Mr. Emberson fairly establishes himself as a leading authority on the spiritual scientific dimensions of computer technology and the Keely machine with these two volumes. From Gondhishapur to Silicon Valley, Vol. 1 (FGSV) traces the spiritual threads that guide the emergence of the computer and the World Wide Web from the Ahrimanic (satanic) Academy of Gondhishapur in 666 AD in the Near East to its current flowering in modern times with its center in Silicon Valley. The Academy of Gondhishapur welcomed the Platonic Scholars who wandered to that area after their famous school in Athens was closed in 529 AD by the Emperor Justinian. Following Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925; collected works of over 360 volumes), Mr. Emberson explains that the Anti- Christ, the two-horned beast of the Apocalypse, known as the Sorat, overshadowed and guided the academy of Gondhishapur with the assistance of a powerful Ahrimanic spirit who taught in the academy in spiritual form, after the arrival of the Platonic Scholars. The plan of the Sorat was immediately to inspire the academy's genius scholars to the discovery of every insight and invention that humanity would, in the normal progression of evolution, find over the period stretching to about 3,600 AD, to the end of the era Rudolf Steiner designates as the era of the Consciousness Soul, which started in 1413AD. Had this plan succeeded, the entire future developmental potential of humanity would have been consumed in 666 AD. Humanity would have achieved a tremendous brilliance, but it would have been unable to develop beyond what would otherwise have been achieved by 3,600 AD. In other words, humanity's cosmic future would have been forfeit. This catastrophe was averted by the activity of the Christ Being, who collided with the dark powers. What resulted instead was the religion of Islam. Thanks to Mohammed and his followers, the works were gummed up, and, consequently, the Two-Horned Beast could not proceed. His momentum was stalled. The successors of the scholars of Gondhishapur, who possessed the remnants of brilliance, found their way to the great court of Baghdad in the 9th century, which was ruled by Harun al-Rashid and his wise minister. A scintillating culture of scientific discovery and artistic endeavor emerged during a time when Europe was still rather barbaric. According to Rudolf Steiner — and discussed by Mr. Emberson — Harun al-Rashid incarnated again as Francis Bacon of Verulam in England (1561-1626) and became the great inspirer and popularizer of materialistic science. One of Bacon's important achievements was the invention of binary code: the idea that any concept can be coded in a binary sequence; the binary code now used in computers. This idea was, according to Mr. Emberson, an inspiration from the Sorat and an early step in its devilish plan to create computers and the World Wide Web. Mr. Emberson calls him “the Binary Beast” with his two horns, which Mr. Emberson associates with binary code. Mr. Emberson spends some time explaining why it is not actually possible to encode all human thought in binary code. In this connection, I should mention what Rudolf Steiner calls the “thought sense.” At the end of his seminal work The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, it is explained that the way one person understands another is not as people usually conceive. The normal view goes like this: I see you speaking. You make sounds we call words. I know that when I make such sounds there is an inner experience of meaning attached to the sounds. So I infer that you too have a similar experience of meaning as you speak. Thus, I infer what you mean. Steiner says understanding is quite different. Spiritually we are permeable. When I listen to you, the will in my thinking is momentarily taken over by the will in your thinking. You literally think in me. That means: I am directly inside your thinking and it is thus that I actually understand you. We are unaware of this because the experience of my own thinking and your thinking alternates back and forth very rapidly so, while I know your thought intimately from being in it, I am unaware that I am actually slipping in and out of my own self in the process. Through spiritual development we can become conscious of what is actually happening. If one understands true human communication, namely, the direct experience of ideas generated by others, then it becomes clear that a sequence of printed letters on a page is something quite different. It is quite possible that I never really comprehend what a writer intended. Reading the letters depends on many presuppositions and is culturally conditioned. For example, think what a series of cultural and educational experiences one must have to read an advanced text of mathematics. When I was working on my MA in mathematics at the University of Michigan in the 1970s, aware of what Steiner had stated about the thought sense, I chose my math courses according to how well I could follow the thinking of my professors in the classroom. Trying to work with the text books was simply not sufficient. I needed to jump into the living thought processes of my teachers. The consequence was a lot of course “drop” and “add” at the start of each semester! Rudolf Steiner had observed that something changed when the printing press was invented. Something of the human being is still communicated in handwriting, which disappears with the fixed printed letter. (Note that the teaching of script writing