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(…) What do we think of when we hear the word “meaning ether?” Probably not nearly enough — myself included! — for it is difficult to grasp what the term “meaning” signifies here. With respect to the chemical ether we had to refer to the numerical laws and to the Harmony of the Spheres. To the meaning ether, however, belongs the general and great harmony of the universe (as Kepler has expressed it). It can help us yet further if we consider a word which was used by the profound translator of many works of Chinese literature, Richard Wilhelm. He has chosen to translate the word “tao,” as used in the “Tao te Ching,” (“Tao” is translated into English as “way.”) with the German word “Sinn” (sense, or meaning). He points out that it had something of the same meaning as did the Greek word “logos” at the turning point of time, the beginning of the Christian era. If you consult a Greek dictionary, you will find a long list of meanings for the term “logos” — word, speech, computation, relationship, reason, etc. The mathematicians of 400 B.C. used the word “logos” when they stated a ratio, as 3:4. And when in the time of Plato it was established that there was no “logos,” or integral proportionality, between the diagonal and the side of a square, that was called an “a-logon,” or something without logos. Translated into Latin, logos became “ratio,” and something without “ratio” (or proportion) was something “irrational.” The discovery of the irrational in the time of Plato consisted in the proof that “irrationality” exists in the world of measure. That gives a faint indication of the paradox inherent in the deepest “sense of the word ‘sense’.”

But now you must understand that the negative mirror image of a mastery of the world of meaning, of the logos, must appear in our time, and where this negative image appears it is today called “information.” The “Science of Information” can only measure the quantitative aspect of information, and not that which is its true meaning.

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On Nuclear Energy and the Occult Atom 

by Georg Unger, 1978 (online)

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many of the products of mankind — not only machines, but also cultural works (such as great works of art, ceremonial actions, and rituals) — attract elemental beings. “Out of the interaction between these creations of humanity and the elemental beings which live with man are formed the foundations of the kingdom of Future Jupiter. That, then, is comprised by the term the occult atom.”

(…) in that time in which the soul was not yet living in such substantiality (in the Polarean and Hyperborean times), the Spirit World, which is now our inner world, surrounded us as our outer environment; in the future, that which is now outer nature and that which is “constructed” by man will become our inner world. This again is a reference to one of the occult expressions connected with Freemasonry, and it was taken for granted that the listeners would understand what was meant. They knew that the old church builders constructed churches not for themselves, nor to bring their own names into the world, but rather for others. “It was the task of all secret brotherhoods to bring the spirit into the outer world.”

it was said in 1904: “We are approaching a time in which — as I have already indicated — comprehension can reach even as far as the atom. Even lay people will recognize that the atom is nothing other than coagulated electricity. Thought itself is of the same substance; even before the Fifth Cultural Epoch comes to an end, man will come so far that he will be capable of working right into the atom.”

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On Nuclear Energy and the Occult Atom 

by Georg Unger, 1978 (online)

1171 – The Electronic Doppelganger: The Mystery of the Double in the Age of the Internet (Book by Rudolf Steiner / Andreas Neider 1917 – 2016)

“Large temptations will emanate from these machine-animals, produced by people themselves, and it will be the task of a spiritual science that explores the cosmos to ensure all these temptations do not exert any damaging influence on human beings.” —Rudolf Steiner 
In an increasingly digitized world, where both work and play are more and more taking place online and via screens, Rudolf Steiner’s dramatic statements from 1917 appear prophetic. Speaking of “intelligent machines” that would appear in the future, Steiner presents a broad context that illustrates the multitude of challenges human beings will face. If humanity and the Earth are to continue to evolve together with the cosmos, and not be cut off from it entirely, we will need to work consciously and spiritually to create a counterweight to such phenomena.
In the lectures gathered here, edited with commentary and notes by Andreas Neider, Rudolf Steiner addresses a topic that he was never to speak of again–the secret of the geographical, or ahrimanic, Doppelganger. The human nervous system houses an entity that does not belong to its constitution, he states. This is an ahrimanic being that enters the body shortly before birth and leaves at death, providing the basis for all electrical currents needed to process and coordinate sensory perceptions and react to them.
Based on his spiritual research, Steiner discusses this Doppelganger, or double, in the wider context of historic occult events relating to spirits of darkness. Specific brotherhoods seek to keep such knowledge to themselves to exert power and spread materialism. But this knowledge is critical, says Steiner, if the geographical Doppelganger and its challenges are to be understood.

