MysTech Newsletter, September 2021
Painting: Archangel Michael by Lois Schroff (2018)
Newsletter on the Mysteries of Technology
Dear Friends,
You may have felt a shift in consciousness lately, sensing that something is just not normal but you don’t quite know what it is. You may ascribe it to any number of things happening in the world right now but tracking one or two of them is, often times, all that one can handle. And this shift — this lack of normalness — no matter how hard you try, it seems your life, post 2020, will never be the same.
For those of you living in the developed countries and especially in the U.S. you may be more sensitive to a feeling of an ending of sorts and the entry of something different. For those of you who have kept technology at arm’s length, cautious about all that it seems to promise, you may feel the squeeze of technology pressing in all around, becoming more prominent in controlling every aspect of your life, your health and most especially your voice.
For years now we have been exposed to the real workings of bureaucracy, technology, corporations and the unbridled power wielded through wealth in the most transparent way. Those who have had nimbleness of thought and sound reasoning will have more easily recognized all that has been happening on the world stage and can see it as an inevitability that must come to pass. This passing is a shift of unconsciousness to consciousness of one’s individuality as a sovereign spiritual being endowed with the greatest of capacities in all of the universe. But this waking of consciousness will come at a high cost and that is the inevitability that we all must face or be left behind.
Two books are scheduled to come out this October, one from Elana Freeland called Geoengineering Transhumanism and the other by Harrie Salman entitled The Great Reset and the Health Dictatorship. Both of these books describe a methodical and diabolical path that has been followed for decades toward what we are living through today. Both cover a breadth of actions reportedly taken by the most wealthy and powerful to control you. That is because, to control the world and the stars, the battle must be won within each of us. The battlefield for this war is internal and it is for our eternal soul.
Both of the books aforementioned have an upside to them at their end, showing us that there is always a way out, a path that is true and sure. We, at MysTech, are confident that there is no better way to see the sure path forward, than at the recent MysTech Conference of 2021. The conference gives one the tools needed to understand and to relate to technology, as it is in the world. It also, and more importantly, provides a vision of how a right technology can be created that is responsive to us, instead of us having to comply with it.
MysTech’s mission is about this technological path forward that supports the human being in its evolution toward greater spirituality, not as a crutch but as a tool. The conscious wakefulness toward this end is not a simple one. We can all be deceived and/or distracted in believing or focusing on one negative thing or another. However, we can be sure, with the growth of the population of the earth from 250 billion in the 1950’s to almost 800 billion today, every soul that can be born is here right now to have a chance at experiencing this shift, this next step in human consciousness.
For now, may you live into the Tau of the World!
Frank Dauenhauer
Managing Director of CFAE
THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY
TRANSHUMAN OR SPIRIT-MAN?
Douglas Smith, Ph.D.
This is a summary of the presentation delivered for the MysTech Conference 2021
21st Century Technologies
In May 2000, the initial sequencing of the human genome was announced – a landmark achievement for science and humanity. Since then, DNA sequencing technology has advanced considerably, and the genomes of several million people are now being sequenced. The information that will be gained by studying the genomes of such large numbers of individuals will teach us a great deal about genetic traits and disease susceptibility across human populations.
Each of us carries a unique set of about 4-5 million genetic variants. These variants define our genetic heritage and individuality. They contribute to common traits as well as rare genetic diseases. Gene therapy-related research for rare diseases, active over the past 20 years, is now beginning to show some highly promising results.
In 2018, two babies were born after CRISPR gene editing of human embryos to delete the CCR5 gene and using in vitro fertilization. It set off a firestorm of controversy in the scientific community and general public. There is currently a moratorium on human germline gene editing (e.g., editing of sperm or egg), but research on gene editing of human embryos is still allowed.
Research on the brain is another important area. Projects are underway that have the potential to fundamentally change our understanding of the brain, and its function. There have been some amazing advances in brain-computer interface technology, even allowing words and sentences to be decoded directly from cortical activity.
