This one-act-play was performed in August 2017 in the Facebook theater. It was leaked by an unknown patriot, despite being classified Top Secret and verboten by the Anthroposophical Society's counter-conspiracy division. (Shred before reading.)
The Players (in order of appearance): Tarjei Straume, Frank Thomas Smith, Sarah Cherry, James D. Stewart, Rosann Roxy Jentes, Bradford Riley
Tarjei (quoting Rudolf Steiner): "Yes, indeed, the Americans should not pride themselves on their forebears, their European blood ancestry. Rather they should point to the fact that they once lived in Asia at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and there went through a culture which was not yet permeated by Christianity; thus they are also those who accept Christianity through external tradition and external education. There is still a strong opposition from this quarter to a soul-spiritual conception of the world."Nationality
Frank: I'm reporting you to President Trump, Tarjei Straume. Better crawl into your igloo and don't answer the door...if you have one.
Tarjei: "World-egoism proceeds from the Anglo-American Race. From that direction the whole Earth will be overlaid with egoism. It is from England and America that all the discoveries come that will cover the Earth like a network of egoism. So it is from there that the whole Earth will be covered by a network of egotistic evil." Foundations of Esotericism
Sarah: Really?? genocide and slavery are the underpinnings of our nation. I guess that gave us away??? <<rats>>">
Frank: Fear not, Sarah Cherry. There is no stenographic record of this lecture. It was pasted together from notes made by some listeners. The German language publisher practically apologizes for even including it in the GA. It should not be understood as reproducing what Steiner actually said. (copy James D. Stewart.)
Tarjei: Interesting and disappointing at the same time. It's been a favorite quote of mine for decades.
Sarah:...because we most certainly are the product of genocide and slavery. Keep using the quote. Thus saith the Daoist Priest.
Tarjei: The statement is corroborated in several other lectures. It's about the outline of evolution, geographic medicine etc. stretching all the way from the Mexican Mysteries to the War of All Against All at the end of the seventh epoch which will be a direct result of extreme egoism developing in America. This lies about five or six millennia in the future, and RS emphasizes that we need to make a clear distinction between national karma and individual karma, meaning that Americans who develop the Christ impulse will cease to be Americans and incarnate elsewhere long before this catastrophe brings down the entire cycle. For these reasons, I find it difficult to accept that the above quote is not genuine, because it fits with all the rest.
James: "Time" is not proceeding as it has in the past: it seems to be compressed ... electricity? the industrial age? computers? I think several millennia might be optimistic.
Tarjei: Time being compressed? If we do the math here for the present fifth and future sixth and seventh cultural epochs, each epoch is 2160 years. The present epoch runs from 1413 to 3573, the sixth from 3573 to 5733, and the seventh from 5733 to 7893. In other words, during the latter half of the eighth millennium, the entire root race (or great epoch) will be destroyed by the War of All Against All, not through flood like Atlantis but through fire. If this chronology should be compressed and bring about the destruction of the fifth root race a lot sooner, you would have to reduce the duration of each future epoch or eliminate them altogether.
Frank: I don't doubt that he said that or something like it. But what about things he also might have said that are not included in the listeners' notes? And to what extent do the contents of the notes reflect the listeners' and perhaps also Steiner's prejudices? What he said in 1905 reflects the general German superiority attitude, which is still alive today, justified or not. I lived in Germany for a number of years and became fed up with krautosophy's "Amerikanismus" relegating the guilt for WW2 and the holocaust to Anglo-American secret societies and Americo-Ahriman. I as on the verge of abandoning Anthroposophy altogether until I realized that the future of anthroposophy lies not in "Central Europe" (aka Germany), but elsewhere. German cultural/spiritual superiority ended with Hitler.
Tarjei: The question we're facing today is when American moral superiority and leadership and exceptionalism will come to an end. Geographic medicine may be an antidote. Perhaps the American eagle will end with Trump just like the German eagle ended with Hitler like you said. The eagle is the problem -- a bird of prey with a very small brain.
Sarah: Not only a bird of prey, but a carrion eater and one that kills other animals for their kill.
Frank: You must realize, Tarjei, that the USA is a 3.5 world country. You live in a first-world country, I live in a third world country. The US is 3.5 because it has many 3rd world characteristics, but it also has extreme economic and military power and thus, with a sociopath as president, is very dangerous (more than usual). One may hope, however, that clearer heads with some courage will be able to impeach and send him back to the moon. (Please don't quote Steiner about him; he never got farther west than the UK.)
