95. A New Appearance Should Grow Vividly Out of a New Spirituality

In the fifth post-Atlantic period, spiritual effects are breaking through the veil that shrouds the spiritual world. These effects come from the spirits of personality, just as the effects of the spirits of form occurred in ancient Lemuria. These spiritual effects want to be understood. They show themselves by causing phenomena to occur that, through their own essence, urge the will to view them spiritually. It is the relationships between people that should no longer be judged by what has become of them through the course of nature. What is reported for Russia about the relationship between descendants and ancestors is significant: a person comes into a relationship with the spirits of the personality while awake, which is an echo of a prenatal relationship.

Through the mechanisms that replace human strength, however, beings enter into development that contradict the spirits of personality revealing themselves as creators. From the connection with the mechanism springs a state of mind that drives into the most violent struggle against the newly revealing spirits of form. This new form of the spirits of darkness will have to be brought into the inner soul process of man - for through man the new spirits of personality will be able to take possession of the conditions of the earth - the earth conditions will cause difficulties for man in the future if he wants to adapt to them; he must adapt to spiritual conditions. On earth equilibrium would be necessary; but this equilibrium is the manifestation of a struggle – the struggle in the spiritual field is not evil; it is the element of life: man must find the means to transfer the struggle into his inner being; at first he still resists under the guidance of the spiritual powers that want to keep the struggle external. But the external is not to be spiritualized mechanically, but a new external is to grow alive out of a new spirituality - the spirits of form are to give up their forming and the spirits of personality are to take their place - the archangeloi are to enter into the personality, i.e., man is to learn to understand the spiritual order; the Angeloi are to give the power for this - but man is to find that he is not in his body; he can only do so if he understands it spiritually - in spiritual understanding he will slip away from it.

People feel that demands are being made of them by the spiritual realm, if their spiritual life is adapted to the fifth period; by pretending that they are dealing with fantasies, they want to keep people at the present stage of their development – the shaping of social life that depends on the mechanical order could serve this purpose.

We cannot continue to move the process of redemption behind the scenes, as churches and masonic societies want to do with rituals and dogmas of redemption: It must be summoned before the scene. One must have the courage to face the spirit. Symbolism must end and reality must take its place, that is, the contemplation of the spiritual. The strongest enemies of this process will be the keepers of the confessional and ritual traditions will be the strongest enemies of this process - they will use the unconscious moments to sneak in and pursue their business - they still have much that enables them to catch dull minds with this business. —

The astrological element is most likely to seduce one into helping the mechanism to gain control, for it draws on the last dying impulses. At present it can only be useful if it leads to a defensive council that refers to something that cannot be averted in any other way. Old Christianity is still full of astrology, but this must be recognized as a disguise. The world of men, not of nature, ordered according to the astrological mode of thinking, would be the death of the human race. The astrological classes, the keepers of ritual, the historical classes, etc., all represent residues; they all refuse to enter into the mode of thinking of the fifth period.