The Coronavirus Pandemic II

About the Spiritual Character of the Sars-Cov-2 Virus

Regarding my own (aphoristic) contribution here, I would like to add that I consider the whole investigation of the coronavirus question, especially with regard to the “behavior” of the virus, as well as to the effects of vaccination, as an extremely complex area of research, which I do not claim to be able to fathom and evaluate completely! Not only are the highest ranking (so to speak) forces involved that stand opposed to the good divine hierarchies, but it's a case of a “happening in development” — not a finished event that can be investigated and definitively evaluated. Like the virus itself, the entire process with its many sidetracks continues to evolve — dependent upon how the human being behaves relative to himself and the living universal active spirit, as well as his potential for higher consciousness.

In my first volume about the Sars-CoV-2-Virus (The Coronavirus Pandemic - Anthroposophical Perspectives, Forest Row 2021 [6]) I wrote that the “nature” of this virus indicated to me that it is the direct result of humanity's spiritual failure in the area of thinking, a result or “metamorphosis” therefore, of the thinking materialism of the past 150 years. Humanity is breathing, along with the Sars-CoV-2-Virus, the manifested results of its own destructive thinking in respect to the spirit and man's higher development. And I tried to point out that this fact is given a particularly dramatic impetus by the fact that the spiritual force, or anti-spiritual force, which is in opposition to the spiritual individuality or the “I” (in contrast to the ego or self) of man, is attempting to take advantage of this event by using those thoughts of humanity which have now become manifest (or material) as the Sars-CoV-2-Virus, as a means of preventing the higher development of man under the leadership of his I.

Conventional science regards the virus as a potential danger coming from without, which causally has nothing to do with human beings and against which the organism must defend itself.

In anthroposophical circles, however, the notion exists, based on certain remarks by Rudolf Steiner, that — simply stated — things coming from outside do not by themselves attack human beings, who bring them on themselves, so to speak, because it is a fact that man, through his spiritual being, is related to everything that exists and is active in the world; so that the notion of an outside and an inside as worlds closed from each other can only have a certain justification on the purely physical-material level, but not with regard to the whole real organism of the human being, which does not only include the physical-material body, but also a spiritual physical body, a life-body, a soul-body, and its spiritual core. Through the latter man encounters what enters into his physical organism on a different level than on the purely physical-material one. And since the spiritual core contains the potency to assess its own events of destiny from prenatal existence, and then implement them in this incarnation, completely different criteria emerge when considering the aspects of health and illness.

If one transfers this thought to infections, one can, as mentioned, arrive at the notion that it is the whole human organism itself that ingests the bacteria or virus into itself and interacts with it in order to finally benefit from the meeting; so that one may not regard the encounter with a pathogen as something from which one has to protect the human being by all possible means. The encounter with certain pathogens is — on the contrary — essential for life in a material body on a material earth. (By the way, scientific circles that are adverse to Anthroposophy come to similar conclusions today, only they do not recognize the leading spirit behind what is happening, namely the actual, the higher human being.) If conventional science is of the opinion that the immune system must be supported by vaccination in its defense against the attacker, then from the anthroposophical point of view this is not accepted as an act of support, for the reasons outlined above. One must fear that by a vaccination one rather takes away the strength from the (spiritually led) human organism to integrate itself independently and autonomously into life on the physical plane.

Now, however, in many circles of the anthroposophical movement this view has become a “sacred cow,” an untouchable “Holy Grail” that can never be questioned. Such rigidity must be recognized as fundamentally unrealistic, especially to someone who has experienced the nature of the living universal spirit (see Rudolf Steiner's smallpox vaccination). But precisely now, with respect to the Sars-coV-2-Virus (and doubtless with respect to many other viruses that will emerge in the near future) it must be recognized to super-sensible contemplation as fatal!

One could say that everything that has been previously indicated is still valid. However, due to the fact that the “emergence” of the virus took place under conditions that have never existed in the history of the world until recently, the portents of all parameters suddenly change. And since no serious anthroposophical research has been (or can be) undertaken, basically the same thing happens in large circles of the anthroposophical movement as in conventional scientific circles: Although in anthroposophical circles it is recognized that it is the person who takes the virus in “from outside” instead of being invaded by it, it is nevertheless believed, exactly as in other circles, that the psychical-spiritual human being is not the cause of the coronavirus pandemic.

