Automatic translation

Ways out of anxiety and depression. The origins of mental hardships. The experience of Christ transforms nervousness.

Notes by Theodor Hundhammer from a lecture by Harald Haas at the Eurythmy4you Summer Week 2020

Today I would like to address the spiritual needs of our time, their origin and background, and show the possibility of overcoming them. I am referring to the development of humanity described by Rudolf Steiner and will try to illustrate this visually. My sources are mainly the book "From the Akashic Chronicle" and aspects from the "Occult Science in Outline" by Rudolf Steiner.

Ahriman und Luzifer

This includes how in the course of the development of humanity the adversary beings, who are called the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, have worked on the development of humanity, and what significance they perhaps also have in what appears today as nervousness or, on the other hand, as high sensitivity.

The tricky thing is that in trivial religious terms, people more or less say to these forces that they are the devil. It's special that there are two manifestations of it, these are two forces, but they act on people in a completely different direction, but also work together again and again. And sometimes it is not so easy to distinguish whether it is more one or the other force that is effective.

If I now briefly characterize what Ahriman is, as Rudolf Steiner calls it, then it comes from Persian, which we also encounter as Mephisto, the figure who is mentioned in Goethe's Faust and appears there. Mephisto is more the Ahrimanic power, whereby R. Steiner sometimes says that Goethe threw this together with the other force, the Luciferian, in Mephisto. For the most part, this is the force that wants to bind man completely to the earth, wants to make him completely earthly. In today's world, there are phenomena where people have the illusion that they can let themselves be frozen when they have died, and at some point they will be thawed out again, then medicine has reached the point where they can continue to live in the same body again. Of course, this is a purely materialistic illusion. And on the other hand, there is the data illusion today that people say, yes, if I'm no longer there, then there is my data everywhere, which is stored everywhere in the computers and so on, and that's eternal. Then I'll stay on earth, I'll stay forever. Also a huge illusion of this kind.

And this other force, the Luciferian, has more of an image of light, Lucifer is the bearer of light, it is a force that always wants to pull man away from this earth. She says: yes, what do you, man, want with this murky earth? You only have suffering and so on. With me it is much more beautiful in the spiritual, come up to me in this world of light. And that is also the great illusion that lives today. I see that in this phenomenon where you say you're New Age, you're already so spiritual that you don't even have to incarnate anymore, you've already completed it all. The next thing is that you rise like the Buddha and don't have to be embodied anymore. And Rudolf Steiner warns against this in "How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds" and says: Yes, you can ascend in this way, but then you remain spiritually imprisoned in this kingdom of Lucifer and have to experience that the whole of humanity will pass you by in the future, will develop past you, and you yourself will remain in this initial angelic state. Lucifer is also called the seducer, because there is a great seduction associated with this Luciferic power.

Beginning of human development in Lemuria

If you know the etheric forces, you can differentiate between them. The powers of cognition, which are warmth and light forces, which are connected with Lucifer, and the life forces, which consist of the clay or chemical forces and of the actual life forces, the life ether. This was separated, and humanity began the path of knowledge. Rudolf Steiner calls this Lemuris, this time when it began. And now this luciferous element has caused the ego of man, which was then for the first time connected with man in general, to lead too deeply into the soul. The ego is that which is actually directly related to the sensory perceptions. We do have the sense organs, but they are really only mirroring organs, and the nerves serve to make something conscious in our self-consciousness, but what perceives is actually always our ego. Our ego perceives in all sensory qualities. And what was then brought about by this Luciferian element was that the sense organs were overstimulated. This was the first deed which this Luciferic Being performed on man in Lemuris. It has had an effect on the sense organs.

Rudolf Steiner tells us in the lectures "Precursors to the Mystery of Golgotha" that it took an effect of the Christ on the development of humanity, together with a spiritual being, a Buddha or sister being of Adam, which then caused this to be at least somewhat balanced. If only Lucifer had worked, then certain sensory stimuli would have caused a tremendous greed or a tremendous disgust that would have been unimaginable.