Tarjei:He investigated some bats in Kentucky.
Frank: You and Rudy think that Amerika is materialistic, Tarjei. Well, here's evidence that it isn't so, that Ahriman had been defeated in Florida. I don't know about you, but Rudy was never in Florida: Drive-In Jesus, going to church without leaving your car.
Tarjei: Maybe Rudy didn't visit Florida, but I did in 1975, just ask Rosann. We went to the movies -- we actually saw "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud" -- but we missed out on them drive-in churches, which would have been a treat. Anyway, Rudy never went anywhere outside Europe physically, but he went everywhere with his initiation magic, including the far away reaches of the Cosmos, and did some impressive time travel in Mexico where he investigated the very root of the great evil mentioned above that will engulf the world in the eighth millennium. Your problem with Rudy and the West, Frank, is that you don't like his mention of Anglo-American conspiracies -- it's the monkey on your back. You should have come to Dornach in 2013 and had an in-depth discussion with Bradford. We talked about you and missed you.
Rosann: Man...how do you remember what we saw at the drive in...I didn't remember taking you. Sometimes you didn't remember what was in front of you at the time-I think you astral traveled then.There were no drive in churches in Miami and this is the first I ever heard of one anywhere. Your reasoning makes sense to me Frank. If I ever pass one I'll be sure to stop by.
Tarjei: I remember, Rosann, that we first read a short story in London titled "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud" in some magazine. A little later on we were in Miami, and the movie had just come out we were told on TV, and you jumped up hitting the ceiling with excitement and dragged me to see it the very next day. That's not hard to remember. And it wasn't a drive-in, it was a regular cinema; I remember that because it was air conditioned and it was weird to be hit by the heat outside afterwards long after sundown. (The story was silly because people simply do not jump in and out of bodies like that, but I mentioned it to Frank in order to feed him the notion that it was a very spiritual experience judged by the title.)
Frank: Ok, I admit that monkey on my back. We know what Steiner said about the Anglo-American secret societies and how they were behind...well...just about everything bad those days. Do you think he knew about those secret societies through clairvoyance, or did he happen to know about them, or did some mortal give him a tip? Either way, I don't know if he was right. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Of course certain fundamentalist anthropops believe that it's true simply because Steiner said so. OK. My monkey itches because those same ...er... individuals believe every conspiracy theory, no matter how absurd, because RS said something almost 100 years ago. But hey Tarjei, you mention Bradford. What's with him? Once in a while he "likes" something, but doesn't comment. In his previous Texan incarnation, he was not known for reticence.
Tarjei: Well Frank, let Bradford speak for himself. He believes in conspiracies with which I personally disagree. But I don't think he believes in them just because Steiner talked about conspiracies in his own day. Steiner did suggest that political Communism in Russia was planned by a small secret group in England as a social experiment, and this makes sense if you consider that Lenin was making his preparations in London in 1905. Furthermore, the Nazis coming to power in Germany also appears to have been manipulated by the West if you follow the money through the twenties and the crash and beyond. And if Steiner was a nut because of what he said about conspiracies, he must have been nutty about everything else too, including his entire Weltanschauung.
Frank: The story about the communist "experiment" in Russia being engineered by the British makes no sense. It was the Germans who arranged for Lenin to travel in a sealed railroad car from Zurich through Germany to Russia to take over the revolution there and make it a Communist one. The Germans benefited by thus eliminating the enemy on its Eastern front. For the British it was a serious disadvantage. I don't see how this makes Steiner's Weltanschauung "nutty". He could well have been wrong about some things, never claiming infallibility, and right about others where he was more competent: education, Christology, initiation science, spiritual science in general. If something makes sense to me - which most of what Steiner said does - I can accept it. If not, not.
Tarjei: The Germans who participated in Lenin's move may have been collaborators or puppets. The same goes for German banks choosing to support Hitler at a time when those banks were very much at the mercy of American banks. This all makes sense, no doubt about it. But it's still theory, and that means it can neither be proven or disproven. And that's why I think Bradford needs to step in. He implies that conspiracies are not theories but proven facts while you seem to insist that they are disproven because you can't wrap your head around them. So I say let Bradford help you with that monkey and vice versa.