The fact that humanity has been negligent in respect to the I, that it has hardly activated what in anthroposophical terminology is called the “consciousness-soul” or, in the broadest sense, not activated it at all, although it could have done so long ago (whereby the sacrificial act and gift of the Christ would have led to its actual purpose and fulfillment), has led to the fact that humanity not only prepares its fate itself — as it already did previously — but that since recently — in contrast to previously — it does not have the means to respond to its self-prepared fate in a beneficial way. Because until recently, when man had not yet been negligent in respect to his I, what is sometimes called in the anthroposophical movement the “peripheral” I was responsible and sufficiently so, in responding to a viral pathogen. Up until that point the infectious disease was, so to speak, a vegetative process, which was beyond the human being's consciousness. It was only by means of his physiological reactions, for example fevers, that he could sense that a “higher something” was active in him. Neither could he, his daylight consciousness that is, lead the altercation with the pathogen — nor did he need to!

However, due to the fact that in the meantime a serious negligence of the I has occurred, because of which the human being has not deployed his consciousness-soul at a time when he could and should have, but instead has produced overripe, rotten fruits of the comprehension-soul, which have now become manifest on the physical plane in the form of the said virus, and the neglect is springing upon him today with brunt force as a demand: He would have to be able to respond to the virus — or rather all bodily processes that have taken place in his organism during earlier infections when still under the guidance of his higher I acting from the periphery, and thus unnoticed by his consciousness — consciously from within his bodily existence! For the neglect consisted in the fact that he made no effort to bring his higher I from the periphery into his inner being in order to let it become active from within. In order to compensate for the danger he created for himself by his neglect, that is, to resist the harmful effect of the Sars-CoV-2 virus and transform it into a form that is useful or at least does not harm him any further, he would now have to be able to conduct those bodily processes self-sufficiently by his higher consciousness, which his wise higher I had conducted before from outside of his body, that is, without his daylight consciousness! So the higher I would have to shift completely into his physical body, awaken completely in his ordinary consciousness down to the bodily processes, or, expressed differently: humanity would have to awaken from its ordinary consciousness to its higher I-consciousness to an extent that would allow it to consciously control its immunization processes — an impossible task!

Even if humanity had not neglected its consciousness-soul activity during the past 150 years, it would still be far from being in a condition to perform such a conscious act. (Nevertheless, in that case it would not have had something removed, which has now returned in the form of a coronavirus.)

One can visualize what has been described here, but not the enormous dimension of the monstrous “nature,” the spirituality or rather “unspirituality” of what underlies the Sars-CoV-2 virus!

In view of this circumstance it is hardly bearable when from many directions of the anthroposophical movement it is proclaimed that the Sars-CoV-2 virus can be classified as harmless, that it is basically indistinguishable from an ordinary flu virus, and there is even spin of a “benign” I of the virus that people should invite in and embrace. And the fact that the “official” side of the anthroposophical movement advocates for protective measures and vaccinations, although they obviously have no knowledge of the contexts presented here, or at least do not say anything about them, cannot be called very hopeful either.

This virus, with its currently known mutations or variants, is only the very weak advance guard of pathogens of much greater caliber. But the origin and the “stowaway” of the Sars-CoV-2 virus are the same as the pathogens that will follow in the future. For if man does not now make an about-face in his attitude towards his own, namely spiritual, nature, if he does not now, because of this event, which is more than just a warning shot, arrange conditions for developing “organs” with which he is able to comprehend reality and thereby engage in completely different behavior, his new neglect will spread exponentially on the physical plane and rush toward it. (And the problem of pathogens, which are in principle uncontrollable by one's own spiritual forces, will not be the only one against which humanity will have to fight, as is already indicated today by climate change and its consequences — as a “minor” example.) It is a pandemic event. It is an event which — because its causal neglect is of a spiritual, which means moral nature — affects all human beings, also those who may be less responsible for the spiritual neglect. They will also have to suffer under this kind of plague. What humanity will then have also accomplished is to pull the basic needs for life out from under the bearers of hope sent to it by the spiritual world as impulse for the good. And within the raging storms against the spirit in which humanity finds itself, it would have thrown away the torch which could have given it some orientation in the darkness.

I am aware that these lines weigh heavily. I am aware that nobody likes to read such “messages.” I am aware that one prefers to read and agree with viewpoints that present our current situation in a more hopeful light, which perhaps even give the “all-clear,” especially when they are sprinkled with all kinds of conclusive quotations from Rudolf Steiner — and not infrequently (this should be disconcerting) with all kinds of confirming contributions coming from personalities who otherwise have not the slightest interest in anthroposophical knowledge of man and the world.

Yes, I am aware that the description of these gloomy conditions and prospects is not what the soul wants to hear. But if a fire flares up in the room no one will want to lie in bed and pretend not to know about it, hoping that in that way the flames will disappear. He would, on the contrary, certainly jump up and try to extinguish the fire. And if he had been asleep during the burgeoning fire, he would certainly be glad later that his neighbor, who noticed the fire, had woken him up. And he would certainly not blame having woken up for the fact that his bedroom is no longer as cozy as it was before the fire.

