In another thread, I have previously reported some excerpts from
this lecture [1]. Here comes the complete version:
- Origin of racism
- Nicotine and alcohol
- Thinking liberated from the nervous system
- Atoms and particles as etheric entities
- Nature of darkness and light
- The astral body of man
Rome, November 28, 1978
[Reading a question] “
Dear Massimo, why is the materialist racist by necessity?”
Because the racist is materialist by necessity. That is, racism as an ideology is a contradiction, a systematized error of thought. But one can be unconsciously racist, when one is materialist. When it’s felt that one belongs to a certain race, for instance, and from that place other races are jostled, one is already within racism. Indeed, we learn that nations are formed through the union of different races, according to an idea that goes beyond race. Something is created that lies above blood ties. Look at the history of Italy, for instance, the process leading to unification, and the melting pot of races. Think about Sicily, where there are the Nordic, blond ones, the most dark-skinned Mediterraneans, the Black ones, they are all there. The topic would lead us far, but at least it’s good to clarify that: if materialism is not overcome, racism is inevitable, because one is enclosed within the limits of a physical form that is felt as the only value that connects us to others and makes life worth living. Therefore, any form of hatred is racist, be it against a nation, or against a race. I believe we have a shared understanding and there is no need to insist on this point. The thing is, unfortunately we thought that the question was overcome, but there are negative signs, when for example we see that certain ethnic groups rebel against the nation they belong to. In the name of what do they revolt? They want autonomy. I understand autonomy in the case of the [----] for example. In that case there is religion in the background, there is a spiritual state, there is even something akin to tripartition. But in the case of the Basques for instance, what are the Basques looking for? When one looks at things without reading the newspapers… how is it possible…
Let’s move on: “
Dear Massimo, does nicotine in general hinder spiritual evolution?”
Here there is plenty to say. It’s not nicotine that hinders. If it only were nicotine! Then we would eliminate it, and we would be all good, evolution would finally have the go-ahead. Any addiction to a habit is a fold of the soul and that’s what hinders evolution. If nicotine at some point has become a life necessity, you could eliminate it, but then it could be anything else. The thought is the impediment, or let’s say, it’s the soul. The soul is addicted. A friend whom I had much respect for, and have to this day - he’s dead - used to say that, waking up in the morning, he would find again the joy of life in the thought of smoking a cigarette, and I remember I was wondering: “Boy… how is this possible?”. Many years later, I have understood that it’s a fact related to the nervous system, a discharge of the nervous system, at the confluence of three directions: one is nervous, another one is yearning, and the other one, etheric. However, when the result is intoxication - the two things are separate, one can smoke, without being intoxicated - the question may arise: does nicotine
in general hamper evolution?
That which we can’t really say for nicotine, is indeed true for alcohol. Yes, this can be objectively said about alcohol, because alcohol has completed its task in humanity. Thus, it’s not as much the habit of drinking, as it is the fact that any minimal amount of alcohol has the power to send the etheric body to sleep. It might even not hurt physically, but just imagine the case of someone who grounds his inner balance and also his physical health on the fact that one has a certain mastery of the etheric body, because one does the exercises. If he takes in alcohol, he paralyzes his whole process of healing, including supporting the physical. For him, alcohol is truly contradictory, it’s a real danger. But in a less serious form, it is also a danger for humanity at large, because alcohol today really has exhausted its function. The Sun initiate [------] is the one who introduced alcohol - with wine. Then the most evolved man was the one who had to start thinking, start having a relationship to the physical world mediated by thought and by the senses. To achieve that, that man had to forget his spiritual homeland, and alcohol was useful, it was even an initiatic beverage. Alcohol has always been an initiatic beverage, because it helped forget the spiritual world. It helped accomplish earthly activities that would connect the initiate with the spiritual world in new ways. Today, all this has run out. Today, man really has to stop taking alcohol. He has to find again the path towards the spiritual world, as an etheric path.
Let’s move on to [reading] “
The liberation of thinking as a form of victory on death that petrifies. Does thinking, freed from the nervous system, also free the etheric sphere from the power that furthers its petrification?”.
Very powerful, absolutely. The liberation of thinking is an expression we have been using for a long time. Thinking is the free self. Now, it’s all about setting in motion the real thinking, that is, making sure that thinking reveals what it is, that it appears as it truly is. Then, it appears that it’s a free element. In other words, it is that in which spirit realizes itself. Why? Because the spirit - let’s even say the I - only lives through mediations - conscious mediations. When the I finds the exclusively physical mediation, it’s forced to live physically. Behind that, the spirit is pressing. The spirit presses with thought, but thought is bound to the physical, therefore it doesn’t give us spirit. Hence, there has been a long epoch during which - while there was such reflected thought, or dead thought, or thought deprived of life - the memory of spirit was urging, it was pressing. Therefore, everything we find even in spiritual philosophy, was not the conquest of thought connected to the physical, because that one wasn’t mediating anything any longer. It didn’t give anything. Look at the Thomists, look at the Realists. Those philosophers were using thought, but in thought they were inserting a content that was dependent on their ability to still perceive the inner forces of things. Thus, they were using thought, but not as a new way towards the spirit, rather as a form that had to serve the expression of an ancient connection with the spirit that was still preserved in them - because they were more spiritual. Notice, this lasted until modern times, until the limits of the Middle Age.
