Sunday 26 April 2020

Terry Boardman on the current crisis

Ever since this crisis broke, I have been awaiting with anticipation Terry Boardman's analysis: here it is - I excerpt a few of the more striking (and accessible) insights (lightly edited - italics are mine):

Again and again in his lectures on The Karma of Untruthfulness, Steiner emphasised the importance of the search for truth. He began with the question that was in everyone’s minds at that time of the First World War: “what can I do in this crisis?” – and answered simply and directly: “Endeavour to understand! See through things!”

Thoughts, he said, are forces and have effects. What people think is far more important than what they do, because thoughts become deeds in the course of time

We live today on the thoughts of past times; these thoughts are fulfilled in the deeds of today. Clear and proper understanding of what is going on is the only way – “Nothing else is of any use”

We need wide-awake vigilance and discrimination in all things. All forms of atavistic mediumism and spiritual practice that avoid the conscious mind are anti-modern and harmful. At the very beginning of his public life, in his book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1894; a.k.a. The Philosophy of Freedom), Steiner showed how it is vital to combine the correct thought with the object, to find the concept that truly corresponds to the percept. 

Nothing is better for a person, he said, than real insight into how things work in the world. The truth can never be as damaging as an untruth and to adhere to the truth is a solemn and holy act of worship. Have courage for truth, he urged; stand on the foundation of truth, even if it is harmful or embarrassing. 

It is essential “to develop the will to see things, to see how human beings are manipulated, to see where there might be impulses by which people are manipulated. This is the same as striving for the sense for truth. ….

This Consciousness Soul epoch (1413-3573), which according to Steiner lasts 2160 years, will continue until the middle of the 4th millennium. A crucial aspect of this epoch is for individuals to become conscious of themselves as spiritual beings and of their relationship to the worlds of spirit, nature and other human beings. This is something that only individuals can do in freedom; it cannot be done en masse, as a group... 

In this epoch the main challenge is for individuals to penetrate their mental life so that they can become the conscious masters of their thinking. The Consciousness Soul Age will be followed by the Age of the Spirit-Self, the first period in which the spirit of man will be developed, as distinct from the soul. The focus in that epoch will not be so much on individuals and thinking but on the development of new communities and a higher, more refined life of feeling...

The current coronavirus crisis in this 21st century since the time of Christ is taking place within this struggle for the corona (crown) of world power between China and America... 

From the early 1970s until today we have seen countless examples of this animalisation. In their paranoid overreaction to the coronavirus, governments have sought to reduce whole nations to sheep, locked up in domestic ‘pens’, unable to move freely until their ‘shepherds’ allow, and whole nations have meekly complied. 

Public social and cultural life has all but been sheared off and we wait dumbly for we know not what. Perhaps a vaccine that, like sheep, we shall all be required to take for purposes of “health and safety”, our vaccination records accessible on an implanted ID chip in our bodies, just as farm animals already have...

Meanwhile, as we are not in fact sheep but human beings, we can at least use this current imposed detention in our ‘pens’ to study, research, think and meditate, and try to understand what is going on, even though much of that research and study may have to be in the ahrimanic realm of the Internet (the inspiration for which, like almost all modern technology, came from that realm). 

We can take courage from the knowledge, a result of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual research, that in this Age of the Consciousness Soul, in this 21st century of the Christian Era, and in this Michaelic Age, since the 1930s17 the Christ Being, the Divine Logos, has been visible to those who can perceive Him in the etheric mantle of the Earth, which is the realm of the angels. 

There He is borne by an angel, as in Palestine He was borne for just three years by a human being. Since the Ascension he has united Himself with the Earth. This can become a great source of strength and comfort to people in times such as ours.

(Note: this essay is difficult, esoteric in a way different from my own frame of understanding - nonetheless, I regard it as full of deep insights.) 

9 comments:

Brief Outlines said...

Boardman's article is also published in the New View magazine, where you can find other excellent articles on the subject such as the one written by Richard Ramsbottom. I highly recommend getting hold of a copy for that article if you haven't already.

Bruce Charlton said...

@B-O I find New View a bit pricey to subscribe to for the odd article of interest to me. I find it strange that nowadays anyone would bother publishing in such a tiny circulation magazine without making their work also available online (as Terry Boardman does) - I started republishing everything of significance online from about 1997.

