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tantly, whether those concepts fit reality or not. Therefore it was inevitable that, even with such detailed historical books like Turing’s Cathedral and Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators, which give an almost blow-by-blow account of the development of computing ideas, there existed no real motif that answers the essential question: “Why did it take this particular route?” It was the old story of hav-ing a name for every bend of the river but having no name for the river. Moreover, historical books take the existing development for granted, as if that was the only possible way things could have evolved, and more importantly, they do not challenge the concepts used by the pioneers and inventors, nor take human development into ac-count. So this line of investigation reached a dead end: there was way too much detail, and way too lit-tle in terms of coherent overarch-ing human concepts.

Following this dead end, an-throposophical literature was ana-lyzed. Several works address this subject head on. Gondishapur to Silicon Valley by Paul Emberson indicated not only the overall de-velopment of ideas, but also several references from Ru-dolf Steiner’s work mentioning the nature of computing technology in terms of spiritual science. Steve Talbott’s excellent work, such as Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in the Age of Machines, indicated the social ef-fect of computing technology very well, drawing on his own computing background. In addition, several ways of

by Gopi Krishna Vijaya, PhDEditor’s note: Some months ago we received a very clear and

readable document which traces how the logic used in and essential to today’s computers and mechanization branched off from the fuller logic of human experience. Though it offers only a restricted subset of human capacities, machine logic has become the measure even for human develop-ment. Dr. Vijaya’s sixty-page book is too long for us to pub-lish, so we asked him to share a summary of his research and insights. A PDF document of the full text is available on request; e-mail editor@anthroposophy.org for a copy.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Henry David Thoreau

There has been such a massive emphasis on technol-ogy around us that in its glare the condition of man is like a deer caught in the headlights. In this condition, understanding the very nature of technology, particularly computing technology, appears quite tricky—especially when there is a natural antipathy generated in almost ev-erybody who has a wholesome human sense for things. Yet, in one way or another, it is absolutely essential to get to the bottom of it. My booklet Technology and the Laws of Thought is an attempt at doing precisely that.

The work arose due to graduate research where the author had to tackle several problems in theoretical phys-ics utilizing computer programs and hardware-software interfaces. The question “What is a computer, really?” began to stand right at the forefront as the research pro-gressed. Conventional technical approaches simply take the logic of computing for granted, and delve right into the details of the working computer. Any reader would quickly get lost in the forest of algorithms, logical circuits, language syntax, and calculation times, even with very basic level computing. On the other hand, while read-ing the history of development of the subject, it appeared clear that almost no one looked at the history of comput-ing thought symptomatically. Nowadays, most analyses of the subject restrict themselves to simply outlining the de-velopment of concepts which took place in the past, such as the invention of binary number system, calculators, and computers, without paying adequate attention to how those concepts came to be developed—and more impor-

Technology and the Laws of Thought

Conventional approaches take the logic of computing for granted, and delve right into the details of the working computer. Any reader would quickly get lost in the forest of algorithms, logical circuits, language syntax, and calculation times...

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offsetting the effects of computers were also described. In these works, the essential concepts were tackled by them-selves, especially as they relate to the human being. Yet a clear bridge was not present to connect the already well-developed theories of computing to the kind of thinking activity developed in, for example, the Philosophy of Spiri-tual Activity, even though Carl Unger’s work had pushed that thinking forward tremendously. What was necessary was to balance general concepts derived from anthropo-sophical spiritual science against the excessive detail given in traditional books on computing, so that the path to the human can be derived from the study of the logic itself.

It was with David Black’s work Computer and the In-carnation of Ahriman that this bridge first became visible. It was an indispensible masterpiece, where the relation of the logic of thought to the logic of computers (Boolean al-gebra) was discussed, freely using concepts from anthro-posophy. This pushed open the door, and the next step was to assemble a picture of the very core development

of the computing process. Build-ing that bridge was the key pur-pose of Technology and the Laws of Thought.

My approach has been to ob-serve the thinking process closely. This was done to identify differ-ent qualities that the process nec-essarily has in itself, such as the feeling-element and the willing-element, as directly indicated by life experience. It became clear that the development of mechani-cal aids to thought was mainly related to the will-power, or strength, of the thinking process.