It’s only when thinking became able to finally make itself independent from the ancient spiritual impulses, that thinking could become an instrument of the I (here, as you know, we should always remember Galileo and all his friends and companions). From that point the possibility emerges that thinking finally reveals itself as that in which the spirit ceases to be bound to the world of senses. Notice, that’s exactly how science was born. When science, for instance, develops in certain forms that start to overcome naive realism, it’s already on a trajectory to overcome the deceit of senses. Then it doesn’t bring it further, because it lacks awareness of what it’s doing. But let’s come back to free thinking.
When this thinking finally begins to acquire autonomy, in order to reveal what it is, then the
I finally starts to manifest in another domain. Then it starts to be free, because previously it was imprisoned in the world of senses, which is what we experience on a daily basis. We are continually assaulted, continually conditioned by sensory perceptions, thus we need to meditate in order to have those moments of liberation of thinking. In other words, the
I - not anymore the ancient spirit propelled by the memories of the spiritual world - has to form as a spiritual entity in the world, and it starts from the lowest level - the sensory world - in which its self-consciousness awakens. However, it has to realize that the sensory world comes to it through an inner experience of which it has to become conscious. If it does become conscious, then it ranks up. The first step is indeed the step of free thinking, of thinking that sets itself free. That’s when the
I begins to live its free being.
This is not our invention. In fact, the spirit is free in the physical world, but it doesn’t realize it. It only realizes it when man finally accomplishes an act that expresses the spirit, because he’s free, because he has initiative. But look what a great detour the I had to take. Because if this I had followed the ancient religious world, the mystical world, let’s say the spiritual world, it would never have had the possibility of a free act. Who gave man the possibility of a free act? Ahriman! Because in Ahriman’s sphere, any possible spiritual handhold is over. It’s gone, materialism has begun. And that’s when man has ceased to submit himself to the suggestions of the memory of the spirit. Until that moment, he had lived on nothing else than memories, and - on the esoteric level - on ancient rites, pentacles, Eliphas Levi... whining, moaning, continual jumps back… then came the Masters of Tradition and that was even worse, because then thinking served the revival of all that is ancient, the return to the Middle Ages,.... and those poor guys, they were all grumbling and moaning, criticizing modern man, etcetera, but they actually didn’t know that it’s exactly through that one has to pass in order to rediscover the spirit.
So we can see that, in the sphere of Ahriman, man finally becomes independent from Lucifer. However, woe betide man if he doesn’t realize what has happened. In which case man becomes the prey of Ahriman, that is: from bad to worse. Still, that was the beginning of the possibility for man of a free act. Why free? Because the act is not anymore suggested by Lucifer, but by Ahriman, the one who tells man “Mess everything up! Wreck it!”. And in the beginning our Doctor speaks positively of this turning everything upside down: Stirner, Nietzsche, Haeckel, the positive element he found in all that evolutionary enquiry is: it’s an act of freedom. And that’s how we come to Goethe. Goethe is great because he's free. He is a scientist and he is a poet. He doesn’t follow the traditional frameworks of science.
So you see, the way is long, but we are getting there. With the Ahrimanic act, human freedom begins. I would say, that was an act of courage of a lower type, nonetheless it's an important courage, because man started to be the examiner of his own inner position. And here comes the Philosophy of Freedom. The Philosophy of Freedom begins exactly at that level, there are no discontinuities, no transcendences. It starts exactly from that Ahrimanic level, and then you see how we ascend. That's how thinking has been set free. Yes… and this is only the very beginning.
But for now, we can see how we are susceptible to deception, for instance in nuclear inquiry. In nuclear inquiry, at some point they have said no to atoms, not to fall back into Greek atomism, that is, limited by an indivisible entity, a sort of minuscule being that is no longer separable. And so they have established the “elementary particles”, in doing so revealing a limitation of thinking, because they have changed the terminology, but the atom is still there, waiting for them to understand what it is. They still don’t know it.