It is also strange, and significant, that the Rudolf Steiner Archive contains almost everything he wrote but Not "The Karma of Untruthfulness" - which must be bought as an expensive (needlessly 2 volume) book. It seems obvious that the Anthroposophical Society are continuing to hold back on these lectures - more than a century after they were given.

They can be listened to free on Rudolf Steiner Audio (well done Dale Brunsvold!) - however, I find them unbearably prolix in this form (Steiner takes forever to get to the points) - so I think it would be preferable to read KoU (where skimming is possible) rather than to listen. But I have not yet done so.

Stephen Macdonald said...

Bruce, I come here because most of what you write has the ring of truth. I get a similar sense of truthfulness from the video interview of the Calfornia MDs who challenge the prevailing global narrative. These men "feel" honest and good to me. By contrast, the disembodied voice of the interviewer (who is on the verge of an angry outburst the whole time) comes across as unmistakably demonic.

This is a long video (51 minutes) but if perchance you are able to watch some of it I'd be very interested in your reaction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfLVxx_lBLU

Bruce Charlton said...

@N - I watched about 5 minutes, and I agree they seem sensible folk.

However, they seem to be labouring under the usual error that the lockdown has something to do with responding to the birdemic; when the lockdown is the primary purpose (fully achieved - job done!), and the birdemic is just an excuse. Which is why, considered as a response, the current situation is full of contradictions, errors and lies.

More people will be dying from the lockdown than deaths that are temporarily *delayed* by somewhat slowing the transmission - which is all that the current policy does. A respiratory virus cannot be excluded in the medium term (weeks) except by *total* isolation - as in specialist infectiour disease units, zero world travel or trade etc. Masks, gloves, disinfectant just somewhat reduce the rate. That's why in closed environments - like ships, residential homes etc - everybody gets exposed whatever you do. And about 65-85% then become immune with no symptoms.

The authorities very obviously do not want to lift the lockdown - not because they are afraid of people dying but because they prefer the masses to be locked down. Currently They have us where They want us - and are in no hurry to free us from our cages.

Stephen Macdonald said...

@Bruce -- thanks for the feedback. Toward the end, these doctors intimate that whatever merits social distancing may have had early on, today the lockdown is being done for reasons unrelated to public health. They imply the motives are sinister. I agree with you though that neither they nor the vast majority of people comprehends just how cosmically significant this all is.

Thanks for your untiring efforts on this blog.

Bruce Charlton said...

@BillT - Try following those links...

Bruce Charlton said...

@Nova - "neither they nor the vast majority of people comprehends just how cosmically significant this all is"

This is what I find absolutely staggering. How could people not notice this? - and yet, they don't...

As I have said: once it was officially (with sanctions against denying it) true that a man could change into a woman (and back again, if desired) - and that there was officially no difference between a man changed into a woman, and a woman - *then* we were ready for an accomplished totalitarian takeover of the world that nobody would notice and everybody would deny.

Once it had been officially decided that castrating boys and speying girls was a morally glorius example of human progress to be promoted, subsidised and celebrated (and to deny this was evil) - *then* the masses were ready to embrace the life of a caged serf (tied to a particular piece of land, traveling only with permission of the master); to insist on the same for all others as a ethical necessity; and to demand the further progression from serfdom into slavery ASAP.

Stephen Macdonald said...

@Bruce

Well if anyone had any lingering doubts regarding the nature of the current global elite coup, YouTube has pulled the video of the Calfornia ER doctors who publicly questioned the need for a massive lockdown. Here in Canada, parliament has simply vanished. Perhaps one person in a hundred even seems notice we're no longer a democracy. Fewer still care.

Nevertheless, take heart! As a friend who is a fervent follower of Jesus said to me recently: "you mean we finally get to be persecuted?"

Bruce Charlton said...

@Nova -

"we finally get to be persecuted"

This time around, Christians are being persecuted by the Christian Churches. By the simple expedient of them closing-down all neccessary functions and locking the buildings (because the church leaders have deemed these 'inessential').

Naturally, the churches are still asking for undiminished financial support.