Grappling with Evil: Conquering Fear and Anxiety

By Douglas Gabriel

Modern thinking is attacked by elemental and demonic spirits who slow down their development (fall from heaven) to create resistance for humans to “push-up against.” Evil is there to provide the temptations and challenges that are needed to strengthen the muscles needed to climb the moral mountain to the summit. Thinking can rise-up and become higher thoughts, vibrations, and harmonics while also creating the future spiritual environment of the aspirant, building their ‘mansion’ in heaven. Thinking can also lower the human being’s vibration until it becomes food for the elemental beings and the laggard beings who remain behind for our benefit by becoming “evil.” Unfortunately, these evil beings desire to eat the soul and spirit of each human being. In our current age, these beings are evil and wish to lead thinking in the wrong direction and make earth-bound thinking the materialistic limit of human development, instead of a tool that can commune with spiritual beings through living thinking called Moral Imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tyla Gabriel
• Release date: Apr 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781963709988

Douglas Gabriel

Douglas is a retired superintendent of schools and professor of education who has worked with schools and organizations throughout the world. He has authored eleven books ranging from teacher training manuals to philosophical/spiritual works on the nature of the divine feminine. He was a Waldorf class teacher and administrator at the Detroit Waldorf School and taught courses at Mercy College, the University of Detroit, and Wayne State University for decades.He then became the Headmaster of a Waldorf School in Hawaii and taught at the University of Hawaii, Hilo. He was a leader in the development of charter schools in Michigan and helped found the first Waldorf School in the Detroit Public School system and the first charter Waldorf School in Michigan. Later, he became the superintendent of a public school that annually educated five thousand adjudicated youth throughout a dozen facilities in Wayne County. Gabriel also helped found the second largest charter school management company in the country and created their entrepreneurial business curriculum for elementary and secondary education.Gabriel received his first degree in Religious Formation at the same time as an Associate’s Degree in computer science in 1972. This odd mixture of technology and religion continued throughout his life. He was drafted into and served in the Army Security Agency (NSA) where he was a cryptologist and systems analyst in signal intelligence, earning him a degree in Signal Broadcasting. After military service, he entered the Catholic Church again as a Trappist monk and later as a Jesuit priest where he earned PhD’s in Philosophy and Comparative Religion, and a Doctor of Divinity.As a Jesuit priest, he came to Detroit and earned a BA in Anthroposophical Studies and History and a MA in School Administration. Gabriel left the priesthood and became a Waldorf class teacher and administrator in Detroit and later in Hilo, Hawaii. Douglas has been a sought after lecturer and consultant to schools and businesses throughout the world and in 1982 he founded the Waldorf Educational Foundation that provides funding for the publication of educational books.He has raised a great deal of money for Waldorf schools and institutions that continue to develop the teachings of Dr. Rudolf Steiner.Douglas is now retired but continues to write a variety of books, including a novel and a science fiction thriller. He has four beautiful children who keep him busy and active, and a wife who is always striving towards the spirit through creating of an art of life.

Book preview

Grappling with Evil

One of the greatest questions facing humanity is what to do with evil. Students of Rudolf Steiner often argue whether one should conquer evil in a ‘Michaelic’ fashion, with a ‘sword of wisdom’ slaying ignorance; or ignore evil and see only the good; or absorb and transform evil in the fashion of Mani, the great spiritual teacher who founded the Manichean religion. Mani believed that light and darkness are in an eternal battle for the soul of the human that is in the middle.

Evil abounds everywhere, and in America it is the mainstay of almost every newscast, television show, and movie. The greater the evil displayed, the larger the audience. Evil is so enculturated that when it rears its demonic head, like the American bombing of Syria, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and other countries, the modern Westerner does not even notice. Evil is king and the global elite, and every smaller cabal underneath them, runs rampant through the world causing chaos, destruction, and destabilization in their wake. Evil seems to be rushing towards an apocalypse in our time—and the majority of people are participating.

How can the modern aspirant of spiritual science understand evil and learn how to deal with it?

First, we need to know what evil is. Steiner gives tremendously detailed descriptions of good and evil and explains the material world as the combination of four different interpenetrating space/time realms (incarnations of the Earth) that create our world through processes of heterochrony; essentially, three interlocked dimensions and the added factor of ‘time,’ as a linear experience. Our three dimensions result in the three soul forces of the human being—thinking, feeling and willing and their co-operation with spiritual beings who donated and sustain the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms. These three soul forces are confronted by three different types of evil beings in the world. We need to know who these beings are, where they came from— and what is their ultimate goal.