Bradford: The doctor is busy with other patients. Let me check my calendar.
Frank: I got Argentine health insurance, Doc. So no problemo....they tell me.
Bradford: We don't recognize no stinkin' health insurance. We got OBAMA CARE, where you go stinkin' bankrupt and we get your house, car, wife and dog and you get chemo. Frank is on redemption road. He retired from the spy business and constantly, relentlessly, warmly, sensually pursued his love of baseball, stood behind, as solid backbone, Waldorf and Anthro studies and pursued his dream of novelist continuing his path in El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan, a 1941 short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges whom Frank and I have idealized. In the Intelligence Community Mr. Smith goes to Washington, evolved in the Cold War to Mr. Smith gets an new identity and a new incarnation status as a Good Man, (not to be confused with a cold war CIA, company man with an abnormal high IQ) I was never gifted with a high IQ nor signed up for testing in the military. I have reviewed your psychological profile Mr. Smith and we see no need to interfere with all that you have suffered now as an exiled ex-patriot. You seem to have adjusted brilliantly to being a Consciousness Soul guard dog who produces rather riveting, objective and Cosmopolitan reporting on irritating and difficult scabs and wounds on the standard Anthropop ego. I suppose we might compare Mr. Smith to Robert Culp. It was an era, but not everyone became or evolved into lovely language leaping Spiritual Science grandfathers with huge hidden histories of Cold War Europe. Bless you my son, for we have all sinned. Take communion and seven hail mary's or bloody mary's or margaritas's or mimosa's. Whatever you do keep doing what your doing because I for one love to read your Zine. See your local pharmacist.
Frank: Your diagnosis is brilliant and accurate Herr Doktor. However, I'd never heard of Robert Culp and was instantly suspicious (culpa = guilt in Spanish) so I googled him. (to google - verb: google, googled, will google, would have/had googled, googling, etc.) I can identify with him because: "Terry and the Pirates had been Culp's favorite comic strip as a boy, and it was his long-time wish to make a film based on it." Reminiscent of "Tarjei and the Pirates".
Frank: The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
Bradford "I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms . . . I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars."
"An astounding fate, that of Ts'ui Pen," Stephen Albert said. "Governor of his native province, learned in astronomy, in astrology and in the tireless interpretation of the canonical books, chess player, famous poet and calligrapher-he abandoned all this in order to compose a book and a maze. He renounced the pleasures of both tyranny and justice, of his populous couch, of his banquets and even of erudition-all to close himself up for thirteen years in the Pavilion of the Limpid Solitude."
"In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pen, he chooses simultaneously-all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here, then, is the explanation of the novel's contradictions."
"Ts'ui Pen was a brilliant novelist, but he was also a man of letters who doubtless did not consider himself a mere novelist. The testimony of his contemporaries proclaims-and his life fully confirms-his metaphysical and mystical interests. Philosophic controversy usurps a good part of the novel. I know that of all problems, none disturbed him so greatly nor worked upon him so much as the abysmal problem of time."
"The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts'ui Pen conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us."
Bradford takes up the thread, Frank could presume to get lost in his own Labyrinth. No, Spiritual Science is not contradictory terms. In reality my spirit and thought stream knows as in a Devachan to Earth meeting of spirit to spirit on Earth just as once it may have been face to face in the Devachan. Time is the next vision of Space. It should be Time the final frontier not space. However this little complex essay captures exactly the Frank, who once got lost in the Labyrinth and indeed anyone of us can easily get lost in the labyrinth and indeed we need a new definition of the Labyrinth. And all of this explains many unusual and explicit contradictions. Synchronicity, Coincidence, Destiny, the magic of events simply as symbols or simply as literal life and death lessons that are incomprehensible Karmic Lessons. Thus the profound, complex, abilities and defenses that Frank Thomas Smith has self enclosed and erected in his standpoint of how he became in this life, HIM.
Frank: When I first read this story - many years ago in Spanish - I thought it was about historical facts fictionalized. When I came across this English translation years later I still thought so. But now there was Google, so I tried looking up the characters by name and finally realized that they never existed and that the whole thing is a beautiful Borgesian fantasy - fake news, as it were.* Curtain. The players bow low. The audience remains sitting in stunned silence.
