The World is Under a Spell Part 2

 Continued from Part 1 

    Likewise, what has actually happened with the eliminativists is that they have fallen below the conceptual level.  In a lecture titled: "Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts: From Nature to Sub-Nature",  Rudolf Steiner says: 

"By far the greater part of that which works in modern civilisation through technical Science and Industry — wherein the life of man is so intensely interwoven — is not Nature at all, but Sub-Nature. It is a world which emancipates itself from Nature — emancipates itself in a downward direction. " 

    Rudolf Steiner had the idea that Divine plan for the development of consciousness was that consciousness would become increasingly less spiritual until a certain point at which point, consciousness would become spiritual again.  In the lecture cited in Part 1 of this post, Steiner gave a clue how to do this:  "We can, however, recognise the task before us: it is to permeate our concepts and ideas with spirituality. "

    However, the way up will not be like the way down, not only in its characteristics but because the way up must be conscious.  Steiner warned that if we do not take the upward path, then we will put ourselves in a dire situation: we will lose the old unconscious power of concepts, but will have nothing to replace them with.  And when you don't even believe in concepts, do you believe in nothing?  No, no one can actually believe in nothing.  What happens in practice is that people believe reality is what is imposed.  Bruce Charlton has many posts describing this phenomenon.  

    And in our world, what is imposed is not just materialistic and non-spiritual but in fact anti-spiritual and unnatural.  But who is imposing it?  I think Descartes was more prescient than he realized when he imagined an evil genius that could confuse people's thoughts and deceive them.  That is what we see all around us.  People do not even believe their own thoughts or their own experiences and not only that, they believe things for which they have no basis to evaluate the truth of.  If an ancient or medieval person saw our current world, I think they might conclude that it was under a spell.  

    The ultimate source of our enemies' power is spiritual (though their material power is immense).  The ability of mutually indifferent or even hostile groups to combine in such a way that all friction is ironed out doesn't make sense otherwise.  And if one believes that thinking is spiritual, then the ability to control thoughts is a spiritual power.  It is amazing how many people will not permit themselves to even think things that the media has declared unthinkable.     

    But, as discouraging as the current situation is, if our enemies' power was purely material, we would have no recourse.  Whether things will turn out for the good in a worldly sense and how so, I hope, but cannot be certain of.  However, if the nature of what is happening is spiritual, then there is much that we can still do.  Only spiritual power can counter spiritual power.  So, developing the spiritual within us by thinking and also calling upon power greater than us, by prayer is what we must do.