The Unreal Machine (4) - Recognition of the Counterforces
‘Humanity had to go to sleep spiritually so that spirituality could
reappear in a new form.’
Rudolf Steiner
It is increasingly difficult in these times to speak of truthful matters, especially in relation to spirit-consciousness, for people are increasingly subjected to false beliefs and thinking patterns. This is itself a sign of social conditioning and of a certain ‘management of mind,’ and this situation is rife throughout our human societies and is becoming increasingly predominant. Social norms are persuading many people to prefer safety and security rather than the potential discomfort that comes from genuine realization. A perceptive understanding of the human condition recognizes that inner potentials lie within our creative imagination. Yet, unfortunately, we are witnessing how the Inversion has usurped this into a construct of fantasy, make-believe, and the crass and superficial culture industries that rule over these lands. Any notion of Higher or Greater Reality has been twisted into an artificial lesser reality that acts as a block against the developmental impulse from penetrating. This arrangement has culminated in dissociating humankind not only from its natural, organic, carbon-based environment, but also from its inherent contact with its origin – Source consciousness. This increasing disembodiment is reflected in such forms as the techno-digital ecosystem, virtual worlds, computerization (including algorithms), and artificial intelligence. For many people today, their digital devices have become their instruments of salvation.
A recognition and resurrection of the inner life of the human being is now of paramount importance. This is the window of time, of opportunity, as humanity finds itself fraught with uncertainties and many unwelcome forces. What is required is nothing less than a human re-evolutionary revival from lower impulses and stunted understanding towards a fuller realization of self. This is time for a ‘reckoning’ with oneself, for there to be any chance of developing our innate human higher faculties from within the Inversion. This is not a time for drawing back and retreating into one’s inner cave of darkness and ignorance, like a new expression of the medieval ages. Collective ignorance was a state that had to be passed through for there to be a stepping into an individualized self-awareness. A period of ‘inner sleeping’ has enabled humanity to be in a position to regain its spirit-consciousness faculties as if anew. And abstract truths were dominant so as to force people to reach forth for more recognizable inner truths. Modernity was arrived at through this period of gradual individual awakening from a slumber of mass formation, or mass conditioned mentality. To remain at this level would be disastrous for human development, for it would indicate a falling back into lower states of vibration based upon base instincts and appetites. It would also lead to opening the door towards further, and much increased, domination and enslavement. What is needed is for a significant number of individuals to recognize the inner tools and capacities they already possess, and to relate to these. To quote again from Rudolf Steiner:
Humanity needs to take up that which flows down from the spiritual heights into earthly life. It can be rejected. If it is rejected there then ceases for those people who have rejected it the possibility of human progress, of cultural progress, of human civilization, and the further development of humanity will have to be sought among other peoples, and in other areas…’1
To reiterate, humanity now needs to take up that which is flowing ‘down from the spiritual heights into earthly life.’ It can be rejected, as Steiner notes; yet if it is rejected then there is the consequence that those people who have rejected it lose the possibility for their further development. And in this, they also hinder the progress of human civilization as a whole. This may sound dramatic, yet we need also to recognize what is at stake in these times.
The more we close ourselves off by losing ourselves in materiality, the more we are in danger of calibrating our lives in alignment to the machinic impulse and to a mode of automation. This then clears the path towards transhumanism, technocracy, and the domination of entropic forces, as mentioned in the previous essays in this series. A closed-down person is the ideal candidate for inclusion into a socially managed and mind-programmed mass. This must be seen now for these forces and impulses are present in the Inversion with increasing speed and ferocity. It is imperative that we do not get caught up within a mesh of materialism that supplies many fantasies and promises, yet ultimately delivers a package of containment, control, and even possession. We need to recognise, in order to inform ourselves, that there are power groups operating within the Inversion (with conscious participation), who deliberately create programming, narratives, events, and more, that deepen the engulfing materialism. This is with the aim of steering (i.e., social managing) the majority of humanity to believe wholeheartedly in the dominance of materialistic forces. These groups want to ensure that the masses live and breathe materialistic thoughts, at the exclusion of metaphysical thinking, from their birth until death (from the womb to the tomb). This deliberate push into a deepened materialistic path – the extension of reality into the digital realms of an etheric materialism (as discussed previously) – not only denies the existence of the spirit but attempts to imprison this vital force within a cage of electrified matter.
This makes the current task for humanity right now a more difficult one, for such entropic anti-evolutionary forces must be recognized and confronted – and then, transformed into positive impulses for human development. This is all the more difficult at this time for there are also influences in place to push people into a space of ‘personal darkening’ that aims to debilitate, entrap, and block individual sovereignty and empowerment. The impact and consequences of the incoming forces and impulses very much depends upon the state of consciousness with which they are met. And this will determine how humanity progresses, and whether it develops in evolutionary alignment or not. There are powerful world forces, both those operating within visibility and those non-visibly, that would prefer that humanity resides in a state of unknowing. To this end, it is our present responsibility to strive to be more and more conscious, and to stimulate conscious awareness in as many people as possible. It is no longer a long-term feasibility to remain in ignorance of the aims behind world affairs, or the processes that target people’s beliefs and thinking patterns. Similarly, to be absent of the transcendental impulse in our lives is ultimately a path to stagnation in terms of inner development. As a species, we either evolve and develop, or we do not. And the evolvement of the human species entails that we become receptive to, and aware of, those impulses that connect us to realities of consciousness beyond our current realm. This knowledge needs to become more generally known and spoken about, rather than kept occult as it has been for ages past. Otherwise, the human species is in danger of succumbing to entropic influences that will work to diminish critical thinking, imaginative expression, and freedom of the life experience.