The day they realize the atom is an ideal entity, a thought-out entity, in the same way that you think out the vital force of a plant... And when you do that you are not going outside of scientific rationalism, because that vital force of a plant is deduced when we observe the daily transformations of the plant: the seed, the germ, the stem, the bud, the flower, etcetera. We deduce the plant’s vital force. In the same way, we deduce the atom. But is it possible to operate on a deduction? Heck no. Therein lies the rub, because they don’t realize the atom is an etheric entity. We can say that it's an etheric entity. Naturally, it’s an etheric entity that stands close to the physical, as you can intuit when you look at a crystal. The crystal is that physical entity whose etheric body really is the negative-positive, it envelops the physical crystal, it keeps it within the activity. In the plant however, this etheric element is not there in the same way, to be incarnated, but when it does incarnate it’s an imprisoned ether, whilst in crystals it is free. This is why, from a hierarchical perspective, the spiritual entity of a crystal is higher than the one of a plant.
Everything that incarnates falls asleep, decades, down to the animal. The animal is an incarnation of forces. Man is an incarnation of forces, and the heaviest level of falling into sleep lives in man, which is the most physicalized being. The animal is less physicalized than man, because the
I stands higher. This is why the
I, in order to be able to freely operate in man’s head, needs a calcareous concretion, which is found by the epiphysis, in the pineal gland. If that wasn’t there, the
I wouldn’t have any chance of freedom in the head, because that is the only spot in which the
I is not forced to incarnate - really a minuscule spot. Where is it not forced to incarnate? Where man is able to liberate thinking from the cerebral organ in the head. Then the
I finally manifests its I-ty, so to say. Maybe… in German: “Ichheit”, here we have it - it means its “egoity”, but this word doesn’t render the meaning. It’s the freedom of the
I, because it finally has an entity that doesn’t force incarnation. Where it incarnates, it goes to sleep. We are awake, because we push the etheric away from the head. We fall asleep because at a certain point, tired, we finally abandon ourselves and the etheric forces of the head regain possession of the brain, and we fall into sleep. What is thinking that sets itself free? It is thinking that begins to live in the etheric sphere without falling asleep. Hence the dynamics of the etheric. If you think about it, we have been saying these things for 40 years, and it’s always the same thing. Still, you see how, in a way, it’s always new. It's an experience that we need to revise every day.
Now, we have to understand that, when they say “we have discovered the antiproton”, they don't realize it is a concept. They do the chemistry of concepts, they take a concept, they unite it with another concept… and what’s the result? Experience is the result! It’s like a child when it discovers that potassium chloride and carbon make a bang. Yes there’s a bang, but the child doesn’t know why. Their ability lies in the fact that from nuclear inquiry they derive instruments to generate energy, and that’s great. However, they still don’t know what they are working on, because they ignore the etheric forces. If we don’t finally come to the understanding, to the hypothesis of these forces, you see, we really are in trouble, because this is applicable to everything, to all science, to psychology… How can we do psychology without understanding that the whole basis of willing feeling and thinking happens in the etheric sphere, it needs the etheric body? And it’s the same thing for economics. Economics, by the way, is an utterly difficult spiritual science that requires a subtle thinking, really etherized up to the highest intuition. The possibility to lead an economic organism can only come from thinking that has reached higher than the etheric sphere, that is, the sphere of inspiration and intuition. These are the beings who have created the wealth of the nations, their prosperity, free from the risk of inflation, at a time when there were still residual spiritual forces coming from the past. These were beings who had received the task of helping the nations. They have been the great founders of various movements.
But the enemy of humanity wants to destroy these creators of economic welfare. He wants to destroy the leading minds, the minds who intuit the economic realities. Materialism has been preparing the situation so that today whoever is in charge is immediately under indictment. It's as if we put the commander of a ship under indictment, saying: “You are the one in charge, you are the boss, you give orders, get out of here!” and so the ship will sink, because it's necessary that someone is appointed at the highest level of responsibility. Look at what happens today, someone should have the courage to defend the role of the boss, because that is the I. If nobody is able to take initiative, things will get worse and worse, and economic troubles are to be expected at the scale of humanity.
Let’s move on to the questions about darkness and the rainbow. Have you ever seen darkness? Do you see blackness at night? Have you heard of those expressions about cutting darkness with a blade? If darkness didn’t exist, we wouldn’t see it. Darkness does exist. It is inverted light. When we see darkness, we have the spiritual experience of the presence of Ahriman. It is the kingdom of Ahriman, that is, darkness coagulated. In other words, inverted light, coagulated light is matter. But see how this physical matter behaves well, surrounded as it is by etheric forces, that are ready to any operations decided by man. But man doesn’t decide anything, man consecrates darkness, consecrates matter.
We have to realize what darkness is. Darkness logically follows from the fact that we see things through the physical senses. And we believe that the things are physical, despite the fact that they present themselves to us through inner acts of ours. Darkness is illuminated by light. There is a continuous relationship between darkness, the physical things, and light, whence forms and colors are born. These are not born out of themselves, they are born because man looks at them. Man looks at them, and operates in the act of looking. True darkness is possible where the sun stops shining through the atmosphere. The atmosphere is a sort of very delicate fabric, within which spiritual light shows, becomes sensory, for example when it meets a body. It’s the same relation that exists between invisible light and what is tangible, because the atmosphere is already a corporeality, a very subtle corporeality met by sunlight. Where this very subtle corporeality ceases to exist - at about 500 km height - that’s the beginning of the kingdom of darkness.
