Thursday 6 January 2022

Bodies Without Souls

In one of the recent interviews I did I was asked if I thought there existed in our world bodies without souls. As I recall my reply was somewhat non-committal and I said something along the lines that everyone has a soul but some people by their choices, their actions and their thoughts may have cut themselves off from their souls to such a degree that they could be regarded as soulless entities.

I didn't want to get into anything too esoteric in these interviews because they were about the Earth is a School idea and I wanted to keep the discussion simple. However, the world is currently under an occult attack of such proportions that it is incumbent on all religious people to deepen their understanding of the supernatural realm, the better to withstand this attack. What is taking place is part of a longstanding scheme to enable demonic forces to get a greater grip on the material world and human beings. Their plane of existence is largely cut off from the source of spiritual energy and so they want, perhaps even need as a matter of survival, to interact in some way with the physical world where they can have access to life energy. This they have previously done through attacking the energy fields of human beings, chiefly emotional but mental and vital too, but the growth of technology has given them other means of achieving their ends, and I would suggest that one of the methods they are developing is incarnation in the physical world through computers. Artificial intelligence can never in itself be anything more than mechanical but it is possible that demons could use it to interact with the physical world and, in that sense, it might become real. Computers are surely one of the greatest sources of evil ever to have afflicted the human race. Yes, I know I am using one now to write this but that really isn't the point. What computers do is reduce human beings and a large part of human consciousness and many aspects of human relationships to the quantifiable and the mechanical and the easily controllable. Basically, to the inhuman. I'm sorry if this offends some readers but, be honest, look at the world and how it has changed over the last 50 years and is changing increasingly. Can you deny what I say? And this is just the beginning unless something derails the process. To use the terminology of Rudolf Steiner, computers are the manifestation of Ahrimanic evil.

What is man? Essentially, a human being is various intermingling fields of energy, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, to keep it to its basics. The lower levels are the ones we normally function in on the material plane but these only have life in them because of the higher levels. It is the soul that animates the mind and body. Now, through wrong thinking, wrong imagination, which is both the creative and destructive force within us, wrong exercise of the will and wrong action we can separate ourselves from the source of our life to such a degree that we isolate ourselves on the physical plane. We can actually sever our contact with the soul, our spiritual core, so that it may continue to give life to the material side but that is all it does do for the consciousness has descended so far that it is locked in the material. It has erected a wall of darkness between itself and the spiritual. This is effectively a body without a soul. The soul is still there on its own level but contact with it (influence by, perception of) has been completely lost. This can be perceived by someone spiritually attuned in this world. You can perceive it in many people currently in positions of power. The eyes are indeed the windows to the soul. There is an emptiness in some people's eyes, a blankness.

Demons are beings in whom this process has been taken to its conclusion. They are non-physical but non-spiritual in the higher sense too. This means they have severed the connection to the spiritual and therefore to the life force. That is why they must steal energy through various means from incarnate humans. Because they are non-corporeal they are not bodies without souls but they could be seen as minds without souls.

Soulless entities are not necessarily evil in the conventional sense though those who are evil in that sense could potentially fall into this bracket, beings absorbed by their own shadow and open to domination by the aforementioned demonic forces. But you can be intellectually evil too and those cold, calculating, highly intelligent individuals who have, according to their own estimation, used logic and reason to dispel the notion of God also risk turning themselves into soulless entities. These would perhaps be defined as Ahrimanic evil as opposed to Luciferian evil, again using Rudolf Steiner's helpful terminology. They will be more defined by pride and lack of love than one of the 'hotter' sins such as lust, greed or selfishness. They can be capable of living almost like monks in terms of poverty, chastity and obedience (obedience not to God but to the laws as they see them of reason), but the motivation for this is purely intellectual and utilitarian. Cold and dead. There is nothing spiritual behind it at all. Study such types and you will see that there is never anything spontaneous about them. Everything is done from calculation. They will be drawn to computer technology because the mindset behind that represents their worldly ideal. Everything can be quantified, controlled, reduced to data. As I say, these people will not seem evil by the traditional standards but they are anti-God, anti-creation, anti-love, anti-beauty and if that is not evil I don't know what it is.

Before concluding there is one other aspects of the question I'd like to address. According to some esoteric teachings not all human beings have the same origins or come from the same source. Some have come down from higher worlds and so they are souls that have incarnated in matter to further their spiritual development. But others have risen up through the material side of existence. These people, usually fairly simple and primitive in consciousness, have not yet developed a soul. They are in the process of doing so and their life trajectories will lead them to that end if faithfully followed. Of course, this won't be a popular thought today but why should all human beings be the same in terms of their origins? Once you accept a spiritual world you can see how improbable that actually is.