Using the analogy between physical strength and mental strength, a place is created for the concept of will to be considered in thought as well, on par with well known factors like the structure of the brain and chemistry. This will factor has been largely ignored in conventional un-derstanding, as it is not readily suited to cast in a logical form. Examining will-power in thought also led the way into the past, where it was shown that the nature of ex-perience guided logic, and hence it is important to come to terms with experience based on which the logic was derived. It is one thing to talk about algorithms and logi-cal connections, and quite another to examine how those arise from basic life experience.

With the door to the past being opened with these ideas, a systematic development is followed, starting from early Renaissance and Enlightenment ideas of mechanics and computing (by the likes of Leibniz, Bacon, and Des-cartes) to the results of the modern day (Boole, Frege, and von Neumann). Boolean algebra is treated in some detail, showing how the algebra works and how it matches up to normal experience. This point was necessary since it lies at the heart of all computing technology. On the way, the crisis that occurred at the middle of the 19th century is described, and the form of logic and mathematics created at this pinnacle of the Industrial Era is analyzed. A lot of ideas that came to the fore in this time period were basi-cally a re-invention of the logic of Ancient Greece, but cast into a modern mechanical mold. Seeing this enabled direct parallels between Aristotelian logic and Boolean al-gebra, and the precise changes introduced in order to suit the logic to mechanization. In other words, the fork in the road was found, where one path led to increasing mecha-nization, the other to an increase of human capacities.

Now it was evident that the origin of computing does not lie in a natural development moving forward from earlier results in logic, but is actually a restriction of the domain of logic to that which can be mechanized. It was also found that mathematics and logic took this route mainly because many concepts held as true for two thousand years (such as Euclidean Geometry) were com-ing into question at that time, bringing uncertainty into the very foundations of mathematics and logic. Putting it plainly, the mathematicians freaked out. Yet, instead of starting afresh with a new path for tackling logic, the very opposite route was taken, marking the birth of comput-ing technology. These were the findings of Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing and other such pioneers. Instead of facing the paradoxes generated by using traditional logic and mov-ing ahead, as was done for example by Hegel, the para-doxes were shunned by seeking refuge in a restricted form of logic—but the same problems inevitably recurred once more in a different form! This confirmed the insights from spiritual science that there is more to life than just thinking, and that thinking, feeling, and willing all have to be included to tackle the questions properly.

As a direct consequence of the choices made, human thinking also faced several obstacles by being tied to me-chanical ideas alone. I highlight the repercussions of con-tinuing to adhere to the mechanized form of logic. The refusal to understand these principles as well as a lack of exercise of will-power of thought are seen to lie at the root

Identifying qualities that the thinking process has in itself, such as the feeling­element and the willing­element, it became clear that the development of mechanical aids to thought was mainly related to the will­power, or strength, of the thinking process.

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of all problems facing thinking and concentration today. The alternative that has been missed, which can restore the creative and constructive capacity to human thought, is described: it is possible to reconnect thinking capacity to human potential directly, instead of taking the bypass through the machine, and this makes it possible to offset the effects of technology on the mind. The correct identification of the will-element in thought also shows the ways it can be developed independently by anyone interested in do-ing so, and I show the paths pursued by a couple of people in this direction during the past century.

Finally, some effects of a misdirected application of the mechanized logic are touched upon (its effect on hu-man relationships, for example), indicating the bound-aries within which mechanized logic is useful. This en-ables the reader to appreciate the development of modern

technology from the inside, so that education and self-development can restore creativity to its rightful place alongside the arts and crafts. It is only when the head and the limbs work in sync, that the heart can find a place in life as well.

It is hoped that this work will be beneficial to anyone who is willing to tackle the question of computing at its very root. Just as the bridge to the supersensible was built by spiritual science through the study of philosophy, a bridge to right use of technology has been attempted by the study of the “laws of thought.”

Gopi Krishna Vijaya has a background in Physics. He has obtained his Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and his PhD (on the topic of improving efficiencies in solar cells) from the University of Houston. He is a member of the Anthroposophical Society. The paper described here is available as a PDF file on request to editor@anthroposophy.org.

Like Shattered Glass

I became interested in Kurzweil through discussions with friends about the dark aspects of transhumanism, the movement to augment people with technology.