goodreads   /   amazon

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The Computer and the Incarnation of Ahriman

By David B. Black (online)

1054 – Staying Connected (a practical book)

Staying Connected: How to Continue Your Relationships with Those Who Have Died is a collection of selected talks and meditations (1905-1924) by Rudolf Steiner, edited by Christopher Bamford.

“We are the books the dead read. Our thoughts and feelings are the works of art that brighten and instruct their lives.”

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goodreads   /   rudolfsteineraudio

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[page 150, 151] Thus we see how these elemental beings are the intermediaries between the earth and the spirit-cosmos. We see the drama of the phosphorescent upsurge of the undines, which pass away in the sea of light and flame of the higher hierarchies as their sustenance; we see the upward flashing greenish-reddish lightning, which is breathed where the earth continually passes over into eternity, the eternal survival of the fire spirits, whose activity never ceases. For whereas, here on earth, birds tend to die at a particular time of year, the fire spirits make sure that what is to be seen of them pours out into the universe throughout the entire year. Thus the earth is as though cloaked in a mantle of fire. Seen from outside the earth appears fiery. But everything is brought about by beings who see the things of the earth quite differently from how man sees them. As already mentioned, man’s experience of the earth is of a hard substance on which he stands and walks about. For the gnomes it is a transparent globe, a hollow body. For the undines water is something in which they perceive the phosphorizing process, which they can take into themselves as living experience. Sylphs see in the astrality of the air, which emanates from dying birds, something that makes them into more actively flashing lightning than they would otherwise be, for in itself the lightning of these sylphs is dull and bluish. And then again the disintegration of butterfly existence is something which continually envelops the earth as though with a shell of fire. Beholding this, it seems as though the earth were surrounded by a wonderful fiery painting; and there to one side, when one looks upwards from the earth, one beholds these lightning flashes, these phosphorescent and evanescent undines. All this shows us that here on earth the elemental nature spirits move and work actively, striving upwards and passing away in the fiery mantle of the earth. In reality, however, they do not pass away, but they find their eternal existence by passing over into beings of the higher hierarchies.

Harmony of the Creative Word: The Human Being & the Elemental, Animal, Plant, and Mineral Kingdoms (CW 230) (Human Being and the Elemental, Animal, Plant and Mineral Kin)

 

390 – The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily

read “The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe HERE

read Two lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Berlin and Cologne on Goethe’s Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily HERE

 

(…)  “Now in this chasm lay the fair green Snake, who was roused from her sleep by the gold coming chinking down. No sooner did she fix her eye on the glittering coins, than she ate them all up, with the greatest relish, on the spot; and carefully picked out such pieces as were scattered in the chinks of the rock.

Scarcely had she swallowed them, when, with extreme delight, she began to feel the metal melting in her inwards, and spreading all over her body; and soon, to her lively joy, she observed that she was grown transparent and luminous. Long ago she had been told that this was possible; but now being doubtful whether such a light could last, her curiosity and her desire to be secure against her future, drove her from her cell, that she might see who it was that had shaken in this precious metal. She found no one. The more delightful was it to admire her own appearance, and her graceful brightness, as she crawled along through roots and bushes, and spread out her light among her grass. Every leaf seemed of emerald, every flower was dyed with new glory. It was in vain that she crossed her solitary thickets; but her hopes rose high, when, on reaching her open country, she perceived from afar a brilliancy resembling her own. “Shall I find my like at last, then?” cried she, and hastened to the spot. The toil of crawling through bog and reeds gave her little thought; for though she liked best to live in dry grassy spots of the mountains, among the clefts of rocks, and for most part fed on spicy herbs, and slaked her thirst with mild dew and fresh spring water, yet for the sake of this dear gold, and in the hope of this glorious light, she would have undertaken anything you could propose to her.” (…)