If with this in mind one looks back once again at the method outlined above, which is so frequently used today, namely to draw conclusions regarding current events based on Rudolf Steiner's spiritual-scientific research, then adds to this mental construction one's own ideas that seem to fit on top, and in this way judges the situation and subsequently recommends a certain behavior to others. From this one can recognize how “diabolical” the coronavirus (or rather the counter-spirit working through it) operates, even without the path of an infection. By using this method one runs the risk of confusing true from false. Everything fits together conclusively. Everything seems suddenly crystal clear! Euphoria percolates. One wishes to spread what is so clearly evident in the form of articles, newsletters and lectures in order to guide others to enlightenment as well. And it seldom happens that one wonders why suddenly people share or approve one's own convictions who may not want to know the slightest thing about Anthroposophy (in whose center Christ stands) and the ideals to which the anthroposophical spiritual student strives. But the conviction that one has clearly localized the evil and, moreover, found a good formula for dealing with the virus, seems to be so irrefutable that one simply brushes aside this one drop of wormwood, which so strangely disturbs the conclusiveness of the whole thing, and continues.

The fact that the impulses of the I's enemy, which also affect materialistic medicine or pharmacology by creeping through the most diverse doors that have been opened, among others, by the fact that the idea of the Triformation of the social organism has not taken hold is undeniable, and this problem must be recognized and addressed (even if the opportunity for the for the Triformation impulse is missed for the time being). But to brand the attack on the free I exclusively on this level and to rush past an essential field of attack by this counter-spirit with flags flying because of ignorance of the super-sensory facts, does not lead only to being dangerously sure of one's cause and thus falling into the knowledge trap after all, but it also leads to the fact that one puts others unnecessarily in danger by careless behavior (which one is sure is not careless, because of the irrefutable conviction that others cannot be endangered by a “harmless” virus). If the actual origin of the virus (spiritually sleeping humanity!) as well as the manipulator of this particle (“Soratic” counter-spirituality) remain unknown, one may start with “right” but arrive sometimes at “wrong.” One insists on the correctness of the equation, but doesn't notice that the “signs” in the equation have suddenly changed.

For this reason, one of the biggest problems we have today concerning the Sars-CoV-2 virus is once again emphasized:

Yes, it is the human being who grants the virus entrance as part of his life. And the physical body evades — under the guidance of the “sleeping” I, that is, the higher I that has not become conscious in the physical body — the Sars-CoV-2 virus, as it has always done in the past, when the human organism came into contact with other pathogens. This means that the human being takes a pathogen with the Sars-Cov-2-Virus into his organism in the customary way — namely unconsciously — which, however, cannot be treated in the customary way by a “sleeping” I, something recognizable by the immune system's strong reaction, which can lead to the most severe effects of the disease. The virus manages to take the “peripheral” I (if one wishes to use to the terminology of some authors) by surprise, which the human being, due to his spiritual neglect, has not brought into his inner being and made conscious there, letting it stay asleep, so to speak, and provoking it to a kind of autoimmune reaction.

The unconscious or subconscious contact with this pathogen is no longer sufficient. What man has neglected in his spiritual development, namely the conscious striving for access to his higher I, now comes back at him as a spiritual fact with manifold potency in the form of a particle (corresponding to his materialistic thinking and his conviction that the world is a particle-cosmos). And he can only overcome this if he (contrary to the materialistic particle-cosmos conviction) establishes a fully conscious access to his higher I and thus elevates the imperishable I to the fully responsible, powerful controller of his self as well as that of all immunological processes in his bodily organism.

That man with the best will is not able to do this, belongs to the great misery which humanity has prepared for itself and from which it can no longer emerge unscathed. (This is the price of total freedom of the human I: that real consequences result from man's actions, from which he will not be redeemed by a deus ex machina. For he must realize that he himself is the deus ex machina. He is the free divine being in whom the good spiritual world places its trust. No higher power will come to sweep up the heap of shards he has produced. The Redeemer was already here! Man must recognize and learn to use the tools assigned to him through the Redeemer's sacrifice.)

Therefore, what we integrate into our organism, in this case with Sars-CoV-2, is treated by our organism at first in the same way as before, but since it differs from before in its spirit (by the fact that humanity has let it become a real effective danger by the will to be spiritless, and it being moreover the carrier of the Sorat impulse), no “automatic” protection is provided now against such pathogens, as it was potentially before — depending on what lay in the karma of the individual. What has now become a part of human life in the form of the coronavirus has — at least when seen from a good-divine view — has not been conceived of as such a part, and it has not suffered, as in former times, the products of Lucifer or Ahriman as a somewhat unpleasant “aid” to the awakening of knowledge from a higher point of view. It is now a particle — as bearer of the “counter-I-spirituality” — that has become a part of human life, which as emanation and expression of human free will rejects the living spirit-mechanism in the physical organism, making it unable to act or, expressed differently, which no longer allows the spirit-mechanism to interact with that particle, or more exactly the “spirit” of that particle, in an adequate, “natural,” beneficial way for humanity. The equation is the same. But, as said before, the constants of its terms carry reversed signs — which in the real world can mean the result is upside-down.