Such entropic forces are the forces of opposition regarding the spiritual advancement of humankind. And these forces have been compelled to make their move now, before enough individuals within the collective gain conscious awareness of those transcendental impulses that connect humanity with Source. This is the period of spirit-consciousness, which is why the counterforces are working desperately to act against these developmental processes. It is in this period that the conscious, individualized, independent thinking human being is required to emerge. And emerge we must: to break through the encroaching psychological web of lies, deceit, and programming. It is the programming side that is becoming increasingly dominant for it is pervasive now in forms of social conditioning and ‘mind management’ – literally so, as in the software programs, algorithms, and inorganic intellects that run in the digital background of physical life. In Steiner terms, the Ahrimanic forces are incarnating through the electrical sub-nature ecosystem in an attempt to gain control and influence over human life and thought. There are already major signs that many people have adopted a digitalization of thought, with abbreviated texting, twitter-ing, and social media mutterings becoming dominant forms of everyday communication and expression. The digitalization of human thoughts has erupted massively since the arrival of advanced computing and computer networks, although its earlier inception was with the printing press (beginning with Gutenberg) and the distribution and massification of information. In the words of the Russian thinker Sergei Prokofieff:
It follows that the whole computer and Internet industry is today the most effective way to prepare for the imminent incarnation of Ahriman or at least to allow his earthly task to run as smoothly as possible for him. The net of ahrimanic spider beings developing out of the internet around the earth stands right from the beginning in a direct relationship to Ahriman appearing in a physical body and will serve him particularly effectively and offer him extremely favourable potential to work.2
Here is a direct indication that the influence, or seduction, of Ahrimanic forces is already in play. People across the world have been connected like never before, and are communicating, organizing, and informing themselves through these networks of communication. Yet the danger here, in relation to entropic forces, is that these webs of interrelation slyly coax a person deeper into the materialistic web and further away from inner connection to the metaphysical realms (including Source consciousness). Connection on the physical-digital level may increasingly denote isolation in relation to the transcendental.
As stated, the greatest danger concerning these entropic forces is if their presence, activity, and influence go unrecognized. These influences take great efforts to remain largely hidden or, at the least, beyond the perceptions of the majority. In this way, they can stealthily establish conditions that make people increasingly dependent upon their systems and within their sphere of control. The incarnation and presence of such forces is recognized also through the push toward dominance of the intellect over imagination and inner values. The intelligence of the intellect is seductive, and logically reasonable (of course), yet it negates the role of imagination, intuition, and inspiration. If this continues into the extreme, then it will lead to a collective state of inner blindness among humankind. Anti-developmental forces seek to exercise their control through influencing both the conscious and subconscious minds of people by means of instilling fear: fear of one’s well-being, security, and economic status. The focus of distraction, since earliest years of education, is placed upon an individual’s physical needs – such as work, money, home, and security – rather than upon the forms of self-actualization that strengthen the internal gaze and higher faculties of perception. The human being too has been colonized in an interior way through layer upon layer of misdirected education/information (or, in other words, programming). In general, people who live in this modern age of controlled media, insipient entertainment, corrupt politics, managed economies, and more, have been purposefully impacted and influenced so as to be inwardly stunted. Outward signs of physical and mental activity may easily hide a true state of inner stagnation. If the entropic forces that work to block human development become prevalent within, and through people, then a dissociation occurs that hampers further inner growth within the individual. There is no more inward maturity as the counterforces place all attention onto external, superficial projections. This is the state of a great many of our supposedly ‘high status’ individuals of today – including world leaders, corporate CEOs, bankers and financiers and, especially, those high-powered people running the tech giants. The masses are being led blindly by the inwardly immature who, perhaps unknown to themselves, are vessels for the incarnating influence of entropic, Ahrimanic forces. In the end, human civilization must choose one of two alignments – with de-evolutionary processes (leading to decay and destruction), or with the development of the spirit-consciousness of humankind.
Negative influences have already been allowed to gain too great a foothold upon the earth. Much of this, though certainly not all of it, is due to a small minority of persons aligning themselves, through greed and power-hunger, with anti-human forces that seek to control and contain human freedom and development. Their greedy actions fuel the programmed illusions that then rule over us, whether we are aware of this or not. These lies are spreading across the world, its nations and, perhaps soon, the whole earthly realm. An alternate sphere of existence – a lower vibrational realm – may have already incarnated. It is time we became informed of the Eighth Sphere …
To be continued in Pt. 5 …
[The above essay was taken from Kingsley Dennis’ new book The Inversion: How We Have Been Tricked into Perceiving a False Reality (Aeon Books, September 2023)]
Discount code ‘INV20’ will give readers 20% off The Inversion until 25/03/24 when ordered direct from publisher:
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References
1 Steiner, Rudolf (1923/2011) Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Rudolf Steiner Press
2 Prokofieff, Sergei. ‘The Being Of The Internet,’ https://philosophyoffreedom.com/the-being-of-the-internet