The Spiritual Development in Atlantis

If we draw the development of humanity as an arc, its beginning would be in this Lemurian period. Then there are seven epochs in which Rudolf Steiner describes certain groups of humanity as having made spiritual developments. These are the seven different stages of Atlantis following the lemuris.

The first was that there was a memory for the sensory impressions. What had been disturbed in the Lemuris has been rearranged here: the memory in relation to the senses.

But at the same time, because there was a memory, language could arise. The origin of language therefore lies in this first period of the Atlantean period. And there were already feelings. Lucifer is the one who impulses the experience in the soul body, in the astral body. And language was not only abstract, as it is today, a designation, but the word had a meaning and even an effect. People were able to exert effects on their environment with words.

Now in the second epoch, the deeds came more to the fore. Interestingly, Rudolf Steiner uses the word ambition here. People developed an ambition in relation to the deeds. The memory continued to work, and it remained so throughout the Atlantean period. In it, the memory powers were much stronger than is the case today. And the people who were particularly good in their ambition were remembered, and that is the ancestor cult.

In the third phase, it was more about remembering common deeds, i.e. not of the individual, but of the joint deeds in the group. Which led to the discovery of the eternal laws.

In the fourth phase, selfishness was very pronounced. There was an abundance of power of the individual personalities, also an ambition in terms of wishes, desires. But that was still quite selfish, this selfish act.

But in the fifth epoch, the power of judgment became such that it could regulate desires and desires.

Then came the sixth epoch, when prudence was developed even more strongly together with the power of thought. That was appreciated was what made the most sense, the plausible thoughts.

Then, in the seventh epoch, the power of thought was still more pronounced. There was the conviction of the right thought, that was already faith.

Now you can ask, what does this have to do with these exercises? What kind of relationship is there?

It is a very figurative language that Rudolf Steiner uses to describe the soul abilities of people. And if you express that positively and turn it around, then you can say that this actually corresponds to the qualities of the eight-limbed path.

The Eightfold Path of Buddha

After Atlantis, in post-Atlantis, there were four cultural epochs, and in the fourth of these cultural epochs, about 500 years before Christ (when the Christ-earth life is the lowest point of the curve), Gautama Buddha worked and passed on his teachings as an enlightened one. The qualities of the Eightfold Path are the basic arrangements of this teaching.

1. Believing, that is the right perception.
2. The plausible thoughts, that is the right judgment
3. And regulating desires and desires in relation to language is the right word.
4. And to live selfishness not selfishly, but in the ideal, that is the right deed.
5. And these common eternal laws, that is the right point of view.
6. This ambition is, in the right measure, the right striving.
7. And the memory, the memory of the striving that is shown to you by the ancestors, is the right memory, that which initially completes the seven stages.
8. And then comes meditation or real contemplation.

You can see it as a process that repeats itself. Buddha himself says it's like a wheel. We also find this in Rudolf Steiner's work in the fact that they are exercises for the days of the week, so that they are repeated.

In the reverse order, as it was originally developed in Atlantis, the Buddha then arranged it. This is a secret, because the throat chakra, to which these abilities refer, has 16 leaves. If you take what has been said/drawn together, there are 16 qualities.

And this corresponds to what Rudolf Steiner said: First, people were trained in mystery sites to acquire these mental abilities. In the unconscious, these first eight leaves were developed. And they have moved in reverse. These chakras, these organs of perception, are only active when they move. This is the image of a wheel that turns.

And what needs to be developed in today's world is the conscious taking up of this quality. This is then clockwise, i.e. in the opposite way. But there are things that strive for this earlier unconscious way, so to speak, without the human being connecting the ego with these exercises, with these abilities. This is called brainwashing today. This is practiced by all ideologies. This is something very topical, how it shapes people, that they themselves do not relate to these abilities from their ego, but that they are told that this is so and so, they have to believe what is not true at all. It all works by people acting on others and the throat chakra works in the wrong way, in the opposite way, in the old way, you also say atavistic way.