Modern thinking is attacked by elemental and demonic spirits who slow down their development (‘Fall from Heaven’) to create resistance for humans to ‘push-up against.’ Evil is there to provide the temptations and challenges that are needed to strengthen the muscles needed to ‘climb the moral mountain’ to the summit. Thinking can rise-up and become higher thoughts, vibrations, and harmonics while also creating the future spiritual environment of the aspirant, building their ‘mansions’ in heaven. Thinking can also lower the human being’s vibration until it becomes food for the elemental beings and the laggard, luciferic beings who remain behind for our benefit by becoming ‘evil.’ Unfortunately, these evil beings desire to consume the soul and spirit of each human being. In our current age, these beings are evil and wish to lead thinking in the wrong direction and make materialistic earth-bound thinking the limit of human development, instead of a tool that can commune with spiritual beings through living thinking called by Rudolf Steiner Moral Imagination.

Living Thinking Becomes Imagination

The evil beings who wish to steal human thinking and lead it astray are called luciferic beings. They attack the human astral body and lead thoughts into the Seven Deadly Sins instead of into higher worlds through the Seven Holy Virtues. Every person is faced with the polarity of evil in their thinking with cold, gray shadow-thoughts on one hand (Ahriman), and brilliantly selfish thoughts on the other (Lucifer). When the center is found through ‘warmed-up’ thinking that arises from the heart, then thoughts can be filled with life and become living Moral Imaginations. Lucifer is tamed through this type of living thinking. The evil of thinking is then transformed and channeled into Moral Imaginations that feed the Angelic realms; rather than an evil thinking that serves the lower self, evil, and dark elementals. The spiritual initiate works to transform the Seven Deadly Sins into the Seven Heavenly Virtues.

Grappling with luciferic Angels, who wish to steal our thoughts, is the first stage of spiritual development where doubt is conquered, and thoughts become wisdom-filled and are warmed with love. This type of love is provided by Christ to the higher self of humans. It is a type of warmed-up thinking that becomes living Moral Imaginations which are often referred to as Cosmic Wisdom or the Being Sophia. Steiner called this Being of Wisdom, AnthropoSophia.

Sophia, the Being of Wisdom, works with the Archai Michael through cosmic thinking to guide human thinking into the realm of the Angels, the realm of living Moral Imaginations. Michael is the ‘son’ of Sophia, according to Steiner. With Sophia’s love and close guidance, the aspirant can utilize the Cosmic Wisdom (Sophia) of Michael and the Christ-filled heart forces to defeat Lucifer in the realm of thinking.

Courageous Feeling Becomes Inspiration

The second stage of spiritual development happens when feelings can be turned into Moral Inspirations. Generally, evil penetrates feeling through fear and anxiety in the human heart. Cold ‘reptilian’ feelings rule the modern realm of emotions. From cold, dispassionate evil, that racks the heart with fear and anxiety, to the rage and anger that fills the American emotional landscape, there is little balance found in the soul of the modern thinker. Faith and confidence in the spiritual world seldom fill the heart of a secular humanist. Worries of making money, finding love, and making a living often overwhelms the heart until fear and anxiety turn to depression and suicidal thoughts. Only the confidence that comes from belief in—and experience of—the spiritual world can allay those fears.

Fear of death is conquered when the Inspiration arises that human life is eternal, and that we live on after death, one life after the next. The ‘sting of death’ dissipates when faith and confidence in the divine fills the human heart. This type of Moral Inspiration comes from the realm of the Archangels. The opposing beings who use fear, anxiety, and oppression to steal the heart forces of humanity are called ahrimanic beings, who work in tandem with asuric beings. Ahriman and his minions join with the hosts of asuric beings attacking humanity to steal the immortal I Am of the individual through fear. Christ, the Being of Love, is the antidote: Where there is love, there is no fear; where there is fear, there is no love.

Rudolf Steiner tells us about fear and anxiety in, The Stages of Higher Knowledge, Chapter 3. Inspiration, GA 12:

The human feels, as it were, far more things compel him to feel, only in ordinary life this excess is employed in a direction that through occult training must be transformed into another. Take, for instance, a feeling of anxiety or fear. It can be crystal clear that often fear or anxiety is greater than it would be if it were in true proportion to the corresponding outer event. Imagine that the occult student is working energetically on himself with the aim to feel in no instance more fear and anxiety than is justified by corresponding external events. Now a given amount of fear or anxiety always entails an expenditure of soul force. This soul force is actually lost as a result when fear or anxiety is produced. The student conserves this soul force when he denies himself fear or anxiety—or other such feelings—and it remains at his disposal for some other purpose. If he repeats such processes often, he will build up an inner treasure of these continually husbanded soul forces, and the occult student will soon find that out of such economies of feeling will arise the germs of those inner images that will bring to expression the revelations of higher life.