Our era has also witnessed incredible advances in computers, software algorithms, and the internet. Artificial intelligence is now being applied to applications in business, healthcare, image recognition, self-driving cars, natural language processing, and scientific data analysis. Research on next level algorithms and artificial general intelligence is ongoing at several companies. Many scientists are concerned that the development of computers that can essentially program themselves, and outperform humans at virtually every computational task, could represent an existential threat to humanity.
Transhumanism
Proponents of transhumanism advocate the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies able to greatly enhance longevity, mood and cognitive abilities. Numerous transhumanist organizations and political parties advocate for the adoption of transformative technologies, such as human genetics and artificial intelligence, to achieve this. Some even believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are ordained of God to enable this.
Many transhumanists believe that in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis should be used not just to reduce the occurrence of genetic disease, but also to enable selection for non-disease traits like intelligence, memory, self-discipline, and impulse control. These ideas, bordering on eugenics, seek the elimination of undesired traits in the unborn. Some look to artificial superintelligence to make the difficult moral decisions that will be required by humanity in the future.
Spiritual Scientific Perspectives
A number of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures relate directly to these topics. For example, he spoke of how we shape our destiny as individuals, choose the nationality, culture, parents, and body that we will be born into. He described the connections between heredity, natural science, the Father, and the mysteries of karma, birth, and death. He described how Christ impulses must be taken up and elaborated by the soul to enable us to free ourselves from bodily and hereditary forces.
The same elemental spirits that are involved in birth and death are now serving technology, industry, and human commerce. Scientists in laboratories and workshops are influenced and guided by these spirits, inspiring them to create ever more powerful technologies to manipulate the material world.
Our challenge, in the age of the consciousness soul, is to develop a living perception of the spiritual within the universe. As the age of the consciousness soul progresses, the human soul will withdraw more and more from the body – enabling powerful Ahrimanic spirits to live within us, if we are not vigilant. This is a challenge that all of us will experience.
Rudolf Steiner predicted that our commercial, industrial and technological civilization will lead to the decline and fall of the Post- Atlantean Epoch. The impact of so-called modern technology on our planet over the past 200 years bears this out. The only way to counteract this is for human beings to take up impulses which come from spiritual knowledge – to make the consciousness soul a reality within us! Through the experience of evil in the present age, Christ is able to appear again in the etheric body of the earth. This is something we all need to experience.
More and more it feels like we are living in apocalyptic times. Rudolf Steiner warned us that Sorat, the Anti-Christ sun demon (who corresponds to “the beast” described by St. John in the Book of Revelation) will do everything in his power to prevent humanity from having an experience of Christ in the etheric. Asuric spirits, retarded Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archai, are also becoming more active in our time. They seek to tear away fragments of the consciousness soul and ‘I’ and unite them forever with the earth – where they will be lost to us irretrievably.
So here are some things to consider as we go forward into our brave new world… We now have the power to consciously manipulate physical heredity. We can use that power for either good or evil. Efforts to eliminate inherited genetic disease, and its effects, will certainly continue – with many amazing results. How will it affect incarnating souls seeking to resolve their karma? How will it affect the development of the consciousness soul, the “I”, and the future of humanity as spiritual beings?
Selection of desirable transhumanist traits is likely to gain favor at some point. Will it hinder the overcoming of hereditary forces and expression of the individuality? Will it blind us to spiritual vision and cause us to cling to earth experience?
Human beings who make the transition to a spiritual life – the rightful course of human evolution – will enter into a different relationship with the earth as humanity enters the seventh post- Atlantean cultural age. They will no longer incarnate in physical bodies but will instead pulsate through the manifestations of nature. However, the Ahrimanic Powers are becoming extremely strong, and might succeed in preventing this – inspiring people to cling to physical life at any cost.
Which will we choose, the New Jerusalem of the Logos, or the Ahrimanic noosphere of the transhumanists?
