How Much Truth Can We Defend and Advance for the World in Our Lives?

Nicanor Perlas

The “Grave of All Civilization”

In his lectures on Karmic Relationships, Rudolf Steiner repeatedly warned that if spiritual science does not become a significant force in world affairs, then, at around our time, humanity will plunge into the “grave of all civilization”:

This battle, more than any other, is laid in the human heart. There, within the hearts of men, it is and has been waged since the last third of the nineteenth cen- tury. Decisive indeed will be what human hearts do with this Michael Impulse in the world in the course of the twentieth century. And in the course of the twentieth century, when the first century after the end of the Kali Yuga has elapsed, humanity will either stand at the grave of all civilization—or at the beginning of that age when in the souls of men who in their hearts ally intelligence with spirituality, Micha-el’s battle will be fought out to victory.1

1 Karmic Relationships, Vol. VI (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2009), GA 240, lecture of July 19, 1924.

We are in the midst of this collapse of planetary civilization. The Covid lockdowns, instituted all over the world in surprising synchrony and determined totalitarianism, are a symptom of the decadence of our current civilization. The “Great Reset” has begun.

The last three years have been a very powerful demonstration of how censorship, disinformation, and lies have shattered every aspect of global civilization. We absorb the disinformation and lies that pervade the narratives on Covid-19,2 the war in Ukraine, NATO’s role in the world, democracy in the US, the climate apocalypse, the Central Bank Digital Currency debates, the WHO pandemic treaty, transhumanism, and other contentious areas of life.

Institutions designed to protect humanity have become the oppressors of humanity. Witness the collapse of regulatory integrity in the CDC and FDA, the fraud that has permeated scientific publications, the lying factcheckers, the addiction of mainstream and social media to censorship and disinformation, the massive corruption of most of Congress and the US military as well as the weaponization of the US justice system, and global corporations that have changed from selling products to compelling behavioral change and turning people into products. In addition, governments have imposed psychological warfare, once reserved for foreign terrorist organizations, on their own citizens.

Furthermore, cultural institutions have been weaponized. They have become places where children are programmed by drag queen indoctrination, abused by pedophiles, and manipulated to “need” transgender surgeries and mutilation. The good and progressive ideals of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion live in so many people today in a genuine way, and yet our sympathy for these ideals is now being used against us in service of a larger and more nefarious agenda.3

Even anthroposophists have not escaped the ravages of this war on Truth. Debates on facts have degenerated into accusations of having a right- or left-wing perspective. In reality, anthroposophists need to learn that objective Truth is objective Truth, whatever source that Truth may have come from. Or in Rudolf Steiner’s words, describing the consciousness soul in his book Theosophy :

2 On the topic of Covid, see, for example, the thorough study “A Rebuttal to the ‘Open Letter to the Anthroposophical Community Regarding the Covid Pandemic’” by Ricardo Bartelme and Branko Furst in Deepening Anthroposophy issue 11.1 (June 22, 2022), p. 29ff.

3 On this topic, see for example Yuri Besmenov’s statements from a 1984 interview with G. Edward Griffin (https://bigthink.com/the-present/yuri-bezmenov/).

Everyone knows how a person at first considers true what he prefers in his feelings, desires, and so forth. Only that truth is enduring, however, that has freed itself from all aftertaste of such sympathy and antipathy of feeling. The truth is true even if all personal feelings revolt against it. That part of the soul in which this truth lives will be called consciousness soul.4

The Task of Humanity: Establishing and Defending the Truth

It is clear that, amidst all the chaos in the world, striving for and standing by objective and independent Truth has become the overwhelming task of humanity in this period. We live in an ocean of disinformation, further polluted with Orwellian language games. Lies become seen as the truth. Questioning authoritarian abuse is now characterized as terrorism.

In his book, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Rudolf Steiner emphasized the importance of objective knowledge. One key theme there is accessing this Truth totally independently of what consequences this Truth may have on one’s life. How much Truth can one accept and defend in one’s life and actions?

Unconditionally accepting confirmed Truth ultimately means that peoples’ attachments to certain ideas, habits, ways of life, peer groups, reputations, behaviors, etc. that are contrary to this Truth will have to stop. People inwardly realize that standing up for and defending the Truth will result in pain and isolation. Hence there is an unconscious tendency to avoid the Truth.

In the language of Christ, we take up our cross, our burden of Truth, and live out the consequences of that Truth. Tragically, the burden of Truth is sometimes more than what most people can allow themselves to bear. It seems that many in the Anthroposophical Society have a limited capacity and courage to bear pain within themselves for the sake of the world.