Rudolf Steiner said in the lectures on the Gospel of Luke that what the Buddha has put together is something that is to be acquired by people over 5000 years. Within the next 5000 years! Now two and a half thousand years have passed, we have reached the middle, and now we have the chance, if we manage to do that, to practice for another two and a half thousand years. In the next lives, what we have practiced comes back, and then we already have it as skills. And little by little, we become more and more perfect.

That's a secret. If one practices in this life, practices seriously, and does not yet achieve supersensible perceptions with it, one will have these supersensible perceptions in the next life. You bring it with you. So it is not at all in vain if you make an effort and have the feeling that nothing is happening, that I have no visions at all, etc. In the next life at the latest, you will have the full profit. But something can already be created now.

A lot, e.g. mental health, depends on it. You can already see which central factors are affected by this. In the lecture by Harald Haas "Nervousness and Fear" (Antrhosana issue) there is a compilation that shows that all areas of the soul that Rudolf Steiner listed in his descriptions contain these soul abilities. So it is really the total extent of the human soul faculties that were predisposed in Atlantis that were concentrated by Buddha and are now to continue to be effective in the future.

The Cultural Epochs of Post-Atlantis

In the beginning we had the influence of the Luciferic Beings in Lemuris. And then Rudolf Steiner relates that in the Atlantean development, for the first time, there was the influence of the Ahrimanic beings. And just as Lucifer in Lemuris would have had a total rejection of sensory impressions, so in the Atlantean period there would have arisen a total greed of the organs, either a greed for substance or a total disgust, disgust with the outside world. And again this was mitigated by the influence of the brother or sister soul of Adam, together with the work of Christ, so that this was not too pronounced in the development of humanity.

At the beginning of post-Atlantis, there was already a good relationship between thinking, feeling and willing. Then Lucifer and Ahriman worked together and wanted to mix it up again. In this cultural period from the beginning of post-Atlantis to Christ's earthly life, they have brought about or at least tried to do so in various ways.

In the ancient Indian period, people were still completely drawn away from the Luciferian, completely into the spiritual, into thinking, and they were not yet so earthly in action.  At that time, thinking and feeling were still completely in the Luciferian one-sidedness.

In the Persian period, in the second post-Atlantean epoch of civilization, Zarathustra was in battle with the Ahrimanic beings, who wanted to make men wild in their deeds, and who also made the animals wild. This is an unusual idea. But there is the idea that the wolf only became a wolf after it had become feral by the Ahrimanic beings, i.e. by the human beings who were influenced accordingly. And the other people then brought it back to the dog, then balanced it out again. And at the same time agriculture began, i.e., people worked very strongly into action, and also lost something of their cosmic, of their spiritual vision.

And then in ancient Egypt, in Babylonia, astronomy came back. They had a full connection to this. Herding and grazing, livestock breeding were also further developed. The animals also had a great symbolic significance.

In the fourth, Greco-Roman age, man then came to himself completely. Then he became quite inward. Body, soul and spirit, thinking, feeling and willing, were quite ordered.  At that time it was said: In a healthy body there can be a healthy mind. Or vice versa: The mind cannot be healthy if the body is not healthy.

Changes in the interaction of the members of the being in the modern era

There is another secret in the whole development: the members of the being, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego, were still further apart in this whole development than they are today. In particular, the etheric body had a much greater extent. The etheric body is the memory body, or this power body, which was then able to act on external things. It was much stronger because it was not yet in the body.

If one member of the being is strongly involved in another, then it does not mean that it has a stronger effect there. It has a stronger effect when it is somewhat detached from another member of the being.

300

And so in the time about 300 years after Christ's earthly life there was a transitional point when the etheric bodies were again detached from the physical bodies. That's where it started. That was the greatest deed of Christ next to all the guilt and so forth he took over from men. That was the fact that humans could continue to exist on earth at all. Without the Christ, the Sun Spirit, coming to earth, humanity would no longer have existed 300 years after Christ.