Douglas R. Smith, Ph.D., has over 40 years of experience in human genetics, DNA sequencing, technology development and bioinformatics. Doug led one of the large-scale sequencing centers that helped decode the human genome and was involved in many other pioneering research and development projects. Doug is keenly interested in understanding the spiritual beings and events that underlie physical phenomena and has been a student of Anthroposophy and Christology for nearly as long as his professional career.
QUANTUM KARMA
Robert Filocco
Photo by Andrew George on Unsplash
Robert Filocco was a presenter at this years MysTech Conference 2021
Watch the full presentation on The UFO Challenge
The concept of karma occupies a central place in many world religions, as well as in the work of Rudolf Steiner. It was for him a central part of his life’s mission to help reacquaint the West with this fundamental principle. In an evolving project, I am exploring various ways to approach the understanding of karmic processes, as well as modern technological threats to karmic unfolding in human destiny. These include transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and the quest for immortality, as well as rumors of time travel and tinkering with the future timelines of humanity.
With human history reaching critical crossroads of decision and understanding, our evolution as a species is in the balance. Steiner wrote and lectured about these alternative futures over a hundred years ago. One future is molded and coerced by technological development and increased mechanization and materialism. The other future entails a slower and painstaking spiritual emergence into a world of empathic understanding and communal experience: a spiritualized matter when hearts have thoughts.
I have recently begun research into diverse approaches to understanding this developing story of evolution. This openness to diversity has allowed me to begin to understand the nature of karmic processes operating at various levels of conceptualization and discipline. It has helped me to a better understanding of the confusing events of the present, as well as a deeper understanding of human purpose.
One branch of my path has led me to explore the plasma line theories of physicist Percy Seymour. This theory provides a physical explanation of karma and the storing of memory, emphasizing the special properties of plasma. Seymour’s work also provides a window into understanding the correspondence between the “spooky” entanglements of the quantum world and human interaction, a basis to ground karma in matter. In the process he connects the human experiences of telepathic communication, twin phenomena, and various psychic phenomena to quantum processes, bringing the quantum world “down to earth”. Another related theory, that of Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic fields, provides another template to understand the presence of the past, the natural tendency to preserve form and memory at the biological level.
Moving closer to the human realm, the psychology of schema theory and therapy is based upon the existence of deeply ingrained patterns in human thought, feeling and behavior that in powerful ways shape our lives and self-narrative. Connecting this with karmic theory, past lives, helps to illuminate the purpose and history of these patterns. Here the work of pioneers such as Ann Drake are invaluable in providing a bridge between shamanic realities, karma and healing. I also build here on my own experience as a therapist, helping others to unravel and integrate some of these mysteries.
Moving beyond the human realm, the work of Steiner in illuminating a broader ecology, filled with being and purpose, took me into the fields of ontology and esoteric ecology. The role of other beings of guidance and hindrance is crucial to understanding the nature and role of humans and the events shaping our individual lives. Steiner’s writings, and lectures on karma, help to connect the heaven and earth elements of human evolution. The nature of synchronicity is explored as well. Here the work of Sharon Rawlette provides a comprehensive window into a variety of meaningful human experience, and intelligent speculation about the role of other beings in co-creating and directing our reality and development.
More recently, I have plunged into the literature on the birth of spiritually advanced beings, variously called the “new children”, “star Children”, Indigos, and the “alphabet children”. These children are allegedly incarnating now as part of an effort to advance human evolution. They are said to possess natural telepathic and healing abilities, advanced cognition and IQ, awareness of spiritual realities and past lives. Some writers, such as Mary Rodwell have connected this development to the UFO phenomena, asserting that other beings are aiding or orchestrating a coming step up in human evolution. These children, some now of adult age, also mention the existence of more malevolent beings, some human, who are attempting to hinder this development. If true, this development is of great importance and needs to be understood in a proper light. Steiner’s cosmology, the nature of the Ahrimanic deception, is here most relevant. I speculate that these gifted beings can help humanity to move toward either an organic singularity, akin to what Steiner described, one of empathic group harmony, karmic awareness and sympathy, or toward a hyper-intelligent, but soulless world of technological singularity. One lacking in what Steiner called “gemut”.