But these souls are not evil in any sense, certainly not in the way the soulless entities who have cut themselves off from their spiritual side have made themselves to be. They are simple, more attached to the material world than most and more obviously belonging to that world. They will be less intellectual in outlook but quite capable of creativity and accomplishment in terms of their consciousness. You might think I am referring to one particular class of people but I don't think these types can be defined in terms of human groups. They could be in all groups though most probably in some more than others.

Everybody in this world must have some spiritual contact or else they would die. But there are some who have, to a greater or lesser degree, cut themselves off from their souls because of wrong thinking and perverted will. For this is not just a matter of ignorance. To lose touch with your soul is chiefly the result of a will that has turned against God and creation. The root of all sin is in the will.

12 comments:

Chris said...

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Bruce Charlton said...

@William - Your description of how everybody does have a 'soul' but in some people it is cut off - is my own understanding of the situation; which I partly derived from William Arkle in A geography of Consciousness, where he describes and illustrates this for the true-self (= the soul).

Looking back it seems to me that for a period of my life I was actively trying to bury my soul in this way, because it seemed to stand in the way of having the most pleasurable kind of life. I was always fighting what I would now regard as my own best 'instincts' - or more accurately intuitions.

So I feel as if I have some idea of what it would be like to be a soul-less person; who has given himself over to external stimuli and motivations. The idea would be to go through life in a detached and way, immune to pain of distress about whatever happened, and take advantages of any opportunities for pleasure that present themselves.

I get the impression that many of those who seek 'oneness' - and who achieve some kind of discipline and self control via the practice of that type of meditation, actually end up like that. They seek to avoid suffering by becoming detached and denying the reality/ significance of this mortal life and trying to extinguish 'the ego'; and end up being more or less passively-psychopathic.

William Wildblood said...

I have been obliged by circumstances to have quite a close relationship with someone who ticks most of the boxes of being a soulless entity. This person is all intellect but with no spiritual sense at all which he completely rejects. He has a kind of cold passion for reason and logic and enjoys classical music but for its structure more than its heart. He is a rigid moralist but again his morality comes from the head rather than the heart and is the result of analysis and calculation. He obeys his system but never goes beyond it as a truly moral person would because it's entirely rule based. I used to wonder why I had to have such a close contact with this person but actually I have learnt a lot from observing him. I have seen in practise what I might otherwise only have surmised theoretically.

What About Now? said...

"Computers are surely one of the greatest sources of evil ever to have afflicted the human race"

What now that they are here?

Are you familiar with the book or movie Dune? In it thinking machines, computers, are banned totally with the death penalty if anyone constructs them.

Have you heard of analog computers? In the 1950s prior to digital computers the analog computer was the norm, the ones with a lot of dials and switches. They could be the solution.

What About Now? said...

"The root of all sin is in the will."

What do you mean by this? Isn't it necessary to exercise one's will in development as an individual?

Belief in one's own will was big in the dying Western world.

Still, I observe there appears to be a hostile response from Reality to one's own will so there must be more to it.

William Wildblood said...

Now that computers are here we have to use them for the time being but as we do we should be very conscious of their spirit-denying effects. I am sure they damage our spiritual consciousness but at the moment that just can't be helped. God knows this so expectations are adjusted accordingly.

I have no idea what the future holds but I don't see it carrying on in a straight line with an increasing development of materialistic technology. That is not sustainable. Whether there will be collapse, gentle decline or adjustment of some sort remains to be seen. The Christian view of the End Times is the one that makes most sense to me but we don't know how exactly that works out.

I've heard of Dune but don't know anything about it. I'm not convinced that the death penalty would be a solution for the computer problem!

It's not exercising the will that is the root of sin. To exercise the will is our divine right and responsibility. It is wrong exercise of the will that is the problem. To say the root of sin is in the will means it is our choices that matter and why we make them.

JMSmith said...

I have always been fascinated by the Nephilim, or "giants," that are said to have sprung from the union of fallen angles and the daughters of men. Swedenborg is a very mixed bag, in my opinion, but he says interesting things about the Nephilim, and about their mulatto progeny, the Anakim and Rephaim.

“The Nephalim signify those who from a persuasion of their own loftiness and preeminence, make nothing of all things holy and true . . . . that with their most dreadful fantasies, which are poured forth by them as a poisonous and suffocating sphere, they so deaden and stifle every spirit, that spirits know not the least how to think, and seem to themselves half dead” (Heavenly Arcana [1749]).

Swedenborg believed that the Nephalim, Anakim and Rephaim were in his day chained in Hell, but when he wrote his Heavenly Arcana in the middle of the eighteenth century, we now know the great jailbreak was already underway. Humanism is clearly the creed of the Nephalim, as it is of all modern men who are under “a persuasion of their own loftiness and preeminence,” and humanism certainly pours forth “dreadful fantasies” in a “poisonous and suffocating sphere” that “stifles every spirit,” making them “seem to themselves half dead.”