How can you say that? Because at that time the etheric body began to detach. The etheric body has a very strong relationship to the sun. That is, the Christ Spirit who worked on the sun would have attracted the etheric body of men and men would no longer have been able to continue living in bodies on earth. Therefore, the Christ had to become an earth spirit or unite completely with the earth spirit, so that he can work from the earth in the future, so that human beings can continue to exist on earth.

1413

After this Greco-Roman period, when the Christ's work began, especially in relation to the body, the body, there is the phase that is much more familiar to us. The phase we call the modern age. Rudolf Steiner gives the year 1413 as the beginning of this time. From then on, the events that occur in the development of humanity come thick and fast.

An important date is already the beginning of this modern era, if one considers the archangelic mood with which this modern age began.

There are these great epochs that go on for 2160 years, the so-called cultural epochs, where a certain member of the being is developed in each case. At the beginning of post-Atlantis it is the etheric body, then the desire body, then the desire soul, and in the fourth Greco-Roman epoch the intellectual or emotional soul. This prepared and built up the fact that this development was seized by the ego.

And now is the time of the consciousness soul, and there at its beginning Samael worked as the Archangel Spirit. This is the spirit of Mars, which had not yet been satisfied or pacified at that time. Today it has begun to pacify him. And this is because, as Rudolf Steiner puts it, the Buddha was sent to Mars to pacify these warlike Martian spirits. Rudolf Steiner says that the theme of this consciousness soul is evil. Dealing with evil or overcoming evil, that is the big topic in our time.

1721

After this Greco-Roman period, when the Christ's work began, especially in relation to the body, the body, there is the phase that is much more familiar to us. The phase we call the modern age. Rudolf Steiner gives the year 1413 as the beginning of this time. From then on, the events that occur in the development of humanity come thick and fast.

An important date is already the beginning of this modern era, if one considers the archangelic mood with which this modern age began.

There are these great epochs that go on for 2160 years, the so-called cultural epochs, where a certain member of the being is developed in each case. At the beginning of post-Atlantis it is the etheric body, then the desire body, then the desire soul, and in the fourth Greco-Roman epoch the intellectual or emotional soul. This prepared and built up the fact that this development was seized by the ego.

And now is the time of the consciousness soul, and there at its beginning Samael worked as the Archangel Spirit. This is the spirit of Mars, which had not yet been satisfied or pacified at that time. Today it has begun to pacify him. And this is because, as Rudolf Steiner puts it, the Buddha was sent to Mars to pacify these warlike Martian spirits. Rudolf Steiner says that the theme of this consciousness soul is evil. Dealing with evil or overcoming evil, that is the big topic in our time.

Then there were other helpful influences. There is the date 1721. Rudolf Steiner tells us that in 1721 the etheric body of the heart detaches itself from the heart, from the physical organ of the heart. This is not a weakening, but a strengthening of the etheric. This heart-thinking appeared for the first time in humanity.

That was a big mystery, because there must have been a person with whom it started. In an exchange with Steffen Hartman, a musician from Hamburg, Harald Haas and Steffen Hartman, who then published this in his book on tones, came to the conclusion that this must have been Johann Sebastian Bach in 1721. And there is a dramatic story, which the well-known psychotherapist Luise Reddemann also writes about in her book about resilience.

In 1720, during a trip to Karlsbad in the wake of his employer, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, Johann Sebastian Bach learned that his first wife, Maria Barbara Bach, to whom he had been married for 13 years, had fallen ill. When J. S. Bach returned home on 7 July 1720, she had already been buried in the Old Cemetery in Köthen. So it was an extremely shocking experience that Bach must have had. On December 3, 1721, J. S. Bach married Anna Magdalena, who had come to the Köthen court as a soprano in June 1721. This marriage produced 13 children.

