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{{GZ|Today we have come down to the physical plane with all our institutions. If a moral culture does not go along with the culture on the physical plane, the physical achievements will have a destructive effect. Through the development of morality, man will be able to generate quite different forces from those which now exist on the physical plane. Keely set his motor in motion by vibrations which he excited in his own organism. Such vibrations depend on the moral nature of man. This is a first ray of dawn for what will emerge as the technology of the future. In the future we will have machines that will only start moving when the forces come from people who are moral. Immoral people will not be able to set such machines in motion. Purely mechanical mechanism must be transformed into moral mechanism.|97|40f}}  
{{GZ|Today we have come down to the physical plane with all our institutions. If a moral culture does not go along with the culture on the physical plane, the physical achievements will have a destructive effect. Through the development of morality, man will be able to generate quite different forces from those which now exist on the physical plane. Keely set his motor in motion by vibrations which he excited in his own organism. Such vibrations depend on the moral nature of man. This is a first ray of dawn for what will emerge as the technology of the future. In the future we will have machines that will only start moving when the forces come from people who are moral. Immoral people will not be able to set such machines in motion. Purely mechanical mechanism must be transformed into moral mechanism.|97|40f}}  


This moral technology is based on a further development of mechanics, in which great mechanical force effects are generated solely by the focussing and harmonious harmony of vibrations, which receive their initial impetus from the periodic life processes in our rhythmic system, i.e. namely from our heartbeat and breathing rhythm, and are transmitted to the machine by fine, highly sensitive vibrational elements. The machine thereby adapts itself completely to the human being, his mental experience and his moral qualities, leaving his full spiritual freedom untouched. The use of the destructive forces of sub-nature (electricity, magnetism, nuclear forces), through which man very easily falls under the bondage of the ahrimanic double and which are physiologically connected in particular with our nervous-sensory system, is thereby dispensed with. Steiner saw an early precursor of this development in [[John Worrell Keely]], who had developed the famous [[Keely motor]], which Steiner used as a model for the [[Strader apparatus]] in his [[mystery dramas]].  
This moral technology is based on a further development of mechanics, in which great mechanical force effects are generated solely by the focussing and harmonious harmony of vibrations, which receive their initial impetus from the periodic life processes in our rhythmic system, i.e. namely from our heartbeat and breathing rhythm, and are transmitted to the machine by fine, highly sensitive vibrational elements. The machine thereby adapts itself completely to the human being, his mental experience and his moral qualities, leaving his full spiritual freedom untouched. The use of the destructive forces of sub-nature (electricity, magnetism, nuclear forces), through which man very easily falls under the bondage of the ahrimanic double and which are physiologically connected in particular with our nervous-sensory system, is thereby dispensed with. Steiner saw an early precursor of this development in [[John Worrell Keely]], who had developed the famous [[Keely motor]], which Steiner used as a model for the [[Strader apparatus]] in his [[Mystery Dramas]].  