But why do we see darkness? Because we look with eyes that are used to the hypnosis of physical matter, that is, Ahrimanic hypnosis. It’s the perpetual error that we incur because of insufficient awareness of our perceptual act. Every form, every color, is born from the fact that we meet the physical world with our astral and etheric forces. That’s why matter rises up for us as form and light, as we have often said. I will repeat what I have said many times. What do we see, when for example, we look at a block of marble? What we perceive of it is form, light, colors. Therefore we think that, inside, there is a matter that is true marble. And so, if we break the block, we think that we would then look at a smaller piece that was previously inside the block. But it’s always the same marble. One would say: "No, this one is another piece, more on the inside of the block". We can break that piece too into smaller ones. Then, when we arrive at a small grain of marble, we start to ask: “What are we doing here?” Because that minimal grain is the atom of the Greeks. And here’s where science is afraid to say that the atom is indivisible.
But we know that matter - let’s see if Francesco comes to us now with the copies of the [---] book - indeed, matter does not exist. It only exists by virtue of our perception, that makes it flow, it makes it persist. We are locked inside our sense organs, inside our nervous system. If someone from a world where all physical reality is effete had to come to Earth, he would say “What a bunch of chumps”. He would be going through walls and say: “Look how they bump into the walls!”. He wouldn't suffer from the terrible prison of the nervous system. This prison is terrible because man makes it real by codifying it as science. A science that is entirely veridical, but is veridical on the ground of the existence of this demon of matter, who wants to make it appear as real. And we are here in order to do this work of dissolution of darkness. This dissolution happens continually in us. When we see darkness and feel fear, that fear is very true. It’s the kingdom of Ahriman presenting itself to us and saying “Here I am, this is my world. And you are of this world.”
Darkness is worrying, because it’s an illusion. Darkness is when we can’t see light. Where is light? Light is in thinking. The primordial light that lights up in man is the light of thinking. But it manifests as reflected light. And how do we obtain the primordial life of this light? By tracking it back from its reflection. That’s how the rainbow is explained, because in the rainbow we have the primordial phenomenon of etheric light through the most spiritualized physical means possible. So, from a material viewpoint the rainbow is nothing. We see the rainbow, it’s a marvelous thing, but if we tried to measure it on the spot with some equipment we wouldn’t find anything, because the rainbow has no physical existence, it’s an inner impression, it's etheric. That’s why it’s important to understand the lyrism of the rainbow. Our Doctor says that the aurora and the rainbow are a grand analogy of the birth of thinking, as light. What is the aurora? It’s the end of darkness. once thinking is born, the darkness of the human mind ends, this powerful darkness that creates its own culture. The phenomenon of aurora is magnificent, because it’s the symbol of the rebirth of light, that is, thinking that sets itself free, and it's the same for the rainbow.
There are two questions asking to reconsider the relationship between thinking, feeling and willing. “
Thinking, feeling, willing - When is it that thinking is truly born again as light? When is it not anymore reflected thought?”
It’s when thinking finds harmony with feeling and willing. The symbol of this harmony is the equilateral triangle, on which the Rosicrucians meditate. Man starts to be born again as a spiritual being when the accord between thinking, feeling and willing begins to form, which is when the etheric operation of thinking starts to become an instrument of the most secret life of the soul, because the astral body of man is a divine fabric, in which the original elements in thinking, feeling and willing lie dormant, and encapsulate the primordial divine power.
All this is latent. Through the deep sleep of this astral body, the astral forces become the instrument of darkness, instrument of the worst egoism in man. Egoism doesn’t actually reside in the etheric body, but in the astral. The astral body will never reconnect with its divine substance without the liberation of thinking, which is the tracing back from reflected light to pure light, to living light. Only once this operation is completed, the profound forces of the astral body start to find harmony. The astral body is the synthesis of the thinking, feeling and willing of the hierarchies, it is a fabric of divine Love. And through this dormant, darkened fabric of divine Love, we accomplish the most terrible acts. This is the human paradox, that explains why humanity needs pain, suffering and sacrifice, and a rigorous and heroic discipline, in order to recover the most precious element in the intimate fabric of its inner life, which is the astral body, as instrument of divine Love that gains the power of freedom through the act of free thinking. In this way, finally one day, man will be capable of love without the constriction of any impulses, but only out of will, in accordance with Logos. That will be the resurrection of divine Love on Earth.
***
[1] Thanks to Piero Cammerinesi for making this recording freely available to the public at
Libero Pensare.
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