In 1722, the Well-Tempered Clavier was published. This has the signature that it goes through all keys in major and minor, i.e. through 12 major and 12 minor keys. However, not in the order of the parallel keys (C major/A minor), but in ascending order, whereby the minor key of the same name appears after a major key: C major/C minor, then C sharp major/C sharp minor, etc. up to B major/B minor. That's very special with him.

This is a signature of the heart chakra and its twelve petals. So one must assume that Bach developed this detachment of the etheric body. This enabled him to ensure that all keys were equal, even. This had to be prepared in humanity, because for that you first have to have the right instruments, the well-tempered clavier, as the basis for being able to play it properly at all, so that it didn't sound crooked. With the earlier instruments and tunings, it would have sounded quite crooked on the remote keys.

High sensitivity

This is the beginning, the origin of high sensitivity! Rudolf Steiner says that by 2100, i.e. by the end of the century, high sensitivity will be present in all people. And there are interesting estimates, such as at the beginning of the last century by C. G. Jung, that about ten percent of people are highly sensitive. And Elaine Aaron, who scientifically developed the concept of high sensitivity, estimated in the 90s of the last century that it is about 20 percent. And in recent years, there has been a Mr. Michael Plüss who has done research on this topic at Queen Mary University of London. According to his studies, it is 30 percent. So you can see a significant increase in the course of this century, which can also be seen in the children who are developing this high sensitivity more and more, and who are becoming more and more frequent. Unfortunately, they are often referred to as difficult children.

New diseases

Before we come to the time when Michael had a formative effect on people as an archangelic being in 1879, there was a spiritual and spiritual war. This is expressed in Michael's fight against the dragon. This is above all the Ahrimanic that has worked there. What happened in the process? These Lucifer and Ahriman beings, who were otherwise in the soul-spiritual outer world, have now been plunged into the soul of man by Michael. They have actually been internalized even more in their effect on humans.

Hysteria

Can this be attributed to anything externally? What are the phenomena of this? This is hysteria in the modern sense. Hysteria, from ancient Greek hystéra, womb, is the historical name for disorders that are characterized, for example, by an altered self-awareness or neurological symptoms (such as paralysis, blindness, deafness, epilepsy-like seizures).

The description of hysteria in the modern sense and nervousness only began in the course of the 19th century. These are new diseases. First these diseases had to be there, and then the treatment methods could develop on them. And there are two diseases in particular that play a very important role today, which are polar.

Agora-phobia

One is agora phobia. This began then, Rudolf Steiner describes in his lecture volume "The Limits of Knowledge of Nature". Agoraphobia, what is it? Today it's very easy to say, because that's what has just been decreed by the state, or at least part of it: Stay at home! These are the people who stay at home of their own accord out of fear. These are the agora-phobes. In the past, it was said that these are those who have claustrophobia, i.e. fear of going to a free place. Today, it is perhaps more the people who are afraid to go into a group, to meet other people. This is the ahrimanic disease, the agoraphobia.

Doubtfulness

This is mixed with what Rudolf Steiner called doubtfulness, namely that people have begun to doubt. But that's not what we call it, we say coercion. Actually, compulsion is the overcoming of doubt. This compulsion exists either as a compulsion to think or as a compulsion to act. We also know the compulsion to act today, it is very topical, in hygiene, with washing. The people who suffer from it then exaggerate it.

Compulsions, confusion, disorientation, panic

All these one-sidedness are exaggerated at this very time. These are the fears, as they are now intensified, and where you can see that it is precisely the ahrimanic that works through shock experiences. Or also by the confusion of people, by the electronics, by the far too many impressions that you get from everywhere.

And on the other hand, the doubts. You no longer have any orientation. Or you feel constricted in your breath. This is also added today, as soon as you travel, you are constricted in your breath. And many who are tricky and already feel constricted get asthma, hyperventilate or panic. These are all obsessive-compulsive phenomena.

1899 The End of the Dark Age

But now there are also positive developments. First of all, there is the year 1899. According to Rudolf Steiner, the Dark Age lasted until then, in which around 3101 BC the last remnants of the old clairvoyance for the vast majority of humanity were suddenly extinguished. According to Hindu tradition, the Dark Age began on February 18, 3102 BC with the death of Krishna. With this, humanity was more and more closed off from spiritual perceptions. 5000 years later, in 1899, humanity was again free to enter a light age.