Ahrimanic beings tend to make humans very materialistic, nihilistic, and atheistic. Ahriman creates an ‘illness’ of the heart, and this creates the fear of the past and the terror of the future in the heart of a materialist. Nonetheless, the power of the warmth of love resides within the human heart, and it can conquer the cold, calculated fear and anxiety of the ahrimanic beings active in the etheric body of the human being. Bringing morality and faith into the heart dispels fear and ends anxiety. Then, at that point, the human being can enkindle the fire that feeds love. For as it says in scripture: There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear. (1 John 4:18)

This second stage of spiritual development creates the transformation of the human etheric body. This etheric body is a mirror image, or holographic representation, of the entire Cosmos. Ahriman wants to disconnect humans from their divine inheritance of becoming a perfect image of the whole by convincing humans that they are just animals instead of becoming Angels. Knowing your divine origins fires-up the heart to develop the courage needed to face evil with love and tame it—not kill it. The first stage is learning about the ‘control of thinking’; whereas the second stage is to fire-up the heart with moral feelings that reach to the realm of the Archangels, the realm of Moral Inspiration.

To conquer the cold, deadening forces of ahrimanic beings, the aspirant needs to seek the help of Christ and their own personal higher self. Sophia and the Time Spirit Michael also approach the aspirant in the realm of the astral body to help transform thinking into Moral Imagination. Christ now approaches the aspirant in the realm of the heart to fire-up the soul with moral love born of freedom and Moral Inspiration. Christ joins with Sophia and is often called, ‘Sophia-Christos.’ These two Spiritual Beings belong together like two sides of a coin—Sophia on the side of wisdom, Christ on the side of love.

Spirit Willing Becomes Intuition

The third stage of spiritual development entails control of the most mysterious and unknown aspects of the soul called willpower, or the volition of the human being. Often the will of the modern aspirant is frozen, weak, or undeveloped. That is because a third group of evil beings try to steal the willpower of the aspirant through hatred, ethnocentrism, and selfishness. These beings attack the willpower and twist it into violence, sexual aberrations, and every form of ego deformation imaginable. These evil beings are called Asuras, and they will eat human willpower if possible.

These asuric beings enter the human body and become habits, addictions, and ways of life that distort the nature of the human being into that of an animal. Lower desires feed these beings who wish to enter the will of the human being at every point where hatred, instead of love, rules. The wisdom of Sophia and love of Christ must join together to embrace and redeem these beings who sacrificed themselves so that humanity could have the resistance necessary for growth and development.

When Christ, Sophia, and Michael unite with the pure love of the aspirant to fight the Asuras that have taken up residence in our bad habits, then love can conquer hatred and absorb evil so that we can liberate and redeem the luciferic, ahrimanic, and asuric beings who wish to steal the thinking, feeling, and willing of humanity. These beings steal human ego forces so that, for a moment, they might feel what it is like to be ‘human’ again. Each of these three ranks of evil beings have been through an equivalent ‘human’ stage (4th Planetary Condition) at one time in which they failed; and, as a result, experienced a ‘fall.’ Consequently, they long to re-enter the realm of humans.

When the three ranks of evil take action, it is out of different realms that these beings wish to ‘invade’ the realm of human beings. These beings do not belong in the human realm and need to be sent back into the realms they came from. Each time we consciously face these beings in our own thinking, feeling, and willing, and turn those soul forces into Moral Imagination, Moral Inspiration, and Moral Intuition, we liberate these evil beings and ourselves. This is a mission of humanity: to turn evil into good and absorb the positive gifts of evil while redeeming and liberating these evil beings who have sacrificed themselves for our spiritual evolution.

We are in an age when thinking is the soul capacity over which we have the most control. The astral realm is where we must tame our astral bodies by controlling our thinking and refining it into thoughts that behold the eternal in the world. While Michaelic thinking is the antidote that Rudolf Steiner speaks of most often, we also need Sophia to help lead us through earthly wisdom to Michaelic Cosmic Wisdom.

The Mission of Human Spiritual Evolution

The transformation through love within the realm of human feelings is a core mission of Christ through His Second Coming in the Etheric Realm. For according to Rudolf Steiner, this transformation takes place within the etheric body through the human Ego manifesting selfless love to all sentient beings and all of the surrounding Cosmos. This, in turn, results in the development of a warm radiant force within the heart that rises up and bathes the higher centers of the head. This is essentially the result of the Christ in You or I Am merging with the Human Ego and transforming the etheric or life-body of the human being into Life-Spirit (Budhi); which in turn, transforms its relationship to the astral body, physical body and the surrounding Cosmos. Beyond this, Christ is also transforming the entire etheric life-body of the Earth and linking the microcosmic etheric heart of the human being to the macrocosmic etheric