is now disappearing for the school system.) A kind of dehumanization occurs. Rudolf Steiner advised his students to gather together and communicate the essentials from mouth to ear. (Karmic Relationships VI, July 20, 1924) According to Steiner, the printing press was an ahrimanic invention which would affect the nature of intelligence. But he cautioned that students of spiritual science would have to make use of books as aids to memory, for otherwise the art of printing would be delivered entirely into the hands of the most powerful enemies of the human spirit. Mr. Emberson worries that something even worse happens when the alphabet is transformed to binary code, passed through electric circuits, and eventually re-emerges as pixels on a flat screen. He suggests that it is not possible to communicate spiritual science with the computer and Internet (p. 246). My feeling is that Mr. Emberson goes too far here, as following that view would wholly deliver this tool into the hands of the enemy of the spirit. What is needed is an understanding of what the computer and Internet are, and how to use them without being naive to the risks. An example of the right way to use the Internet, in my view, is the Rudolf Steiner e.Lib ( www.rudolfsteinerelib.org ) which offers many Steiner texts for free, on-line. A central thrust of Mr. Emberson's FGSV is that while we cannot hope to entirely encompass the computer or Internet with our understanding — indeed nobody can, owing to the level of complexity — we can understand both the path of its development and the nature of the spirits that guided the development. This understanding will arm us to deal with the tremendous danger this technology poses to the human being and human evolution. Bacon's invention of the binary code is an early step in this development. FGSV traces the further path through a whole series of ingenious steps that eventually lead to the computer and the web. One of the next steps leads to the French city of light, Lyon, where the high art of weaving developed to perfection. A key event surrounds the little known master weaver, Basil Boachon, — who, apparently, thrived around 1712 — whose discovery greatly simplified the weaving process. He created what amounted to a punch card or punched paper reader, another invention overshadowed by the Binary Beast according to Mr. Emberson. Those familiar with the early punch card readers for mainframe computers will recall going to a computer lab and punching little holes into a stack of cards. The row and column positions on the cards represented different numbers. The punched cards went into a hopper and the code was read into the computer by electrical impulses which made contact where there was a hole in the card. The computer was programmed in this manner. Few people are aware that Boachon's invention was the basis of the later punch card reader. Moreover, this technology is still deeply embedded in modern computers. It can be described as binary technology in two dimensions. Another important step and inspiration of the Two-Horned Beast was Galvani's discovery of electricity; the famous discovery that occurred while Galvani was handling a frog's leg. Mr. Emberson quotes Steiner to the effect that electricity is fallen light, condensed light that has been compressed and thrust down into sub-nature. Outwardly, electricity is the same thing as thoughts are inwardly according to Steiner. (Note “thoughts” but not the activity of “thinking.”) Further, electricity is not morally neutral but is rather the bearer of the instinct for evil. As a child, I once experienced a very bad electric shock that went on for probably 5 seconds. Two electric contacts touched my left hand with a 220 volt current and left two burn marks that have remained to this day. I can testify that what one experiences when a strong current is burning and tingling, with a kind of sledgehammer- like pulse through your body, could really be called an experience of evil! From this set of early inspirations — the binary code, the technology of the loom, and electricity — Mr. Emberson continues to follow the inspiration of Baphomet (the name for the Two Horned Beast, when it manifests in the elemental world) to the invention of sound recording, motion pictures, and the first computer. Into this narration, Mr. Emberson weaves the tragic story of the Knights Templar: their brutal torture and murder by Philip the Fair of France, torture that began in 1306 as the second multiple of 666, namely 1,332 AD, approached. Mr. Emberson states, “Through the incorporation of electromagnetism into the mechanics, the terrible soul forces of blasphemy and hate wrung from the tortured Knights Templar could now be drawn gradually into technology itself by means of the combined working of the two physical forces which, by their nature can act as the bearer of such impulses.” (Part of the relevant material from Rudolf Steiner is found in Inner Impulses of Evolution, The Mexican Mysteries and the Knights Templar, CW 171. However, the important Templar lecture of October 2, 1916 is not in this English volume. It is available at the Rudolf Steiner e.Lib: http://wn.rudolfsteinerelib.org/GA/GA0171/19161002p01.html ) Another important step in the development was, of course, the discovery of sound recording by Thomas Edison. Mr. Emberson describes the historic moment of December 6, 1877 when Mr. Edison first recorded a voice on a silver foil and listened in astonishment as the device replayed “Mary had a little lamb.” In connection with this event, Mr. Emberson quotes Rudolf Steiner: “When people develop a passion for such a thing [recorded music] which is really a mechanizing of what comes down to us as a shadow of the spiritual — when they show enthusiasm for the kind of thing represented by gramophones, then in this connection they no longer have the power to protect themselves, in this case the Gods will have to come to their aid.”