A review of Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology; (2005). Viking Penguin: New York.

by Benjamin ButlerFor Verena BuobIt is important that light is shed on this book and

its clever author, Ray Kurzweil. Anthroposophists in particular should be aware of Kurzweil’s predictions and technological research especially because of the nature of the thoughts presented. I became interested in Kurzweil through discussions with friends about the dark aspects of transhumanism, the movement to augment people with technology. Author Daniel Pinchbeck has also been a great source of inspiration.1

Ray Kurzweil (b. 1948) is an American inventor, au-thor, and futurist. He is currently the Director of Engi-neering at Google, working with them closely on robotics, AI (artificial intelligence), and natural language recogni-tion. Google is one sponsor of his Singularity University. At the time of this book, he was on the Army Science Advisory Group. He has invented scanners and text-to-speech technology utilized by the blind. His other books include The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) and How to Create a Mind (2012).

I offer that the central key to understanding what un-derpins this book and the methods used to arrive at the

1 See his work 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (2006), pp. 152-160, 103-106.

conclusions presented in it, is summed up in Kurzweil’s proclamation that intelligence supersedes cosmology.2 The Singularity is Near takes intelligence to an extreme at the expense of everything else including the cosmos itself. Ul-timately, the human being and cosmos are reduced to ma-chines for intelligent computation.

Ray Kurzweil foresees a future in which each organ of the human being is gradually replaced by intelligent nanobots or otherwise synthetic materials. The heart and brain are seen as flawed in design, badly in need of an upgrade, because they are run by outdated bio-logical programming.3 Kurzweil describes his discomfort with his physical body, thus he seeks to radically “reprogram” it by taking 250 pills a day so as to completely change his metabolic processes.4 He does this so he can live for fur-ther biotechnological innovations which he foresees will allow humans within a few decades to become immortal by uploading their consciousness into computers. He sees the “nonbiological” intelligence increasingly taking over inside augmented human beings as biotechnology comes

2 p. 364.3 pp. 306, 198-199.4 p. 211.

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cloned animal meat, manipulation of bacteria’s limbs and the destruction of their metabolisms, increasing stiffness in computer systems so as to reduce thermal effects, and an appreciation of straight lines over curves for their ef-ficiency.8 All stem from a worldview striving to exhaust technology in an empty cosmos.

The individual with this worldview seeks preser-vation at any cost. Kurzweil and other transhumanists wish to evade death and become immortal. Although this is his aim, The Singularity is Near reads like it con-stantly seeks to displace living life, one could say in an-throposophical terms “the etheric,” with death.9 It is a book about death: death of what makes human beings true feeling beings and warm-blooded active beings. Kurzweil calls religion “deathist rationalization” and urg-es his followers to hold strong, looking forward to the sin-gularity, an event which supposedly will allow the trans-humanists to conquer death.10 This goal of uploading human beings into computers could be seen as nothing less than putting people into the ahrimanic “pre-serving jars” described by Rudolf Steiner.11

Rudolf Steiner shared that Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo and The Anti-Christ were actually writ-ten by Ahriman,12 the supersensible being who wants to divert humanity from any spiritual under-standing, diverting them especially through dense materialism. He is the os-sified intelligence, the op-ponent of the light, and we live in an era when the “ahri-manic” forces are especially active. I believe this book by Kurzweil to be inspired by Ahriman. The predominance of illusion, deception, frozen intellect, and technological dominance, at the expense of beauty, art, and warmth is indicative of the inspiration behind this work. It is not

8 pp. 254, 306, 221, 224, 236, 238, 181. 9 Kurzweil foresees respiration, digestion, and reproductive systems eventu-

ally becoming unnecessary.10 p. 372.11 In Lecture 1 of the cycle entitled Lucifer and Ahriman, given in Dornach

November 1, 1919.12 Karmic Relationships Volume 3, Lecture 11.

to actually replace their biological brain.Kurzweil believes that in the 21st century “strong

AI” will emerge: an inherently uncontrollable super-intel-ligence. Because he holds intelligence as the highest value, his vision culminates with swarms of nanobots blasting out into the cosmos, saturating “dumb matter” with in-telligence, while using the stars and planets, including the sun, as computational substrates.5 His description of the ultimate cold computer and the possible computational potential of black holes really show the dark extreme of thought here presented.6

In coming decades Kurzweil foresees virtual reality taking over basically every domain of human activity. The various senses will be augmented for virtual reality (including touch) and people will project different virtual bodies for different audiences. Kurzweil appeals to the pleasure-seeking impulse in people when he describes the possibilities virtual reality (VR) offers regarding sex. He claims that along with humans meeting in VR, artificial-

ly intelligent programs will fulfill sexual desires. This discussion of sex in VR is revealed in one of the many end-of-chapter sections where Kurzweil has characters discuss aspects of the singularity among other characters and him-self. It all has a very odd quality when his invented “Molly 2004” character talks to “Molly 2104” and “Ray” about nanobot bodies and digital sex.7 The critical point is that the boundary between real and virtual reality will dis-integrate just like the boundary between the biological and new,

“nonbiological” parts of the human being, as Kurzweil sees it.

