The 8th Sphere and A Path To Freedom

For those who question the concepts of freedom, congratulate yourself as being an anomaly in today’s world.

More than 100 years ago, very few people questioned the nature of freedom or the spirit of humanity. Those who were able to discern were often labelled as mystics or visionaries and ignored.  These people simply knew things that most people knew not.

Rudolf Steiner knew things, and he had a purpose to expose his thinking. 

He developed an understanding what it means “to know,” and wrote about it in “Philosophy Of Freedom,” where he presented his principles of free thinking as a Path of Science, a path of cosmic science. This path reflects the path of inner striving, which he recommended throughout his life. For anyone interested in learning more, a free online Philosophy Of Freedom Study Course is available at http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com.

“I have no illusions as to the characteristics of the present time. I know how much a stereotypical attitude, lacking all individuality, is prevalent everywhere. Many flaunt a way of life that follows only the current cultural trends. But I also know that many of my contemporaries strive to conduct their lives in the direction of the principles I have suggested. To them I dedicate this book. It does not claim to offer the only possible way to truth, but is meant to describe the path taken by one whose heart is set upon truth.” – Rudolf Steiner, TPOF 0.6

Rudolf Steiner was the founder of the Waldorf Schools. He was a clairvoyant and a mystic. He was the founder of Biodynamic agriculture. In 1917, Steiner foresaw a dark time of science, and wrote down his thoughts in a lecture, which mirror what many think today:

The events in which we are caught up today indicate where humanity stands now. What matters now is not merely to understand them, but to find a way out them. Yet while there is so little will to penetrate the deeper, real impulses which have led to the present age, practical minds will not be able to understand these matters. It is wrong to think that no one has sufficient insight into the current situation. People simply do not want to listen to them……

To understand the present time, it will be necessary to understand the spiritual evolution of humanity. 

“A great majority of the population looks on with complete indifference as the medical papacy assumes ever greater proportion, worming its way into the most diverse fields – for instance, intervening extensively in children’s education, in school life, and staking a claim here to a certain form of therapy.”   –Rudolf Steiner, GA 107

Deception of Science

Steiner warned about getting caught up in a deception of science, a false reality that everyone must walk through to get to the other side. He likened this shadow world to the world of the “8th Sphere,” also called the Beast System. He wrote about this multidimensional concept as an overlapping reality, along with the higher spheres, that we can either align with, or push away: 

The eight sphere is the name for an additional sphere of downward development that stands apart from the seven normal evolutionary spheres or planetary stages of our solar system evolution. In the normal development beings develop and rise along a ladder of Conditions of Consciousness.
The eight sphere represents the opposition of normal or ‘good’ development, or evil, and the ‘sixteen paths of perdition’ to get off of this normal development (see also human races for background, and Schema FMC00.233 on Development of the I for an illustration of the sixteen paths). More specifically, the eight sphere is connected with the extreme form of evil called black magic that appeared in the middle of the Atlantean epoch (see also: Rakshasas or Asuras and Sorat) and is reappearing again in the current stages of the Current Post-atlantean epoch. For individuals who, out of free will, put themselves in the service of their egotism and devote their life to do conscious harm (as in black magic), the state of ‘avitchi’ describes the state whereby these languish eternally as a ‘place of no return’, because their lower I or threefold soul has lost the connection with the higher or true spiritual I. The soul is banished into lower more animalistic levels and the personality eventually annihilated.   – Rudolf Steiner, Eight Sphere

Steiner dedicated his life to warning people of the growing nefarious and unseen influences upon humanity. These excerpts are from Steiners’ lecture “The Fallen Spirits of the World,” from 27 October 1917, Dornach. To read the entire essay, go here.

The spirits of darkness wanted to gain control over this. They wanted to drive the impulses of the spirits of light from those human souls and bring in their own impulses. If the spirits of darkness had won the battle in 1879, the relationship between human bodies and souls would have been utterly different from what it actually has become in people born after 1879. Different souls would have been in different bodies, and the plan according to which human affairs on earth were ordered would have been according to the ideal of the spirits of darkness. But it is not. Thanks to the victory that Michael won over the dragon in the autumn of 1879, this could not happen.

On the other hand, the spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present. For it makes no difference to their reality whether they are recognized or unrecognized.

It will be the main concern of these spirits of darkness to bring confusion into the rightful elements which are now spreading on earth, and need to spread in such a way that the spirits of light can continue to be active in them. They will seek to push these in the wrong direction. I have already spoken of one such wrong direction, which is about as paradoxical as is possible.  I have pointed out that while human bodies will develop in such a way that certain spiritualities can find room in them, the materialistic bent, which will spread more and more under the guidance of the spirits of darkness, will work against this and combat it by physical means.

I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination towards spirituality out of people’s souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life — ‘foolish’ here, of course, in the eyes of materialists……

….The whole trend goes in a direction where a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination towards spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption — oh, I beg your pardon, from the consumption they themselves suffered — people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination towards spirituality. This is merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more distant future in this field — the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to earth after the victory of the spirits of light.

The first step must be to throw people’s views into confusion, turning their concepts and ideas inside out. This is a serious thing and must be watched with care, for it is part of some highly important elements which will be the background to events now in preparation.

I am choosing my words with great care. I am saying ‘in preparation’ because I am fully aware that to say ‘in preparation’, after the events which have taken place in the last three years, is something significant. Anyone who is able to see more deeply into these matters knows them to be preparations. Only superficial people can believe that this war, which is not a war of the old kind, will tomorrow or the day after be followed by a peace of the old kind. You have to be very superficial to believe this. Many will believe it, of course, if outer events appear to be in accord with the notions some people have; they will fail to realize what actually lies dormant beneath the surface.  

                              – Rudolf Steiner: Fall of the Spirits of Darkness Lecture 13 The Fallen Spririts™ Influence in the World, Dornach, 27, Oct. 1917

A longing will arise(and become)general opinion:Whatever is spiritual, whatever is of the spirit, is nonsense, is madness! Endeavours to achieve this will be made by bringing out remedies to be administered by inoculation just as inoculations have been developed as a protection against diseases, only these inoculations will influence the human body in a way that will make it refuse to give a home to the spiritual inclinations of the soul. People will be inoculated against the inclination to entertain spiritual ideas. Endeavours in this direction will be made; inoculations will be tested that already in childhood will make people lose any urge for spiritual life.

                             – Rudolf Steiner, Lecture 3, Secret Brotherhoods and the Mystery of the Human Double: Seven Lectures. Read original lecture here.

Steiner provided tools to readers that might lead to individual initiative, to move humanity in the direction of spiritual evolution, away from materialism, to a path of true freedom.

Steiner prophesied with his clairvoyance that 100 years later [Here and Now] there would be a new pocket of time, a new opening for humanity. If humanity succeeds in seizing the day and the opportunity, then we will be able to move free from the 8th sphere. The time pocket is approx. 25 years starting in 2012.

Are we there yet?

Perhaps that answer is only found in the mind and the heart since it all transformation happens according to individual frequency.