(August 29, 1923, The Evolution of Consciousness, CW 227). The narrative follows the development not only of sound recording but movies. For this focus turns again to the City of Light, Lyon, and the “Brothers of Light,” Auguste and Louis Lumière. It was they who in 1895 showed the first screening of a real movie. Of film, Rudolf Steiner made the following statement, which was not in Mr. Emberson's book: “I have to admit that the films have an extremely harmful effect on what I have been calling the ether, or life, body. And this especially true in terms of the human sensory system. It is a fact that, by watching film productions, the entire human soul- spiritual constitution becomes mechanized. Films are external means for turning people into materialists. I tested these effects, especially during the war years when film propaganda was made for all sorts of things. One could see how audiences avidly absorbed whatever was shown. I was not especially interested in watching films, but I did want to observe their effects on audiences. One could see how the film is simply an intrinsic part of the plan to materialize humankind, even by means of weaving materialism into the perceptual habits of those who are watching.” (Soul Economy, January 7, 1922, CW 303) Of course, the first real computer did not have a screen or recorded sound as all personal computers now do; so it was not as destructive. It was much simpler. The first real computer, according to Mr. Emberson, was used to take the US Census in 1880. It was created by Mr. Hollerith, used the loom technology of Boachon of Lyon for its punch cards, and was based on electric contacts. Hollerith sold his business to one Charles Flint who hired Thomas J. Watson to run the company which was renamed IBM. The American firm had a German subsidiary, Dehomag. Their machine was specially programmed for Hitler's census and had features to trace blood lines, which facilitated the Nazi project of the Holocaust. Mr. Emberson continues to trace — in some detail — the further steps that brought the new technology, the computer, the web, and now the hand held devices to the current stage of development. The writer argues that the Binary Beast guided all these steps with an end in mind: a technology able to possess men's minds, their feelings, and their wills. Consider the case of addicted computer gamers! At the end of the work, Mr. Emberson presents a horrendous description of how the computer and Internet technology is binding men's wills in connection with their procreative forces, a description not for the faint of heart. At a deep level the goal is to absorb human beings into a more and more artificial reality. The desolate landscape is made lighter by the continual weaving of Rudolf Steiner's insights into the text with many important quotations. In particular, it is made clear that Rudolf Steiner anticipated where the inspiration of the Beast was leading. And Steiner made enormous efforts to find a path for the healthy development of humanity through the maze of technology. In this context Mr. Emberson presents an excellent description of the Christmas Foundation Conference of the Anthroposophical Society (1923/24). Mr. Emberson does worry about what could be called the incorporation of the Beast and its hosts into the World Wide Web and the linked computers. Might they not in some sense incarnate into the web of AI (artificial intelligence) connections and take over the rule of the planet? This would amount to excluding human beings from the crucial decisions guiding earthly affairs. This is, of course, a theme that one hears — in various forms — ever more in the news. For example, leading scientists (such as Stephen Hawking) are warning of the risks inherent in AI, even suggesting it could be a danger to the human race. One Christian radio talk show host recently speculated about how such an incarnation would look. She pictured a being who could simultaneously look out of every web linked camera, hear out of every web linked microphone including those embedded in the Internet of Things like toasters and cars. Such a being would presumably be in a position to take control of cars and planes that had the proper chips, mess with power generation, water systems, etc. and, depending on its intentions, do untold harm to humanity. Parenthetically, let me mention an important related theme, which I cannot develop further in this review: this sort of nightmare, and the ones elaborated below, are likely to happen unless humanity figures out how to threefold at least one nation on the earth because only by threefolding is it possible for human morality to direct the evolution of the planet. Lacking threefolding alien beings will gain the upper hand. Ray Kurzweil, Google's director of engineering who I suspect is overshadowed by an ahrimanic spirit, recently predicted that by 2029 human brains will be fused with machines. This makes me wonder: suppose the Beast would incarnate as a man and fuse his brain with the Internet! Note here that Rudolf Steiner stated on November 25, 1917, that in