{{GZ|Perhaps you know that Keely constructed an engine that only worked when he was there himself. He didn't fool people with it, because he had in himself that driving force which comes out of the soul and can set mechanical things in motion. A driving force that can only be moral, that is the idea of the future; the most important force that must be implanted in culture if it is not to overturn itself. The mechanical and the moral will interpenetrate, because then the mechanical is nothing without the moral. We are standing on the brink of this today. In the future, machines will be driven not only with water and steam, but with spiritual power, with spiritual morality. This power is symbolised by the sign of the Tau and has already been poetically indicated by the image of the Holy Grail. Just as man is no longer dependent only on using what nature freely gives him, but just as he shapes and reshapes nature, just as he has become the master builder of the non-living, so he will become the master builder of the living.|93|286}}  
{{GZ|Perhaps you know that Keely constructed an engine that only worked when he was there himself. He didn't fool people with it, because he had in himself that driving force which comes out of the soul and can set mechanical things in motion. A driving force that can only be moral, that is the idea of the future; the most important force that must be implanted in culture if it is not to overturn itself. The mechanical and the moral will interpenetrate, because then the mechanical is nothing without the moral. We are standing on the brink of this today. In the future, machines will be driven not only with water and steam, but with spiritual power, with spiritual morality. This power is symbolised by the sign of the Tau and has already been poetically indicated by the image of the Holy Grail. Just as man is no longer dependent only on using what nature freely gives him, but just as he shapes and reshapes nature, just as he has become the master builder of the non-living, so he will become the master builder of the living.|93|286}}  
{{GZ|What has mainly occurred in the course of the fourth post-Atlantean period is that man has first been detached from the outer inorganic world which he embodies in his tools. He will in turn be brought together with that which he embodies in his tools. Today machines are constructed. Of course, machines today are objective, the human is still little in them. But it will not always be like this. The course of the world is such that a connection is developing between what man is and what man produces, what man brings forth. This connection will become more and more intimate. It will first emerge in those fields which establish a closer relationship between man and man, for example, in the treatment of chemical substances which are processed into medicines. Today we still believe that if something consists of sulphur and oxygen and some other substance, hydrogen, or something else, then that which has been created as a product contains only those effects which come from the individual substances. To a great extent this is still true today, but the course of the world's evolution is different. The subtle pulsations of the human life of will and attitude will weave themselves more and more into that which man produces, and it will not be indifferent whether one receives a prepared substance from one man or from another.
Even the most extreme, coldest technical development tends towards a quite definite goal. Those who today can form a foreboding idea of the future of technical development know that in the future whole factories will work individually, depending on the person who manages the factory. The attitude will enter the factory and be transferred to the way the machines work. Man will grow together with objectivity. Everything we touch will gradually bear the imprint of human nature. And times will come, as foolish as it may seem to clever people today - but St. Paul already said that what people think is clever is sometimes foolishness in the sight of God - when a mechanism will stand there, at rest; A man will step in who will know that he has to make one hand movement in this way, another in a certain way, a third in this way, and through that which arises as air vibrations and which is the consequence of a certain sign, the motor will be set in motion which will be attuned to this sign.
And the national economic development will take on such a face that external patents and the like will be completely excluded, for what lies in such things will be replaced by what I have just explained. In return, however, everything that has no relation to human nature will be eliminated. This will bring about something quite definite. For just think of a really good man in the future, a man who is really on a special level of human feeling, what will he be able to do? He will be able to construct machines and set signs for them that can only be carried out by people who are as well-meaning as he is, who are therefore also well-meaning. And all the evil-minded will excite quite a different vibration with the sign, and the machine will not go!|172|91f}}
In the East, on the other hand, a "eugenic occultism" of mental birth control will develop, and in the centre a "hygienic occultism" through which one will learn to prevent diseases prophylactically by psychological means. 
{{GZ|First, it is the capacity for so-called material occultism. Through this ability - and this is precisely the ideal of the British secret societies - certain social forms, which today underlie industrialisation, are to be placed on an entirely different basis. Every knowing member of these secret circles knows that simply by means of certain faculties, which are still latent in man today, but which are developing, it is possible to set machines and mechanical devices and other things in motion on a large scale by means of the law of harmonious vibrations. You will find a small hint of this in what I have linked to the person of Strader in my Mystery Dramas.
These things are in the making today. These things are kept as a secret within those secret circles in the field of material occultism. There are motors which can be set in motion by a very slight human influence if the relevant oscillation curve is known. In this way it will be possible to replace many things for which human power is needed today by purely mechanical power. Today there are already fourteen hundred million human beings on earth; but not only is work done by these fourteen hundred million - I have explained this here once - but so much work is done in a purely mechanical way that one can say that the earth today is actually populated by two thousand million human beings; the others are simply machines; that is to say, if the work done by machines had to be done by human beings without machines, six hundred million more human beings would have to live on earth. But when what I now call mechanical occultism enters the field of practical effectiveness, which is an ideal of those secret centres, one will not only be able to do work for five or six hundred million people, but one will be able to do work for a thousand and more million people. This will make it possible that within the area of the English-speaking population nine-tenths of the human labour will become unnecessary. But mechanical occultism not only makes it possible to dispense with nine-tenths of the work which is still done by human hands, but it also makes it possible to paralyse every insurrectionary movement of the then unsatisfied mass of men. The ability to set motors in motion according to the law of interlocking oscillations, this ability will just develop in abundance among the British-speaking population. This is known in those secret circles. They reckon on this as that which will give them superiority over the rest of the earth's population in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean period.|186|71f}}