1933 The Appearance of Christ in the Etheric

The next step in development was in 1933. First of all, there is the negative aspect when you hear about the seizure of power by the National Socialists in Germany in 1933. But there was also an essentially different event, namely that from this year onwards people will be able to experience the Christ in the etheric, that is, not in the etheric, but in the etheric, as well as from outside.

This is the greatest force, says Rudolf Steiner, which can be effective against nervousness, this experience of Christ in the etheric. This may sound a bit abstract or disconnected. But everything that one does in the way of spiritual training in anthroposophy is a way to this experience of Christ in the etheric. You could also say that this is the Grail Path.

Rudolf Steiner describes in the last chapters of Occult Science in Outline that everything he has described, that is, the human being with his constitution, his members of being, sleeping and waking, birth and death, with this whole world development and the path of training and knowledge, all this is the Grail Way. This is what leads to the Christ.

And the next thing that is to be developed in our present time, in order to be able to stand firm especially against these ahrimanic forces, is the imagination. Ahriman's kingdom is the earth and space. He makes things not seem alive to us. The plants, the animals, that we see them only physically, that is an effect of Ahriman on our senses. Through imagination, this perception is to come alive, so that something of this living comes into the perception. That is the essential thing that must be achieved now.

Humanity's Step Over the Threshold

The next steps in this period from 1933 onwards were that the whole of humanity crossed the threshold. It is actually something incredible that all of humanity, even those who do not follow a path of practice or a religious path, have crossed the threshold. This means that every human being unconsciously has these supernatural perceptual abilities of imagination, inspiration and intuition.

At the same time, thinking, feeling and wanting have become confused again. It differs, we see that in many clinical pictures. In the case of trauma, there is a difference in the so-called borderline personality disorders, in people who cannot consciously connect their thinking with their actions and have no perceptions of the other because the soul faculties are so separated. This means the passage of humanity over the threshold.

For all this, what is practiced in the eightfold path is of great importance. Rudolf Steiner explains that the result of the eight-limbed path is the soul faculties of wonder, compassion and conscience. – If you have a conscience, please don't think of your guilty conscience, but of conscientiousness, i.e. to conscientiously guide something from the future.

And he even says that these three, the amazement in the physical bodily world, the perception—the compassion and love in the etheric body, in the heart, in the heart-ether—and the conscience in the astral body—these are the sheaths where the Christ can unite with every human being.

As you can see, these exercises are very central and it would be very reduced if they were only seen as hygienic exercises or exercises for health. There is much more to it.

1998 Preparation of the incarnation of Ahriman

Unfortunately, the negative impulses are not yet finished. 1998 was a special year with the signature of 3x 666, the symbol for yet another spirit being, "the beast". What was the signature? The whole world is afraid, the whole world is crashing because the computers are not prepared for the turn of the millennium. A completely ahrimanic situation.

And what is coming next, where no one knows the year, is even more incomprehensible, namely that preparations are being made for Ahriman to be born in a human being. And in the West, says Rudolf Steiner. This is the counterbalance that Lucifer was born in China in 3000 BC. What he brought back then is the Chinese wisdom, which is still effective today, in many things that are still present in the healing system today.

Ahriman will appear like a Christ, but he is more of an anti-Christ. He will seduce people to become wholly earthly, or organically spiritual. Not spiritually spiritually, but on the basis of organic things, he will lead people physically to spirituality. And everything that is happening right now can probably only be understood that this event is being prepared, the incarnation of Ahriman.

The Impulse of High Sensitivity

But of course there is also a compensation for this, and that is the impulse of high sensitivity. With it, one can develop in the various areas supported by the path in such a way that one does not fall into the one-sidedness of nervousness, but rises above it more and more consciously. An impulse that goes far beyond the personal.