Kurzweil’s thinking leads him to see nothing else in the world except information patterns; believing the cos-mos to be empty he seeks to imbue it with the intelli-gence he feels it to be so badly lacking. Technology is his bridge between the “I” and the world. The details could fill themselves in: nanobots in the blood, nonfluid nutri-ent delivery systems in the body, “reprogramming” cells, human cloning (“weak immortality” as he refers to it),

5 pp. 349, 434-435.6 p. 362.7 pp. 319, 203.

Kurzweil believes that in the 21st century “strong AI” will emerge: an inherently uncontrollable super­intelligence... In coming decades he foresees virtual reality taking over basically every domain of human activity.

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an accident that Kurzweil brings up Nietzsche, citing his concern that man balances on a “rope over an abyss” with regards to technology use and the future, and then slyly encourages readers that humanity is in no such position, that the path to the singularity goes up and not down into the abyss.13

Of interest to anthroposophists is Kurzweil’s hon-est statement that he doesn’t understand why his (mind) “pattern” is continually attached to and perceives the feelings and experiences of the one person called “Ray Kurzweil.”14 Questions arise for his outlook: how is it that consciousness arises in the body? Why isn’t his specific information pattern inside a different body? It all appears

13 pp. 373-374. See also the article: “Rudolf Steiner’s Meeting of Destiny with Friedrich Nietzsche and the Adversary of Our Age” by C.T. Roszell in being human Spring Issue 2015

14 p. 381.

random, accidental. Without any knowledge of the re-lation of body, soul, and spirit, or of reincarnation, this baffles him. I appreciate that he included this comment; it reveals a riddle which eludes his sharp thinking.

The ideas and aims of individuals like Ray Kurzweil should be given careful attention and permeated with in-sights from anthroposophical spiritual science; they serve as a clear warning of the times. We must see the one-sidedness of such viewpoints. We are tasked with facing what comes with the firm conviction that we know the spirit in the human being and in the cosmos. We must love what we create and what we see ourselves becoming.

Benjamin Butler (bnbutlr722@icloud.com) holds a Masters in So-ciology from the University of North Texas. “Thank you for reading this essay. Please reach out if you have comments or are conducting similar research. Thank you to Steven Usher, Andrew Linnell, and all my friends who supported this essay and provided helpful insights.”

Facing a Future with Machines

Early in the 20th century, the merging of Mankind with Machines began. Many of our loved ones already have pace makers, dialysis, or hearing aids. Many more “mergings” are in the works.

by Andrew LinnellIf your son had an accident and lost a limb and was

then outfitted with a prosthetic limb, would you still love your son? Of course you would. What if he lost two limbs? Three? How much of one’s body would need to be replaced by a machine before one would toss in the towel and say I can no longer love this person? Early in the 20th century, the merging of Mankind with Machines began. Many of our loved ones already have pace makers, dialysis, or hearing aids. Many more “mergings” are in the works.

I have not done any survey but I suspect most people today can accept the machine as a prosthetic limb replac-ing a damaged natural limb or bionic aids augmenting a damaged sense organ, but when it comes to internal organs, I believe we enter a squeamish territory. Replacing the will-related body parts does not raise the warning flag about impacting our humanity as does replacing internal organs. What happens to our humanity when the opera-tion of a liver is being largely conducted by an embedded machine? How much of the functioning of our heart can be done by a sophisticated “intelligent” pace maker? Does the one with an embedded machine change in any way? Replacing the thinking-related body parts seems to cause the most concern about de-humanizing our future.

