The three aspects of consciousness we know as awake, dreaming, and sleep, are discussed often in Steiner’s work; in 2019 this blog devoted 5 months to this topic. The counterintuitive aspect of these states is that what we know about the realms of the physical world while we are awake, is like sleep to the knowledge of the spiritual world. Just as we are unaware of our physical surroundings when we are asleep, when we are awake, we are unaware of our spiritual surroundings. We take it for granted that the physical world doesn’t disappear because we are asleep, but many of us are unable to grasp that the spiritual world doesn’t disappear when we are awake. Far too many of us believe that the spiritual world doesn’t exist at all.
This is the starting point of the topic today because we will begin discussing the challenging idea that some of the spiritual beings around us are actively working to bring discord and destruction into the world. There are so many ways to look at this, but the main thing to keep in mind is that these “evil” beings are nonetheless serving the grand purpose of leading the human being to freedom. Freedom is only possible when we have a choice; error, too, is only possible when we have a choice. Why do we so often choose war?
The excerpt below is from a lecture Steiner gave in December 1917, one month after the Bolsheviks took control of Russia and less than a year before the end of World War I. Take a look at the reason given for the war’s beginning. Does this make sense? Then, after the League of Nations was created, and all sorts of sovereignty was given to individual nations, WWII began less than two decades later. That’s enough history for now; we can march through all the wars since then if we are so inclined because the war to end all wars was in fact only the beginning. What are we as nations hoping to accomplish in the world? What do we want? And why do we so often choose war?
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say.
Merely knowing what is going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep in a higher sense. Humanity is only fully awake when people are able to develop notions and ideas of the world of the spirit. This is all around us, just as air and water, the stars, the sun and the moon are all around us. When we are physically asleep, we are wholly given up to the internal processes that go on in the body during the night and have no idea of anything in the physical world around us. We are asleep in exactly the same way when we are wholly given up to the physical environment and to the world and the laws of the intellect and have no idea of the world of the spirit that is all around us.
Humanity has made great play of its intellectual progress and scientific achievements in the last few centuries and has been particularly insistent on this at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Yet, strangely enough, the unconscious and instinctive life was never more to the fore than it is at this time. Up to the present time this instinctive and unconscious element has increasingly taken hold of the human race. Failure to see the spiritual reality and take account of the element of the spirit is ultimately the cause of this terrible world war. Nor can it be said that through these years—years which have turned into centuries for anyone who is awake in them—humanity has learned an adequate lesson from the terrible events around us. Sadly, it has to be said that the opposite is the case.
What is the characteristic element to be found day by day, hour by hour, when we take note of what people think, or rather pretend to think and pretend to want? It is that, fundamentally speaking, no one in the world knows what they want, and no one realizes that people’s perfectly justifiable aims, whichever form they may take in the minds of individual nations, would be achieved so much better if they did away with these terrible wars in which so much blood is shed. People do not realize that these terrible events with their bloodshed are really not necessary as a means of helping them to achieve their aims…
People are ill-equipped to understand what wants to come to the surface. Why are they so ill-equipped? Strange as it may seem to people today, the present age is more than any other age demanding the one thing people least want to have: understanding based on the science of the spirit. Strange as it may sound to the ordinary, average people of today—order will not be created from the chaos of the present time until a sufficiently large number of people are prepared to recognize the truths of spiritual science. Such will be the karma of world history.
If people insist that this war {WWI} is just like the wars of the past and that we’ll be making peace just as peace has been made before—let them talk. They are the people who love maya and do not distinguish between truth and deception. Let them make what may seem like ‘peace’—order will only arise from the chaos that fills the world today when insight based on the science of the spirit dawns in human minds. You may feel in your hearts that it will be a long time before such order comes; you may think it will be a long time before people are prepared to let the dawn of such a science arise, and you will be right. You have to accept that it will be a long time before order arises from the chaos. For it will not come until human hearts understand the realm of the spirit. Order can only come when it is understood how this chaos has arisen.
Excerpt from: The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, Lecture I: The Driving Forces Behind Europe’s War by Rudolf Steiner. Dornach, Switzerland, December 29, 1917.
As much as we may not want to dwell on this topic, we will return to it again next month as we learn why acceptance of spiritual science plays such an important role in bringing peace out of the chaos of our time. Meanwhile, much more than you think, directing our thoughts to those suffering from war’s ravages—saying prayers on their behalf—provides them with some solace. Where your thoughts go, your presence goes with them. Thought isn’t contained by your skin, as you know. Direct your love forth into the world; it is a source of comfort that is real… and vital.