From RudolfSteiner.org
Researcher, teacher, artist, Rudolf Steiner enlarged and deepened the concept of what it is to be human. He linked the human to the cosmic, past to future, for self-development and conscious evolution. For those who do know him, he is among the most penetrating, practical, and far-reaching researcher-thinkers of the last thousand years.
Steiner developed a uniquely comprehensive and many-sided picture of human nature and evolution, past and potential. A picture like this is needed at this moment of radical change in humanity’s relations.
We have been separating ourselves from nature and exercising a new and often careless dominion over it, and over each other. More than that, we seem close to creating—through robots and artificial intelligence and nano-technology and more—a supposedly better version of ourselves.
What could be more needed today than deep understandings of our human situation.
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 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.
(Dornach, 27 October 1917)
Being Human Magazine
The print publication from the Anthroposophical Society in America is called being human. It is sent free to members of the ASA and is supported in part by advertising. It will be available here to download in PDF format. Past issues in an online magazine reading format are available at www.issuu.com/anthrousa