In a coming edition of the MysTech Journal I hope to publish some of my own writings and speculations regarding this diverse landscape of study. The work of Steiner is one central piece to this mosaic, providing both a useful cosmology and human touch. I hope to collaborate with others in this journey, in the process learning more about etheric physics, Steiner’s views on human development and karma, as well as the efforts toward a spiritualized technology. I look forward to dialogue and feedback.
Selected Bibliography
- The Energetic Dimension – Ann M. Drake – 2019
- Under An Ionized Sky – Elana Freeland – 2018
- Karma: What It Is, What It Isn’t, Why It Matters – Traleg Kyabgon – 2015
- Transhumanism – Robert Livingstone – 2015
- Abductions, and Passport to the Cosmos – John Mack – 1994, 1991
- Schema Therapy – E. Rafaeli, D. Bernstein, J. Young – 2011
- Coincidences – Sharon Rawlette – 2019
- The New Human – Mary Rodwell – 2016
- The Third Level of Reality – Percy Seymour – 2003
- Morphic Resonance – Rupert Sheldrake – 2009
- Numerous works of Rudolf Steiner.
Robert Fillocco has worked in the field of mental health since 1986, most recently in private practice. He has served as an adjunct professor of Psychology at a number of universities and colleges. Since his youth he has pursued interests in the paranormal, especially UFOs, publishing in The Bulletin of Anomalous Experience, Outer Limits Magazine, and related journals. He is also a children’s book author.
Book Review
Thinking Outside the Brain Box
Why Humans are not Biological Computers
by Arie Bos
Floris Books, 2017
A physician who practiced for thirty years before turning to the teaching of Philosophy of Science and Neurophilosophy at the University of Utrecht, Ari Bos makes a powerfully convincing case that we are not biological computers, nor is consciousness an excretion of the brain. And in a beautifully clear way, he makes his case using the science of people determined to prove the opposite.
In fact, he makes his case in a way that feels like a continuation of Steiner’s work in Philosophy of Freedom, in which Steiner used the thoughts and words of highly respected thinkers in his own time to show their weak underpinnings. Steiner addressed questions such as: are there limits to knowing? Does free will exist or is man controlled by the laws of nature? How do natural laws and Darwinism relate to morality?
Ari Bos updates this conversation using the science of neurology, genetics, psychology and physics, challenging the conclusions of leading thinkers in those fields. Most of the scientists are not household names, but then perhaps in Steiner’s day, neither were Hegel, Spencer, von Hartmann or Kant. It behooves us to learn about the thoughts and people who are influencing the direction in which humanity is moving. It is at the level of such thoughts that we perceive an earthly manifestation of spiritual battles.
No wonder Steiner repeatedly, and strongly, urged his listeners to embrace science, but to do so without falling prey to materialistic thinking. Ari Bos succeeds in doing just that. Reading this book will help us all to be less vulnerable to subconscious manipulation as well as to have a sound basis for countering the idea that humans are nothing more than complex machines, as many (especially transhumanists) would have us believe.
Thinking Outside the Brain Box
Floris Books, 2017
$35.00 at Rudolf Steiner Bookstore
Arie Bos practiced medicine as a general physician in Amsterdam for over thirty years. He now teaches in Philosophy of Science and Neurophilosophy at the University of Utrecht and gives lectures for the general public. He is the author of many books and articles on evolution and neuroscience.
New Books
Available October 2021
Harrie Salman’s
The Great Reset and the Health Dictatorship
A Guide to Freedom in the Post-Corona World
This new and compelling book by Harrie Salman is a manifesto in which he analyzes the ills of our times, calls out those persons and institutions he sees as responsible for those ills, and issues a call to action. He addresses that call to action to all of us who believe that individuals and groups working together can renew and liberate our society. He calls on us to become fully human and enrich our social lives—impoverished by the lockdowns of what he calls “the health dictatorship”—from the bottom up, with inspiration from the Divine. It is a noble call, and Harrie is quite aware that the tasks he outlines will not be easily accomplished.