the future, men would be welded together with machines, and the question was only how this would occur. Further, he prepared us with the thought that this would be a problem of great significance for the remainder of earth evolution. (See Rudolf Steiner, The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric and Georg Unger's “On Mechanical Occultism,” which is available at: (http://www.rudolfsteinerelib.org/RelAuthors/UngerGeorge/MchOcc_index.php) Recently, the topic of man linked to computers was also discussed by a Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. He spoke of experiments where humans were wired to computers and the computer directed the movement of their limbs. What concerned Zizek was this: these experimental subjects thought they had moved their limbs by their own free will! That is how they experienced what was, in fact, directed of necessity by an alien force. This resonates with something Rudolf Steiner stated in the first chapter of his Philosophy of Spiritual Activity where he speaks of Spinoza. Spinoza fantasizes a stone that is thrown into the air and thinks it willed its motion and thus believes it achieved out of its free will what, in fact, was driven by pure necessity (https://www.rt.com/news/383029-human-ai-implant-slavoj-zizek/). Some American Anthroposophers have been talking about the relation of computer technology and the incarnation of Ahriman since at least the 1980s. Computer expert, David Black, comes to mind. In 1981, he published an important work on the theme: The Computer and the Incarnation of Ahriman. His book is hard to obtain now. Mr. Black speaks of a micro and a macro incarnation of Ahriman. The former incarnation involves Ahriman taking possession of a single human body, sometime in the third millennium, as described by Rudolf Steiner in lectures delivered at the end of 1919. (See Rudolf Steiner, The Incarnation of Ahriman, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2006). Rudolf Steiner never returned to this topic after 1919. The macro incarnation, according to Mr. Black, involves Ahriman and his hosts somehow embodying themselves in computers and AI technology, which is quite similar to Mr. Emberson's picture. Like Mr. Black, Mr. Emberson also believes a micro incarnation will occur. And while on the topic of Mr. Black's book, another comment is in order. I cannot but wonder at Mr. Emberson's failure to offer even a single comment or footnote to Mr. Black's book. Mr. Black anticipated themes central to Mr. Emberson's books by almost 30 years, such as the loom technology, the Hollerith census computer and its evolution into IBM, and, of course, the grand theme of Ahriman's macro incarnation into AI technology and computers. It is worth noting in this connection, that Mr. Black and Mr. Emberson published articles in the same edition of an old British journal, Shoreline, in November 1988, and Mr. Black's article was titled “Further to The Computer and the Incarnation of Ahriman.” In a recent phone conversation, Mr. Black told me that he stands by his 1981 book with one exception. In 1981 he had pointed to then current research on super-cooling techniques that scientists were attempting to use to cool computer circuits. Recalling Rudolf Steiner's picture of Ahriman as surrounded by freezing cold (Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, CW 26), Mr. Black had pointed to super-cooling as part of the macro incarnation process. Since then computer design has dismissed the idea of super-cooling. When I asked Mr. Black where he thought the macro incarnation process is now, he responded that it is happening, which seems to mean it is a gradual event that is unfolding as opposed to a sudden change when the technology reaches some particular degree of sophistication. Of course, it might be both, that is, a slow development that also hits a catastrophic giant leap. He observed that Moore's law continues apace. This means that every 18 months computer processing speed doubles and chip size shrinks. This, he explained, was exponential growth, and nothing in historic human experience has ever grown at that rate for so long, which is to say humanity is not equipped from its history to cope with such a phenomenon. He also cautioned that expectations of AI are always overblown. He pointed, as an example, to GPS navigation and observed when you are in familiar terrain, you recognize the GPS often gives suboptimal directions, as it cannot calculate locally known shortcuts. I should note here that the idea of a macro incarnation is speculation based on Steiner's spiritual scientific discoveries, and on what has developed from science and technology since Steiner's time. Rudolf Steiner only characterized a micro incarnation. In his book Mr. Black gives very interesting reasons why he expects both to happen, which would take too much space to explain here, but he relates his discussion to the fact that Ahriman is part of the material foundations of the earth and consequently his micro appearance would be accompanied by macro transformations of the environment. An example of such a transformation that comes to mind is the universal spying that is actually going on now. Just consider that every phone call, ever e-mail, every web-cam image, the input from every Internet-of-things enabled toaster, refrigerator, etc. is being stored in the big Utah computer storage facility ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center ). This is a huge transformation of the earthly