== Literature ==
== Literature ==

Revision as of 06:23, 30 October 2021

Model of the Strader-Apparat, made by Hans Kühn according to the original model that had been made for the performance of the mystery drama "The Guardian of the Threshold", Munich 1913, according to Rudolf Steiner's specifications.
One half of a late version of Keely's spherical ether-power machine in a corner of his workshop in Phialdelphia (1896).

Mechanistic occultism or material occultism is what Rudolf Steiner called an ability that will awaken very soon, especially in Western humanity, to set machines in motion through spiritual or psychic forces alone. But this will only be possible if people have undergone a corresponding moral development. This can lead to a moral technology of the future, as Rudolf Steiner already saw realised to some extent in the machines of John Ernst Worrell Keely (1837-1898). In addition, a eugenic occultism will emerge in the East and a hygienic occultism in the European centre. But there will also be efforts to abuse these occult forces in a group-egoist sense.

„Today we have come down to the physical plane with all our institutions. If a moral culture does not go along with the culture on the physical plane, the physical achievements will have a destructive effect. Through the development of morality, man will be able to generate quite different forces from those which now exist on the physical plane. Keely set his motor in motion by vibrations which he excited in his own organism. Such vibrations depend on the moral nature of man. This is a first ray of dawn for what will emerge as the technology of the future. In the future we will have machines that will only start moving when the forces come from people who are moral. Immoral people will not be able to set such machines in motion. Purely mechanical mechanism must be transformed into moral mechanism.“ (Lit.:GA 97, p. 40f)

This moral technology is based on a further development of mechanics, in which great mechanical force effects are generated solely by the focussing and harmonious harmony of vibrations, which receive their initial impetus from the periodic life processes in our rhythmic system, i.e. namely from our heartbeat and breathing rhythm, and are transmitted to the machine by fine, highly sensitive vibrational elements. The machine thereby adapts itself completely to the human being, his mental experience and his moral qualities, leaving his full spiritual freedom untouched. The use of the destructive forces of sub-nature (electricity, magnetism, nuclear forces), through which man very easily falls under the bondage of the ahrimanic double and which are physiologically connected in particular with our nervous-sensory system, is thereby dispensed with. Steiner saw an early precursor of this development in John Worrell Keely, who had developed the famous Keely motor, which Steiner used as a model for the Strader apparatus in his Mystery Dramas.

„Perhaps you know that Keely constructed an engine that only worked when he was there himself. He didn't fool people with it, because he had in himself that driving force which comes out of the soul and can set mechanical things in motion. A driving force that can only be moral, that is the idea of the future; the most important force that must be implanted in culture if it is not to overturn itself. The mechanical and the moral will interpenetrate, because then the mechanical is nothing without the moral. We are standing on the brink of this today. In the future, machines will be driven not only with water and steam, but with spiritual power, with spiritual morality. This power is symbolised by the sign of the Tau and has already been poetically indicated by the image of the Holy Grail. Just as man is no longer dependent only on using what nature freely gives him, but just as he shapes and reshapes nature, just as he has become the master builder of the non-living, so he will become the master builder of the living.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 286)