Elite power uses language manipulation and lies to veil the Truth and manipulate the masses. The “empty phrase” is how Steiner characterized such weaponized language.

There is an urge to seek for the truth in empty phrases. But however enthusiastically [people] fill their being with these phrases, this urge will never lead them to the truth. To find the truth, it is necessary to have a sense for the facts, regardless of whether these are to be found on the physical plane or in the spiritual world.5

Steiner gave a series of lectures that elaborated on this point. It has been published as The Karma of Untruthfulness, Vols. 1 and 2. The attentive reader will immediately notice how similar our current situation is to the situation during World War I. Regarding this war, Rudolf Steiner said: “We could not be united in intimate circles, because a terrible world-tyranny was exercised during the war.”6 Lies pervaded the narrative of World War I. Media was the weapon for “untruthfulness.” It is no different today. The only difference is that the untruthfulness of World War I is child’s play compared to the outrageous, in-yourface lies that are being used today to control people in all areas of life.

The Reality and Task of the Christmas Conference

This grave of all civilization was exactly what the Christmas Conference sought to avoid. Steiner wanted to awaken anthroposophists to the two key spiritual goals of the School of Micha-el.

The first was to establish the reality of spiritual science and heighten its potency for being a principle of world civilization through the founding of the Christmas Conference. The second was to prepare all those who truly take up the substance of spiritual science and the Christmas Conference to be active at the “end of the century,” when decisive spiritual battles for the future of humanity would take place.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the earthly manifestation of the impulse of the Christmas Conference has mostly been blunted in our times. Even many anthroposophical institutions have succumbed to the web of lies and disinformation spun by the dominant powers. They have mostly decided to be “politically correct” and therefore not subject to harassment. Fear overcame them.

Where are the courageous anthroposophical Michaelic voices today as the global debates about the nature and future of humanity are shattering societies worldwide? Where are the anthroposophical truth-tellers at this time when there are increasingly prevalent hints suggesting that Satanism (a.k.a. Ahriman-worship) is a real factor used by powerful institutions in their collective quest to destroy planetary civilization and usher in their posthuman world via their transhumanist agenda?

6 The Constitution of the School of Spiritual Science (The Anthroposophical Society of Great Britain, 1964), GA 260a, lecture of January 18, 1924.

Yes, they are there, but they are too few and hardly visible amidst the battles raging around the planet for the future of humanity.

The “grave of all civilization” is so urgent and unprecedented that one can now gain a glimpse of what Rudolf Steiner warned would be one of the foremost challenges facing humanity in our time. This is especially true when we consider what we discussed above as key ideas of the culture wars—as disguised Marxism—happening around the world. Steiner admonished:

The Sorat human beings . . . will not only scoff at everything spiritual but also oppose and want to push into the pool of filth anything that is spiritual. This will be experienced, for example, in the way something that is at present concentrated into a small space in seed form as today’s Bolshevism will become incorporated into the whole of human evolution on earth.7

Steiner calls Bolshevism “the most extreme, radical product of Western thought,” “the most extreme consequence of the most materialistic view of the world and social life.”8

In regard to the immediate future, the so-called civilized world faces only two options: Bolshevism on one side, and the threefold social order on the other. He who does not recognize that only these two alternatives exist in the near future understands nothing of the course of events on a grand scale.9

However, the spiritual substance of the Christmas Conference is very much alive. It is a spiritual force, an actual constellation of spiritual beings and Keepers of Humanity (sometimes known as the Masters) whom one can access in preparation for meaningful engagement in the world. This impulse is living within those individuals and groups who have dedicated their entire lives to fighting for a dignified human future amidst all the chaos. They receive their strength by living with the profound substance of the Christmas Conference.

To be faithful to the spiritual substance of the Christmas Conference and to the expectations of the Michaelic School today is to have an almost insane amount of courage to face all the odds that are aligned against that striving person. In some, it could mean resistance to the point of physical death. Many are called but few remain standing.

7 The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999), GA 346, September 12, 1924.

8 Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms (Anthroposophic Press, 1986), GA 199, August 21, 1920.

9 Ibid., August 7, 1920.

There are nagging questions for all who would strive to stand up against the totalitarianism of lies that is now the dominant force of the world.

How much Truth can we allow to enter our lives? How much of this Truth will become a force that will give us the courage to be present in the midst of the trials of humanity? When do our ideas become forceful ideals that will enable us to contribute our share towards the betterment of the world?

