Adam Michaelis: „Selbsterkenntnis“ und die Begegnung mit dem Bösen


We would like to comment on the problem of “selbsterkentniss / eigene begrifflichkeit” raised here.

The level of “selbsterkentniss” is not ideational in the first place. No rational framework and no mere idea can protect your human integrity when confronted with evil intelligence on a collective scale of energy.

Hence Adam did not use Steiners ideas in order to stay sane and keep his personality together. He used them to organize different aspects of his experience afterwards and make them intelligible to the public and himself.

“Selbsterkentniss” is primarily existential, and so is the remedy for surviving confrontation with evil. Of course there are insights of different nature in play here concerning deep personal and also transpersonal issues, but again that is not what matters in the last resort. That kind of personal “selbsterkentniss” will not stop the prosecuting evil force. Actually it all boils down to a simple, but drastic fact: When evil penetrates your total being (your physical, etheric, astral and mental bodies) – is there anything left in you with a human likeness at all?

In Adams experience the answer was yes and no. Adam was not able to withstand this evil on his own. Had not Christ walked on earth, Adam would most certainly have perished.

Everyone will have to look for himself at himself in that ultimate mirror of “selbsterkentniss” in which evil reflects pride and vanity for real! Of course you can always try to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – that is the individualistic “do/get it by myself” approach – but to our experiential and existential knowledge that it is not the true core of human individuality on earth.

Let us elucidate this a little further.

You really have to realize the collective level of Adams experience – otherwise the discussion is missing the point in Adams book and is not quite valid.

When you define “selbsterkentniss” in this collective context it will not suffice to focus on: „den motiven des eigenen handelns, fühlens und denkens auf die spur zu kommen!“ This issue belongs under personal psychology, analysis of character, insight in and management of the emotional self and so forth – an issue which is part and parcel of Adams professional training and long work as a psychotherapist. Besides some hints in the beginning of the book at childhood-issues, emotional structures, psychological complexes and character formation – this theme is never exposed in the book due to its irrelevance.

Only when this psychological level is linked with archetypical and collective contents – particularly in connection with it’s reflection in the energetic makeup through the experience of the doppelgänger, and on a transpersonal-karmic level in the confrontation with Adam’s own demonic structure – only then is the personal psychological level of interest and relevance in Adam’s book. But since personal issues were and still are not occupying Adam here, the book does not unveil the specific karmic issues underlying Adam’s involvement with a type like B, although they are known to Adam – neither does it reveal exactly how these dynamics reflect into his personal life, behavior, emotional system, acquaintances and so forth. The book only hints at this now and then.

The question of personal motives can be analysed in depth on many levels – not least psychologically – but at some point it proceeds into a transpersonal dimension. In Adams case that dimension was opened up to him for many reasons (one of them being the trangressions of a type like B and the collective group/powers behind him). Then you confront the deeper and more fundamental questions of personal identity – the question of the integrity of a human being in the widest meaning and sense – a question that can only be answered when dealing with collective evil.

Now that implies a quite different kind of “selbsterkentniss”. You will sadly understand how many of your own thoughts that are not yours, but Lucifers and Ahrimans – how many of your motives that are driven by those agencies – how much of your personal integrity that is a mere reflection of their illusive grip on your higher self and their massive invasion of your lower self – how corrupted and weak your autonomy really is. Any other previous idea you have had of yourself and your status of “selbsterkentniss” dwindles away here, because you are at the root of you yourself being not in command of your own humaneness.

This is a different perspective of “selbsterkentniss” taking that issue to the existential extreme. Nowadays this perspective is hardly noticed by modern men because of the prevailing (rather shallow) selfconscious and individualistic attitude. Many have the implicit understanding that “knowledge” is “liberating”, which is yet another influence from Asian thinking. If I know this childhood experience or that karmic event, then my problem is solved!? Or put in other words: Evil is only ignorance and can be solved through consciousness. Consciousness is everything – outer reality nothing in itself.

But as stated above: No rational framework and no mere idea can protect your human integrity when confronted with evil intelligence on a collective scale of energy.

Of course we are begging the question of Adams dependence on Rudolf Steiner now, when we point to his explanation of absolution. In Steiners view the law of karma will perfect every human being through the “evil” structures of suffering and death in time, but that is not liberating in itself, because the perfected soul will have to look for eternity at the panorama of its own destructive deeds and their consequences. The point in our context being: You can know this and that and perhaps everything in the end about yourself. The why’s and when’s down to the moment where you caved in to luciferic and ahrimanic influence. But you can not yourself restore the real and external consequences of your own evilness – the level of corruption and inhuman urge in yourself (that is experienced directly when confronted with collective evil). You are not able to raise the real impact of your own fallen nature. And this is NOT a matter of or for consciousness!
 
This is the saddest and most loathsome experience of yourself you can imagine. But in our view it is also the most fundamental and practical “selbsterkentniss” for every man – awaiting everyone in due time. If only humans had an inkling of this “selbsterkentniss”, then Lucifer and Ahriman would not have the game all to themselves through different etheric, astral and mental structures in the individual human make-up. This is exactly where “consciousness” is lacking and unpopular nowadays through the cultural deceptions of evil. 
 
 
Adam Michaelis  

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