„What has mainly occurred in the course of the fourth post-Atlantean period is that man has first been detached from the outer inorganic world which he embodies in his tools. He will in turn be brought together with that which he embodies in his tools. Today machines are constructed. Of course, machines today are objective, the human is still little in them. But it will not always be like this. The course of the world is such that a connection is developing between what man is and what man produces, what man brings forth. This connection will become more and more intimate. It will first emerge in those fields which establish a closer relationship between man and man, for example, in the treatment of chemical substances which are processed into medicines. Today we still believe that if something consists of sulphur and oxygen and some other substance, hydrogen, or something else, then that which has been created as a product contains only those effects which come from the individual substances. To a great extent this is still true today, but the course of the world's evolution is different. The subtle pulsations of the human life of will and attitude will weave themselves more and more into that which man produces, and it will not be indifferent whether one receives a prepared substance from one man or from another.

Even the most extreme, coldest technical development tends towards a quite definite goal. Those who today can form a foreboding idea of the future of technical development know that in the future whole factories will work individually, depending on the person who manages the factory. The attitude will enter the factory and be transferred to the way the machines work. Man will grow together with objectivity. Everything we touch will gradually bear the imprint of human nature. And times will come, as foolish as it may seem to clever people today - but St. Paul already said that what people think is clever is sometimes foolishness in the sight of God - when a mechanism will stand there, at rest; A man will step in who will know that he has to make one hand movement in this way, another in a certain way, a third in this way, and through that which arises as air vibrations and which is the consequence of a certain sign, the motor will be set in motion which will be attuned to this sign.

And the national economic development will take on such a face that external patents and the like will be completely excluded, for what lies in such things will be replaced by what I have just explained. In return, however, everything that has no relation to human nature will be eliminated. This will bring about something quite definite. For just think of a really good man in the future, a man who is really on a special level of human feeling, what will he be able to do? He will be able to construct machines and set signs for them that can only be carried out by people who are as well-meaning as he is, who are therefore also well-meaning. And all the evil-minded will excite quite a different vibration with the sign, and the machine will not go!“ (Lit.:GA 172, p. 91f)

In the East, on the other hand, a "eugenic occultism" of mental birth control will develop, and in the centre a "hygienic occultism" through which one will learn to prevent diseases prophylactically by psychological means.

„First, it is the capacity for so-called material occultism. Through this ability - and this is precisely the ideal of the British secret societies - certain social forms, which today underlie industrialisation, are to be placed on an entirely different basis. Every knowing member of these secret circles knows that simply by means of certain faculties, which are still latent in man today, but which are developing, it is possible to set machines and mechanical devices and other things in motion on a large scale by means of the law of harmonious vibrations. You will find a small hint of this in what I have linked to the person of Strader in my Mystery Dramas.

These things are in the making today. These things are kept as a secret within those secret circles in the field of material occultism. There are motors which can be set in motion by a very slight human influence if the relevant oscillation curve is known. In this way it will be possible to replace many things for which human power is needed today by purely mechanical power. Today there are already fourteen hundred million human beings on earth; but not only is work done by these fourteen hundred million - I have explained this here once - but so much work is done in a purely mechanical way that one can say that the earth today is actually populated by two thousand million human beings; the others are simply machines; that is to say, if the work done by machines had to be done by human beings without machines, six hundred million more human beings would have to live on earth. But when what I now call mechanical occultism enters the field of practical effectiveness, which is an ideal of those secret centres, one will not only be able to do work for five or six hundred million people, but one will be able to do work for a thousand and more million people. This will make it possible that within the area of the English-speaking population nine-tenths of the human labour will become unnecessary. But mechanical occultism not only makes it possible to dispense with nine-tenths of the work which is still done by human hands, but it also makes it possible to paralyse every insurrectionary movement of the then unsatisfied mass of men. The ability to set motors in motion according to the law of interlocking oscillations, this ability will just develop in abundance among the British-speaking population. This is known in those secret circles. They reckon on this as that which will give them superiority over the rest of the earth's population in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean period.“ (Lit.:GA 186, p. 71f)

Literature

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.