The Wounded Amfortas and the Healing Parsifal in Us

In answering these questions, there is a shattering reality that Steiner painfully pointed out in his lecture cycle on The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity 10 Due to the natural course of human evolution, as human beings lose direct connection with the revitalizing forces of the cosmos, the forces of death have now become part of the human soul and etheric body. This makes human beings vulnerable to all kinds of lower tendencies, passions, deceit, and other weaknesses. These weaknesses imprison thoughts of a more ideal nature which reside in the living parts of the intellectual soul. The result is doubt, fear, irrational anger, apathy, and self-defeating images of oneself and of the future.

Steiner calls this the “Amfortas wound” in all human beings. This Amfortas wound has deeply affected the way human beings think and the way our thinking is able to deal with the fallen and selfish tendencies anchored in the lower aspects of the human soul. This defeated inner condition hinders one from standing courageously and undefeated in battle to defend a truly human future.

On the other hand, there is also the Parsifal force in all human beings. This Parsifal aspect in us can heal the wound of Amfortas. The Parsifal in us is our Fighter for Truth, the Servant of the Logos. This higher and more courageous self in us accesses the loftiest ideals of humanity and offers them to the still-living part of our intellectual soul; and, from there, this part of us becomes the master of the dead aspects in ourselves, those parts of ourselves that wallow in apathy, cowardice, and other decadent traits of the degraded and defeated human being.

One of the most powerful forces of the Parsifal in us is the force of compassion and love. It would be very difficult not to act with courage in the world if we could actually feel, in an expanded state of loving consciousness, the pain of the world as our pain, the sufferings of the world as our sufferings. This is a love that breaks all hesitancy in us to seriously face the carnage of humanity that is occurring all around us. This is also related to the second panel of the Foundation Stone Meditation, which teaches us the nature of true feeling :

10 The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity (SteinerBooks, 1972), GA 144, February 7, 1913.

Practice spirit sensing / in balance of soul / where the surging deeds of the world’s becoming / do thine own ‘I’ / unite / unto the ‘I’ of the world / then, mid the weaving of the soul of man, thou wilt truly feel 11

Reactivating Spiritual Science within the Collapsing Civilization of Humanity

If we want to engage the world, we have to overcome this “two souls” dilemma within ourselves. It is the foundation for our capacity to engage with and be a healing force in the world.

Among other possibilities, one way to do this is to develop the capacity and courage to “bridge” spiritualscientific concepts with the highly materialistic understanding and language of the current world. We know the “sting” or the backlash that awaits us should we engage in constructive bridging work. But we need to do it if we are to be true defenders of the spiritual in the world. This is urgent because the twenty-first century is the century of ahrimanic science and technology.

Steiner, very much aware of this challenge, addressed this in the tenth lecture in his cycle titled The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness :

We must never forget that even people who have made a connection with the science of the spirit often have almost insuperable difficulties in building the bridge to the realm of ahrimanic science. […] I have gone to a great deal of trouble to encourage them to build bridges. Think of what could have been achieved if a physiologist or a biologist who had all the specialized knowledge that it is possible to gain in such fields today had reconsidered physiology or biology in the light of the spirit, not exactly using our terminology, but considering those individual sciences in our spirit! […] This, however, is the urgent need in our time 12

So the question for those who truly feel that they belong to the School of Micha-el is this: Can we collectively catch up and bring spiritual science into a meaningful and constructive engagement with the world, using the proper social tact? Can we speak a language steeped in spiritual science as a foundational framing context, and combine this with knowledge of cutting-edge, twentyfirst-century science and extensive familiarity with world events, as the comprehensive basis for this meaningful and urgent engagement with the world?

11 The Christmas Conference (Anthroposophic Press, 1990), GA 260, December 25, 1923.

12 The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2023), GA 177, October 20, 1917, emphasis added.

This is not only needed in the sciences, but in all areas of life, especially social life, where the capacity to “bridge” is absolutely essential in order for spiritual science to permeate and heal the world.

In conclusion, the greatest need in our time today is to engage in the battle for Truth. We can only succeed in doing this if we have overcome the wound of Amfortas in ourselves and if we have awakened the Parsifal forces in our lives. Then, and only then, can we meaningfully stand in defense of the human being. And stand we will, together with the gods, to actualize the amazing future that awaits humanity.

Nicanor Perlas is chairman of a large foundation helping over half a million micro-enterprising poor and the President of Solution Ecosystems Activator, which is installing large-scale societal threefolding initiatives in four towns in the Philippines. He is a key leader in the national resistance against totalitarian Covid mandates that is playing out in the Senate and the Supreme Court. For the national and global impact of his work, he received the UN Global 500 Award and the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. His website is www.covidcalltohumanity.org