The Overcoming of Evil
By Rudolf Steiner.
From a lecture dated November 4th,
1917.
People
will have to know all the forces that the soul must summon up in
order to overcome the powers of evil, or to transform them into
good impulses. All this was prepared upon the foundation of the
impulses of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch (the Graeco-Latin
epoch), which had to deal particularly with the problem of birth
and death, taken over as a kind of inheritance from the Atlantean
age. It suffices to bear in mind the Christ-Impulse and the way
in which it entered the world during the first third of the 4th
post-Atlantean epoch. This epoch began in 747 B.C. with the
founding of Rome, so that 747 years of the 2160 years forming one
epoch of culture had to go by within the 4th post-Atlantean
epoch, until the chief impulse, the Christ-Impulse, could become
active.
Does not
the Christ Impulse deal with the great significant problem
calling for a super-sensible interpretation of the problems of
birth and death in the history of mankind's development? How many
discussions there have been among Christians on the birth of
Christ, how many thoughts and feelings have already been expended
on this problem! How immensely significant is the part played by
the death of Christ! The birth and the death of Christ reveal
particularly pregnant points in the struggle which went on in
human souls in connection with the problem of birth and death.
This struggle existed in human souls, because, I might say, it
already existed in a more elemental, physical form during the
great Atlantean age. Particularly during the 4th Atlantean epoch,
in the middle of the Atlantean age, but still reaching into the
5th epoch, forces which were connected with birth and death, were
active in the human being. I have already characterized some of
these forces. The Atlanteans could develop forces which had an
influence upon birth and death, an influence which greatly
differed from the merely natural one. The good and evil forces in
man could to a great extent influence the health and illness of
other people, and consequently also birth and death. There was a
connection between the actions of an Atlantean and the natural
course of birth and death.
During
the post-Atlantean age, in the 4th epoch of culture of the
post-Atlantean age, this problem of birth and death was more
connected with the human soul. But during our own epoch, the 5th
post-Atlantean epoch, people will have to struggle with evil in
the same elemental way in which they struggled with birth and
death during the Atlantean age; particularly through the control
of the different forces of Nature, the impulses that lead to evil
will send their influences into the world in an immense, gigantic
form. And the opposite forces, the forces of good, will have to
grow out of the opposition to evil, and man will have to draw the
strength for this opposition out of spiritual sources. This will
take place above all during the 5th epoch, when the exploitation
of electric forces, which will assume quite different dimensions
from those which they have assumed so far, will enable man to
spread evil over the earth, and evil will invade the earth by
coming in an immediate way out of the forces of
electricity.
It is
necessary to envisage such things clearly and consciously. For
those who wish to take in spiritual impulses will find the points
of attack for the opponent forces and the points of issue for the
impulses which have to develop out of the resistance offered to
evil. It is of course difficult to speak of details in this
connection, for these still touch to a great extent human
interests which people prefer to leave untouched. In this
connection the human beings are divided on the one hand into
those who suffer greatly through the fact that they do not grasp
why they must be involved in the Karma of the universe, they
suffer because they must take part in this or in that, and they
cannot grasp this without immediately growing pious in an
abstract way; on the other hand there are the people who are
greatly involved in that which constitutes above all the
World-karma of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, but who are
unwilling to listen to all that is contained in the impulses
which pass through the world, because many people are keen on
setting up the very impulses which have a destructive influence
as constructive impulses. We have already described that ever
since the last third of the 19th century the Beings whom I
designated as the Fallen Spirits of Darkness are active among
men. They belong to the Hierarchy of the Angels. During the 4th
post-Atlantean epoch they were still servants of the good,
progressive Powers. They worked for the establishment of social
orders based on human blood-relationships. But now they live in
the kingdom of man, and as retarded Angel-Being's they are active
in all those human impulses which are connected with
blood-relationships, with racial and national relationships, and
they assert these in an Ahrimanic way, to the detriment of social
and other structures of mankind which should grow out of entirely
different foundations, than, for instance, those of family-ties,
race, tribe, or nationality.
To-day
these Spirits have begun their work in a forceful way by
emphasizing the principle of nationality abstractly This abstract
emphasizing of the principle of nationality, this drawing up of
programmes based on the principle of nationality, forms part of
the strivings which must be described as the strivings of the
Spirits of Darkness. They will approach man far more closely, far
more intimately, than did the retarded Spiritual Beings of the
4th post-Atlantean epoch, who belonged to the hierarchy of the
Archangels.
The
significant fact in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch will be above
all, that the Beings who stand immediately above the hierarchy of
Man, the Angel-Beings, will be able to approach the individual
human beings, not only groups of men, in a very intimate way, so
that these individual men will think that they are upholding
things which come out of their own personal impulses,
whereas — we may indeed say this — they are possessed
by this kind of Angel-Beings of whom I have spoken.
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