environment that has occurred over the last decade. And this transformation carries the characteristic ahrimanic mood of fear, an indicator of his increasing presence! It is worth observing that the huge and ever growing data cache is being analyzed by AI. A small portion of flagged content is actually analyzed by human researchers and a tiny fraction of that leads to action regarding the person of interest. If you want to feel the ahrimanic chill, fantasize a world of the future where advanced AI could really pinpoint content that violated the “rules” of the powers that be and, moreover, that robotic enforcers could mete out the stipulated punishment, all this without the involvement of human consciousness. Your self-driving car, one morning, might lock the doors and drive you to a detention center and you might be processed as “soylent green!” (Don't see the movie; just read about it on Wikipedia as that is better for your etheric body! https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green) Worse than advanced AI completely replacing human consciousness would be real Ahrimanic spirits in the technology. There is an intriguing bit of evidence that such spirits have occasionally manipulated electronics. I am referring to UFO's at ICBM bases. The Malmstrom air force base incident of March 1967 is a good example. Personnel spotted strange lights or forms near the base (UFOs) after which the ICBMs went to “No-Go” status for the better part of the day. The missiles were separately wired, which makes it odd that they all went down. Upon investigation no technical explanation could be discovered. My hunch is that these were actually ahrimanic spirits and elementals playing with the electronics. Note that Rudolf Steiner associates gnomes and undines respectively with gravity and magnetism. (Man as Symphony of the Creative Word, Nov. 2, 1923). You can read about the Malmstrom incident in UFOs for the 21st Century Mind by Richard M. Dolan (p. 112) and in Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilizations by Joseph F. Farrell (section titled “UFOs, ICBMs, and Nuclear Weapons”). Note that both these authors believe that physical events originating either with humans or ET's are responsible. My view is the influence arises from the elemental world. When I contemplate the theme of Ahriman incarnating into AI technology I also think about that famous passage from Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy (CW 204, May 13, 1921) in which Rudolf Steiner presented a future picture of the Earth, after the War of All Against All (which will occur about 7,900 AD according to Rudolf Steiner). In this passage a brood of spider like beings are described as emerging from the shadowy thoughts of human beings after the return of the Moon (about 8,000 AD.) Steiner continues, “These thoughts of human beings that have no reality all of a sudden become realities when the moon and earth will reunite again. From the earth, there will spring forth a horrible brood of beings. In character, they will be in between the mineral and plant kingdoms. They will be beings resembling automatons, with an over-abundant intellect of great intensity. Along with this development, which will spread over the earth, the latter will be covered as if by a network or web of ghastly spiders possessing tremendous wisdom. Yet their organization will not even reach up to the level of the plants. They will be horrible spiders who will be entangled with one another. In their outward movements, they will imitate everything human beings have thought up with their shadowy intellect, which did not allow itself to be stimulated by what is to come through new Imagination and through spiritual science in general.” The passage goes on to describe how the human beings who failed to become selfless by the time of the War of All Against All, will live amongst these horrible beings. Steiner likens the feelings that arise from contemplating this description to the ones that arise from Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, the passage about the “ugliest man.” I speculate that the materialistic communications that encompass the planet in binary code though fiber optic cables and on the electromagnetic spectrum along with the materialistic thinking being stimulated by all the media exposure along with the chilling cold and fear might be the early precursor to the spider like network. Such thoughts take us into the realm of Apocalyptic ideas. No doubt, courage is required to hear such descriptions. To depart this bleak realm, let us turn to Mr. Emberson's, Machines and the Human Spirit. The mood brightens here, at least a bit! For the purposes of his study Mr. Emberson classifies machines into three groups:
1. Atomic machines 2. Resonance machines 3. Moral machines