Elana Freeland’s
Geoengineering Transhumanism
How the Environment Has Been Weaponized by Chemicals, Electromagnetics, and Nanotechnology for Synthetic Biology
Geoengineered Transhumanism is the third book in Elana Freeland’s trilogy on geoengineering. It completes the picture of what geoengineering has been from its very beginning decades ago: to control the ionosphere with phased array heater blasts so as to maintain an ionized atmosphere in which chemicals, nanotechnology, and synbio synergies can be continuously laid by jets, drones, and rockets in the name of “climate change.”
Artist Circle
The Hexameter Rhythm
Odysseus and his crew escape the cyclops, as painted by Arnold Böcklin in 1896.
The hexameter rhythm has traditionally been known to be used for the great epic poems however it is also known to harmonize the human breath and heartbeat. The hexameter rhythm consists of six sequences of long short short and often incorporates two breaths or caesura.
Note your breath and beating heart before and after you practice reading poetry with an underlying hexameter rhythm.
The opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey are written with a hexameter rhythm. Play with finding the hexameter rhythm:
Andra moi enepe moûsa …
polýtropon, hos mala polla …
plangchthe, epeì Troyes hieròn …
Then see if you can hear the hexameter in this YouTube reciting of the Greek: https://youtu.be/MOvVWiDsPWQ?t=56
English translation:
Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full
many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.
Resources to find out more about the hexameter harmonizing the human breath and heartbeat:
- Lecture by Rudolf Steiner: Poetry and the Art of Speech, The Interaction of Breathing and Blood Circulation, https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA281/English/LSF1981/19230329p1b.html
- The American Physiological Society, Reading Hexametric Rhyme Supports Cardiac Synchronization, Especially After a Heart Attack, July 14, 2004, https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/642248
Festivals
Michaelmas
In this time leading to the equilibrium of light and dark which happens yearly on September 21, we see that the day of celebration for Saint Michael was designated on “the octave” – eight days after the equinox. This idea of an octave appears in music, of course, where the eighth note is actually the same tone as the first, just amplified (in a different key or register). Is it possible that there are rhythmic cycles in time that are similar to such cycles in sound? In fact, it is undoubtedly so. All of nature is based on rhythms and cycles. Rudolf Steiner spoke of many cycles, such as the end of Kali Yuga. He also indicated that the spiritual being, Michael, was taking up the task of leading a new cycle of human development in 1879. In that same year, Steiner embarked upon a new phase of his life. At age 18 he entered university in Vienna, and it has been claimed that it was then that he first encountered Michael, the Zeitgeist…the reigning Time Spirit. Was it this encounter that gave him the inspiration and capacity to write Die Philosophie der Freiheit?
Michael often appears carrying the balance scales of Libra, symbol of the ability to weigh things rationally and form judgments. In the skies, it is Libra which separates Virgo from Scorpio: the Virgin protected from the predator with the sting. In the cycle of the year, this is when Michael is most active and we know his sword slices through the brambles of unclear thought, and his spear goads us towards action. What is this challenge that we are facing? And how will WE meet the Spirit of the Time?
MysTech Study Courses
Consider Joining A Course Group This Fall
A century ago, Rudolf Steiner had illuminating and prescient things to say about technology. However, it is not easy to find a group of people with whom to study those thoughts. Perhaps it is because there has not been a collection of lectures specifically focused on this subject, or because many people have a tendency to keep the spiritual implications of technology at arm’s length. In any case, MysTech’s on-line study groups are a good way to overcome obstacles such as these, or others.
In the MysTech, Mystery of Technology Study Guides, Andrew Linnell has brought together relevant passages and lectures that provide a helpful framework to approach this complex topic. The study group’s weekly format motivates participants to do the reading and leads to interesting questions and comments.
Broaden your circle – meet people in different places and time zones.
Sign up for Fall 2021 Study Group Course Until September 20th: https://mystech.org/study-courses
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