Ray Kurzweil and much of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community agree that the ultimate human organ is

the brain. This camp would say we can replace all the oth-er organs and body parts and we still have a human being. They would argue that the essence of the human being is its mind and this is found in the “software” of the brain. Thus, according to this camp, if one can migrate the software that represents the mind from a biological brain to an equivalent non-biological brain, then that mind will have achieved immortality.15

Perhaps we do not truly un-derstand mortality and its role with the human being. Moreover, people who receive organ trans-plants find that they have new memories that apparently come with the new organ.16 Could our memories be out-side of our brain? If so, where are our memories? What are our memories? When I think of a person or place from my past, typically more than a mere picture arises. Other sensory impressions from that past event arise too. And an emotional memory commonly fills our soul. When one sees a photograph taken in youth, more than visual 15 2045 Initiative, Dmitry Itskov [ 2045.com ]16 Pearsall, Paul, The Heart’s Code, Broadway Books, 1999

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memory attributes can fill one’s soul. Where is this mem-ory content being kept and being experienced? If we lost our memory content, how would that affect our sense of a solid foundation to life and to a sense of “who I am”?

It was well established in the first century CE that the human being was a tripartite of body, soul, and spirit. In the 9th century, Western humanity had largely lost this knowledge and reduced the human to body and soul. As the 20th century dawned in the West, the concept of soul had been largely lost and the concept of body had been reduced to its chemical components. With human-ity’s creative focus fixed on the mineral kingdom, great and powerful machinery arose that could move moun-tains. Humans became able to move their bodies quickly from one place to another, over land, over sea, or through the air and even through space to the moon. We became adept at extending our senses to explore ocean depths or the outer bands of the solar system or the inner dynamics of a molecule or an embryo.

In the 19th century, a man and his horse were consid-ered to become as one and “car-riages were an extension of a per-son, like their clothes.”17 Today, when one gets behind the wheel of a car, one is within a machine. As we drive this car, something in us merges with it as we get a feel for its functioning, its ability to respond to brake pressure, steer-ing wheel adjustments, and the like. And as we drive on the high-ways, we can experience the mood of drivers about us, the aggressive-ness of the driver on the road next to us, for example. Something of us permeates the vehicle. Is it soul?

When I make a phone call to a dear friend, my voice is digitized right in the phone itself. This digital signal makes its way through the internet, yes that same in-ternet, eventually coming to my dear friend where the digital signal representing my voice is reconstituted to a facsimile of my voice—close enough that my friend rec-ognizes it as my voice. Although we are not physically in the same room, we can have a conversation that has many of the same attributes as an in-the-same-room conversa-tion. We can be emotional. We can be motivated. We 17 Transportation Past, Present, and Future [ www.thehenryford.org/

education/erb/TransportationPastPresentAndFuture.pdf ]

can feel our soul engaged. We find that our soul is not so bound by spatial obstacles. And our soul can deal with electrical transmission of voice facsimile as it can with ar-tificial limbs and sensory organs. It can permeate bodily extensions such as an automobile.

The AI community, lacking a concept of soul, believes that we will eventually reverse-engineer the brain. Reverse engineering is done when one takes apart some man-made object to see how it was constructed. One discovers the object’s inner workings and then can grasp the original engineering. Once that has been accomplished, one can devise improvements. The brain is deemed by AI theorists to be engineered by—well, by natural selection, with each improvement coming from a mutation. With mutations over millions of years, today’s brain has evolved. Is the brain’s evolution complete? AI believes that the next step in the brain’s evolution will come from mankind and be given to robots into which we each will pour our mind.

Reverse engineering works with man-made objects because our mind can grasp the concepts that are “built in” to a man-made object. Such concepts are within the realm of the ponderable. But this begs the question, does the human brain (and body for that matter) arise from the ponderable or the imponderable? If imponderable, will we grasp enough to make a human-like brain?

As we have already done with sensory organs, many in the AI community expect brain augmentation to come before a fully reverse-engineered brain is ready for hu-manity. This would be some sort of implant that would enable us to perform “context switching” from our hu-man mind to an augmented computational capability. For example, one might need to perform some arithmetic operation such as adding the prices of the items in one’s shopping cart. This AI future would enable the person to visually scan the prices, pass this information to the embedded computer and receive back the result. This is similar to how we conceive today of the context switching that happens within the brain from the functioning of the right hemisphere to the left. The expectation is that, just we became adept at driving cars, we will become adept at such context switching.