All electromagnetic and nuclear technology is classified atomic. This includes the computer and Internet and is the technology that surrounds us, the technology that leads, eventually, to the spidery semi-mechanical beasts. Resonance machines emerged in actual reality, briefly, with the work of John Worrell Keely. (1827-1898; See Free Energy Pioneer: John Worrell Keely by Theo Paijmans) Keely's early machines worked on the principle of sympathetic vibration. The concept is illustrated with a room housing two grandfather clocks. Assume both clocks are at rest, that neither pendulum is swinging. If one grandfather clock is set swinging, then after a short while the second clock's pendulum will start to swing. It starts with very short swings that get progressively longer up to a limit. Under normal circumstances the swings of both clocks are limited by the potential energy imparted to the first clock by setting the pendulum in motion. The swinging of the first clock imparts energy to the second pendulum by resonance. The swinging second pendulum also imparts a little energy back to the first one. And they pass energy back and forth in a diminishing sequence that damps down, that is both pendulums come to rest eventually unless more energy is added. With the Keely machine, something extraordinary happened. By analogy the interaction of the two clock pendulums would lead to the two clocks gaining energy in excess of the potential energy first imparted. Such an occurrence contradicts accepted laws of thermodynamics. The claim is that etheric forces become involved and these are forces not recognized by materialistic science. They make it possible for greater energy to be produced than was put into the process. In other words, we have a perpetual motion machine! Keely created a whole series of such devices and the Keely Motor Company was launched on the New York Stock Exchange and financed by some famous people. For many years Keely tried to achieve commercial success, but never did. The deep problem was that the machine would only run in Keely's presence. In fact, the machine required Keely's own etheric forces and would work only in his presence. Eventually Keely was called a fraud, which in fact he was not, and the company failed. Moral machines, according to Mr. Emberson are totally different. He states: “Atomic Technology … is connected with that which is lifeless in us: with our finished thoughts and with those forces of mineralization and death in our brain and nervous system which correspond to the sub-physical, electrical forces of the atom. Resonance technology … is connected with living, moral sentiments in our personal soul-life. These soul-forces are brought into interaction with physical, mechanical processes in external machines. As for Moral Technology, it stands in relation to the spiritual forces of the human “I”. These spiritual forces are carried over into living processes in the outer world. The machines of Moral Technology have life in them.” (p 65) Mr. Emberson believes that the Moral Technology will develop over the next several thousand years and will be the means by which those human beings who have achieved selflessness will survive the War of All Against All (which will occur about 7,900 AD according to Rudolf Steiner), and will repopulate the next great period of human evolution, just as a select group of Atlanteans survived the Great Flood and populated our period, which extends from the flood to the War of All Against All. This Apocalyptic thinking is developed in Rudolf Steiner's important lectures on the theme in Nuremberg given in 1908 (CW 104), and Dornach, Switzerland in 1924 (CW 346). Mr. Emberson's small volume appears to document just about everything Rudolf Steiner and his important students said about resonance technology and moral technology. Included is a history of Steiner's efforts with three students — Wachsmuth, Pfeiffer, and Schiller — to create a resonance machine. This account includes sketches and reproductions of the stage prop for the Strader machine that appeared in Rudolf Steiner's third Mystery Drama, a prop that unfortunately was lost. Steiner had stated it was important that a breakthrough come within 20 years, or by about 1944. This, sadly, was not achieved. Mr. Emberson's book ends with a plea to spread the information, because further research is so badly needed to combat the atomic technology that has spread across the globe. He hopes that some Waldorf students would take an interest. His plea might be easier effected if Mr. Emberson's books were available in the book trade. They can be ordered from the address given at the beginning of this review. The copy I read was lent me by a friend, who mailed it to me unsolicited. Until receiving the books in the mail I had not been aware of them, and I have been lecturing on resonance technology and the Strader machine since the 1990s, and studying the theme since the 1980s! Mr. Emberson might also want to advertise his books on the Rudolf Steiner Archive & e.Lib which gets as many as 40,000 visitors per day! To close, I offer two details from Mr. Emberson's book, as well as some thoughts about the good Spirits of Light and Love. The two details are these: First, Mr. Emberson states that one in four computers is now being commandeered by criminal elements and, unbeknown to the owner, is being used for all manner of criminal activity. (So you might want to disconnect from the net and power down whenever you are not using your machine!) And second, subliminal messages do regularly flash across your computer screen, the most common message being “Kill yourself!” (I note that subliminal manipulation of desires was a theme of my PhD dissertation, Consumer Aspirations, A Dynamic Approach, University Microfilms, 1978, a very technical presentation.) Last but not least, faced with such dark and foreboding thoughts, we should regularly contemplate the activity of Christ in the Etheric. (Rudolf Steiner, The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric, Steinerbooks, 2003; Centennial conference of Steiner's prediction of the Reappearance held in 2010 in Austin Texas: http://www.anthroposophy.org/fileadmin/nfm/enfmf-6/ pdfs/EN6-Austin-Reappearance.pdf
|
|