I find it very easy to see the tribulations of today as a conquest of the earth by these “giants.” Looking at today’s global elite, a dissident will be reminded of Numbers 13:33.

“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”

Grasshoppers, deplorables, dirt people, insurrectionists, etc., etc. It may be significant that much of today’s environmentalist-overpopulation doctrine views ordinary human beings as destructive “grasshoppers.”

One last thing I would note is that Nimrod is described as a “mighty hunter,” which I take to mean a “giant,” and it was Nimrod who built the Tower of Babel. It seems to me obvious that the Tower of Babel is a symbol of the Humanist global empire in which the “giants” rule, and frequently step on, the "grasshoppers."

William Wildblood said...

That's very interesting. I have heard about the Nephilim, of course, and the Watchers who betrayed their trust and lusted after mortal women, and I am sure this describes something in humanity's archaic pre-Flood past. There is some murky stuff back there that was locked up for a while but seems to have been released over the last couple of centuries in both incarnate and discarnate form in my opinion, perhaps the better to clean it all up once and for all.

Anonymous said...

Steiner distinguished between the Soul and the Spirit, and believed the early Chuch did too, and that this doctrine was rejected and that this was a tragic error.
(He named and gave the date of the Council when this docrine was made)

He seemed to belive - though I'm not an anthroposophist and don't fully understand the distinction so might be getting this mixed up - that the Soul was a kind of inner spiritual environment of the person, but that the Spirit was the part of man that was divine, something far more than just an inner-self but was rather 'with God'.
Again, I could be getting this wrong,but it seemd to mean that it was inviolate, and though 'ourself', must be something that we must unite with.
This is dangerous ground if pushed in the wrong direction towards a Man = God error, but perhaps there is something in it if we look at it as a created perfection by God, which cannot be taken from him even by our sin or error, but to which we must strive to enjoin ourselves. I would hasten to emphasise that this can only be done through Christ and God (Steiner's understanding of these is not something that resonates with me, so far as I understand them; and any development of the 'Self' independent of them through spiritual exercises, etc., is, to me, redundant.)

If we fail, the perfect possibility that God intended for us has not been lost but is with him eternally, but the part of us that is all we are mostly aware of now, here on earth, has been lost.
The mystery of free will was given to us so that we may choose and strive towards that, rather than 'just' be a being that was made perfect.
If any of this is the case, I cannot say what part of us and to what extent it 'is' us is that would exist in Heaven with God should we fall, nor what exactly it is that has been lost/not been redeemed.

Anyway, if Steiner was right about there being a distinction between Soul and Spirit, do you think that perhaps with some people of the kind you have described that they have rejected Spirit and God, but have maybe embraced a dark version of Soul (or at least a parody or shadow of it) ?
It seems to me that many of them, though obviously atheistic, are pursuing materialist aims which cannot benefit them, even to the extent of spending most of their lives plotting to achieve ends which can only be realised long after they are dead.
Perhaps they do believe in the endurance of their ego post mortem, but in a very dark sense - either by uniting with a dark supernatural force after they die which (or 'who') is the motivation and result of their lives' actions, or by reuniting in a later incarnation with the spoils of an earlier life.
Much of the ostensibly materialist evils we can see happening at the moment do seem to have a deliberate and known 'supernatural' motivation to them.

Anonymous said...

http://threeman.org/?p=1092

(This talks about the Council)

William Wildblood said...

You say Steiner said that "the Soul is a kind of inner spiritual environment of the person, but that the Spirit was the part of man that was divine, something far more than just an inner-self but was rather 'with God'. " That is precisely what I believe too. I see the soul as our spiritual individuality which incarnates in the material world but is much more than we can perceive in this sphere of limited awareness. It's as though some extra dimensions have been lost. The spirit is the divine spark within us, that part where we are united with God and ultimately our life. The journey of the soul is to become consciously one with the spirit but it can go bad. directing itself downwards rather than upwards.

Nomenclature can be confusing. I'm using body and soul here simply to distinguish between the material and the spiritual but I do think that, as you eloquently put it, some beings "embrace a dark version of Soul (or at least a parody or shadow of it)". They then become corrupted souls that have cut themselves off from spirit. So just as in this world you can have bodies without souls (and I used that phrase because the question was originally put to me in that form) so in the non-material planes you can have souls without spirit, that is to say, beings that have cut themselves off from their spirit.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I think I agree with your description/explanation in your second paragraph.

I could be inaccurately describing what Steiner said, though. The Terry Boardman article in the link is very interesting but shows that the question of Soul & Spirit - whether in anthroposophy or church theology - appears quite complicated.