As these AI scientists and brain engineers research this, I believe that they will “discover consciousness” just as the quantum physicists did. The “hard problem” of consciousness18 will show the fallacy of this brain re-search. While we wish we would not need to waste so

18 [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness ]

AI theorists deem the brain to be engineered by natural selection...With mutations over millions of years, today’s brain has evolved... AI believes that the next step in the brain’s evolution will come from mankind and be given to robots...

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much money pursuing this goal, we do need more “proof” that consciousness exists outside of the body. Near-death research19 may help to achieve this understanding. I ex-pect this research will prove that consciousness does not require a functioning brain.

While many in our anthroposophical community may have the hair on their backs stand up in fear when they hear about the vision of the future seen by Ray Kurz-weil and others, I want to remind us of this well-known verse by Rudolf Steiner entitled “Facing the Future”:

We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what comes towards Mankind, out of the future. We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatev-er comes, and we must think only that whatever comes is given us by a world direction full of wisdom. It is part of what we must learn during this age, namely to act out of pure trust in the ever present help of the spiritual world; truly nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. Therefore let us discipline our will, and let us seek the awakening from within ourselves, every morn-ing and every evening.

We are in a time of great change. The world has seen great changes before such as the Ice Age, the end of At-lantis, the ending of the ancient mysteries, the entering into Earth evolution of the Christ, and the Renaissance. Our age begins the merging of Mankind and Machine. Once people thought that a human riding in a train at a speed of 20 miles per hour would suffer dreadfully in their nerves while the people nearby the passing train would suffer concussions.20 Steiner says that this assess-ment was actually correct for those times but that since then our nerves have adjusted.

What science was saying was, in effect, that human be-ings would not be able to tolerate the demands made on their physical body via the astral body if the astral body, the animal part of the human being, did not constantly receive a correction, a therapy, through that which rays back up to the surface of the earth from the absorbed cometary substances, exercising a balancing effect on human capacities.

Are we today receiving cosmic forces into our astral body to cause new adjustments? Might this explain generation-al differences towards this subject?

19 Bush, Nancy Evans, foreword by Greyson, Richard, Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences, 2012; and Fenwick, Peter, and Fenwick, Elizabeth, The Art of Dying, Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. See also Greyson video [ youtu.be/Rtk644N2DDs ] and the Near Death Experience Network with Robert Mays [ nhneneardeath.ning.com/profile/RobertMays ]

20 Steiner, Rudolf, Book of Revelation, Lecture 16, GA 346

Perhaps the greatest “adjustment” humanity will need to make in the coming millennia is what to do about the growing infertility in women. Steiner claims that we will need to work with the fallen angels of darkness:

Not later than the seventh millennium in earth evolu-tion women will grow infertile, and reproduction will no longer be possible. If matters went entirely according to the normal Angelic spirits in the blood, human re-production would not even continue for as long as this; it would only continue until the sixth millennium, or the sixth post-Atlantean period of civilization; accord-ing to the wisdom of light, the impulse for reproduction would not continue beyond this time in the seven peri-ods of civilization in this post-Atlantean age. However, it will go on beyond this, into the seventh millennium and possibly a little beyond. The reason will be that those cast-down Angels will be in charge and will give the impulses for reproduction.21

Is this the cause for our merging of man and machine as a training period for mankind to be able to build bodies that allow for continued incarnation? If we use a roughly 700-year incarnation cycle, then we have only about six more in-carnations to complete the fulfill-ment of our karma and prepare these new vehicles.

What happens after that? That would be after the “War of All Against All” when we enter the Sixth Epoch, when the Astral world “descends” into human life. Today, in the Fifth Epoch (which includes the Post-Atlantean cul-tural epochs), we are in the time of the descent of the etheric. The battle of our time is not about what will come but about how it will come. Who will make the call how new technolo-gies are introduced into society and human life? It comes down to a battle for the Etheric Realm.22 It is a personal struggle to find the Etheric Christ.

Andrew Linnell (jandrewlinnell@yahoo.com), a 40-year veteran of the field of computers and related technologies, has served as president of the Anthroposophical Society in Greater Boston.

21 Steiner, Rudolf, Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, Lecture 14, GA 17722 Thomas, Nick, The Battle for the Etheric, Temple Lodge Press, 2006

The world has seen great changes before ... the Ice Age, the end of Atlantis, the ending of the Ancient Mysteries, the entering into Earth evolution of the Christ, and the Renaissance. Our age begins the merging of Mankind and Machine.