What we have sent out as materialistic thoughts returns now in finer substantiality. It is we ourselves who, after all, live in the region to where we send our thoughts. In this region emerge physical-material manifestations of humanity's materialistic thoughts as metamorphosed products within the present state and form of the world, (which is called the “physical mineral kingdom” in the occult school). So you see how powerful man is now — when applied to the good, In the sense of “the True, the Beautiful and the Good.”

For the first time, through the I's freedom, the human being has the ability to work with the physical products of his own spirit. Something has come into being that is really of human creative origin. And man must now deal with this product. (That the primary host of the Sars-CoV-2 virus may have been a bat or some other animal is irrelevant in this respect.) For the first time man has exhausted the potency, which has been given to him as an I-being, to create such a thing. Not in a laboratory! (That can also happen.) A spiritual creation is meant; the creation of a physical product by his psychical-spiritual behavior.

The world is a moral world! All natural phenomena are moral outpourings of spiritual beings.

That is the world. And since man has arrived at the consciousness-soul age he has become, by what the Christ event has given him, responsible for the being and the future of his world. He has responsibility because the ability to bear responsibility has now been given to him. He has borne responsibility for his world since he has been capable of undertaking it. He has become able to decisively shape his world through his I. But the I alone does not guarantee a good development of himself and his world! Through his I he can bring the world to good as well as to bad. He has just as much the power to devastate his world as to lead it to a cosmos of selflessness and creative life. With his fourth component of being (along with his physical body, life-body and soul-body), with his I, this potency has indeed come to shape his world. But something else must now be added to the I and its potency if he would transform his world into a cosmos of selflessness, love, eternal live: higher morality.

At this point in our development, the individual human being is given the task of gradually bringing his I within his incarnation to just such a consciousness as when he leads his life between death and a new birth. Only then can he come to that “higher morality.” This higher morality can only exist through the consciously sought connection to the divine spirit. If the connection remains subconscious (for in reality it is always there), what is carried out on earth by the I may not be “good” either.

If this connection is not actually sought consciously, if one does not acquire through appropriate exercises the means which are needed to clearly recognize what is really “moral” in the sense of the divine spirit, who wants to see us grow to be his equal for our own good, then the higher I remains unconsciously active in the incarnation. In the end, however, the actual greatness and mission of the I is, as it were, extinguished. In that case, the human being could just as well have remained a being without the I. He would then have only a physical body, an etheric-body and an astral-body, and he could advance at most to intellectual-or-sensitivity-soul in his development. But there is a serious difference between the times before the Christ-event and before the consciousness-soul age: Previously he didn't have such an I at his disposal with which he could entirely control his lower components-of-being. But now he has it. And that means: If he treats himself and the world as if he didn't have this I he is guilty toward his own spirit and the spirit of the world. Now he commits spiritual failings and wrongdoings, no longer “only” psychical ones.

And at this point is where the spiritual being can gain access who not only mostly rages in the astral-body like the Luciferic spirits or like the Ahrimanic spirits mostly in the etheric-body, but the one that can be called the I-enemy.

The door and gate are opened to it by the spiritual failings of man, by the failures of the I. And in the case of the coronavirus this happens in that the spiritual failures of the human-I, which in this phase of the world context has fallen though continual repetition into materialization, not only in the thought-ether, but has also left its mark on the physical plane, condensed so to speak, to be used as the bearer for slipping into the component-members-organism of man — in the dress of Asuric substantiality. Matter is prepared in an amoral way by the Asuras to be the bearer of Soratic impulses against the I. Man is totally unconscious of this attack against his spiritual nature. His organism reacts as it usually does. But it is now dealing with a substantiality that it cannot cope with in the usual way. If this fact is not recognized, it will also not be understood that this virus is so terrible not primarily because it leads to certain diseases of the physical body or even to death, but because it is a gateway for the impulses of the counter-I-entity in the spiritual part of man; because then man is threatened to substitute his spiritual part for material earthly existence. It would be counteracting the deed of Christ. But that would mean: the falling of man below the lowest point of his natural descent from spiritual heights to the physical/material plane. Something begins (unforeseen in the good-divine world-plan) which can be described as damaging the actual human being's core, the I. (Rudolf Steiner mentioned this phenomenon in “Geisteswissenschaftlichen Menschenkunde,” GA 107, pg. 266). And with this dreadful counter-development, which is the will of the Counter-I-entity, a first victory has been won by the Sars-CoV virus as the “Advance guard” of this entity's army.