found in the example of the encounter with the father of psychotherapy had by Gustav Mahler.

Mahler's Test

Gustav Mahler met with Sigmund Freud in August of 1910. The premiere of his eighth symphony in Munich was looming. The subject of their conversation: Mahler's relationship with his wife Alma, the grand beauty who in her life was associated, as wife or lover, with a series of famous artists.

The eighth symphony of Gustav Mahler represented a moment in exoteric German-speaking culture when its mission to bring to the consciousness of humanity the highest kind of creativity which is possible when the human being unites himself with impulses from divine worlds reached a kind of last moment of ultimate fruition before the tragedies that befell that civilization in the 20th century began to unfold. Like every great representative of the gifts individual human beings can bring to bear in service to all of humanity, Mahler was aware of the import of his mission, and of the sense of something being expected of him and his work in that context.

Alma Schindler had united herself, nine years earlier, with the great composer as his spouse out of impulses that lived within her of the deepest quality of devotion to the good. However, her time and culture brought with it as influences occultly all manner of contradictory impulses, ones that inspired a profound instability within this individuality insofar as her capacity to maintain her will to the good in the face of distractions and competitive suitors. She had become involved in an affair with Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, which, added to the death of their eldest daughter, the diagnosis of a heart malady for Mahler, and the attacks upon him in Vienna for his tyrannical style of musical leadership at the Vienna Opera, brought the 50-year-old genius to his knees, as it were.

In the eighth symphony, Goethe's presentation of Faust's course beyond the threshold after his death is set to music, culminating in the appearance of the Virgin, whose guidance to Gretchen, in response to her intermediary appeal for his soul's salvation, represents in and of itself a kind of height of spiritual-cultural consciousness and accomplishment for Western civilization. The music Mahler was able to compose to accompany this sublimest of scenes from Western literature reflects the degree of his connectedness, in the creative life of his soul, to the powers that seek to elevate Man from his condition of servitude to powers that see him as less than a son of the divine.

The encounter with Sigmund Freud regarding the threats to his marriage to Alma--to whom he dedicated the eighth symphony--produced the following analysis from Freud:

"Mahler's wife Alma loved her father Rudolf Schindler and could only pursue and love this type. Mahler's age, which he so feared, was just what made him so attractive to his wife. Mahler loved his mother and sought her type in every woman. His mother was full of grief and suffering, and he wanted this subconsciously, also, from his wife Alma."

Freud's incisive analysis had the effect on Mahler of weakening him substantially. Within a year, he was dead.

The author is fully aware of the effect the implication that Freud's advice played a central role in the early death of this last great representative of the impulses seeking to elevate humanity through music (the music of Debussy, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartok--even Strauss, who was of Mahler's generation and outlived him by thirty-four years--had a different mission) must have upon educated people in the twenty-first century. In the world of academia, the influence of Sigmund Freud can only be evaluated in terms of the objectively real importance it has had to the history of thought about the mind. In this world, the "value judgement" implicit in the assertion of a connection between Freud's thought and the death of a genius whose soul the thought affected like a knife would the heart must be unacceptable, because any connection between the life of the soul and physical health must be seen as a matter of subjective opinion rather than objective fact.

From the standpoint, however, of a spiritual-scientific analysis of the human being, it becomes radiantly--because objectively--clear that the reduction of the feelings of a man like Gustav Mahler, who could bring into physical (musical) form the very substance of the love of the Divine Feminine, to a "subconscious" desire to have his wife suffer because he loved his mother, who had suffered, constitutes the kind of violence to the soul that is perfectly expressed, as an analogy, in the image of a knife entering a living, beating heart. And that such violence to the soul has an effect, inevitably, upon the physical constitution of the human being is as objectively self-evident to one who can only gain an unbiased enough relationship to his or her own experience as it is objectively self-evident that a man who drops dead of a stroke upon hearing news that shatters his hopes for the future has suffered a physical consequence from a spiritual effect.

Mahler's mother had suffered; it is in the nature of the Divine Feminine that it suffers when it finds itself confronted with the consequences of the Fall in man. That any woman whose commitment to unselfish service to others puts her in the position to experience something of the suffering of the Divine Feminine will suffer, under the real circumstances of human spiritual evolution, is an inevitability that represents something about the sublime tragedy of human existence.

That Gustav Mahler "subconsciously" wanted his wife to suffer as his mother had is a statement that has the effect, upon a man whose only thought is how to represent impulses of the highest goodness, truth, and beauty in his work, of an accusation of perverting these very ideals. And here the power of Sorat to inspire self-doubt makes itself manifest: An individuality responsive to redemptive impulses will always be ready to question his or her own inherent goodness. Freud's "scientific" claim to be able to discern the "subconscious" motivation in Gustav Mahler raised just the quality of self-doubt in the man that opened his soul to powerful impulses of accusation--beings who exploit the questioning of an innocent soul of itself to bring to bear their own hatred of every human soul.

Jung's Valiant Failure

An effort on the part of higher worlds to counteract the inspiration that found it possible to work through the theories of Sigmund Freud as a vehicle can be seen in the work of Karl Jung. His idea of a "collective unconscious" represented an attempt to meet Freud's theories of Id and Superego with an element that lifted Sorat's constant reduction of man to an individual personality divorced from contact with higher worlds and their impulses of truth, beauty, and goodness into a sphere that reconstituted that reduction: Jung's "collective unconscious" and "synchronicity" are no more an assertion of real direct contact between man and higher worlds than that of which Freud's criticism of religion would admit, but they re-open the door to an affirmation of the belief that one is connected to these worlds and their weaving as something healthy for Man.

 

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