The Eighth Sphere: Lucifer's Dream, Earth's Dump*
"Beside these there is an Eighth Sphere to which everything goes that cannot make any connection with this continuous evolution.... When a human being uses the life on earth only to amass what is of service to himself alone, only to experience an intensification of his own egotistical self [black magic is the ultimate ego trip], this leads in Devachan [Heaven] into the condition of Avitchi. A person who cannot escape from his own separateness goes into Avitchi. All these Avitchi men will eventually become inhabitants of the Eighth Sphere. The other human beings will be inhabitants of the continuing chain of evolution. It is from this concept that religions have formulated the doctrine of hell." [1]
"The destiny of Ahriman and Lucifer is that they work with their forces in earth evolution and repeatedly make the greatest efforts to hold back the wider progress of evolution; they try to establish a realm for themselves, and have again and again to suffer disillusionment." [2]
The preceding quotation is one of the most general statements I've ever read by Steiner about the goals of Lucifer and Ahriman. In previous essays, I have concentrated on a few of the approaches they use to sidetrack our evolution, but I didn't go into much detail on their intended destination. That is the subject of this essay.
The "destination" to which I refer is known as the Eighth Sphere, which is a quasi-spiritual world which permeates Earth. It was produced by Lucifer and Ahriman just as our solar system's previous "incarnation," a.k.a. the Old Moon "manvantara," was ending. As Steiner puts it, "Thus as Sphere Three [Old Moon manvantara] was advancing to a further stage, something is wrested from the Spirits of Form by Lucifer and Ahriman; into this part that is wrested away, Lucifer and Ahriman penetrate, instead of the Sprits of Form. The activities of Lucifer and Ahriman are added to the Spirits of Movement [among others which created the Old Moon] and, as a result Eight arises out of Three." [3]
In An Outline of Occult Science, Steiner describes this "substantiality": "[Mankind was] embedded in the above-described vaporous environment. The most manifold processes occur within this mistlike element. Substances now unite, now separate. Certain parts condense, others become rarefied. All this occurs in such a way that the human beings neither see nor hear it directly, but images [Imaginations] are called forth by it in their consciousness.... Although they are symbols, not copies, they correspond, nevertheless, to the outer events.... A Moon humanity is thus in the position to direct its actions in accordance with these pictures [although driven by dull urges instead of having free will]." [4]
"... on the Old Moon, man's natural mode of perception was visionary and imaginative in character, so that any substantiality to be discerned in the Eighth Sphere must be found by way of visionary Imaginations [a form of clairvoyance]." [5]
"Into our Fourth Sphere [Earth], therefore, there has been instilled a sphere that is really a Moon-sphere, but is filled with Earthly substantiality...." [6] [In this context, "Moon" refers to the Old Moon or Third Sphere - the previous "incarnation" of Earth.]
The following passage provides additional clues to the nature of the 8th Sphere:
"Were [Earth] really to consist of atoms, all these atoms would still be impregnated by formations belonging to the Eighth Sphere -- which are perceptible only to visionary clairvoyance. These formations are present everywhere; so too is the spectre-like content ... which can therefore be perceived just as actual spectres are perceived." [7]
But the original matter-heist wasn't the end of it - Lucifer and Ahriman continue to take whatever they can from Earth, and add to their world:
Lucifer and Ahriman strive unceasingly to draw from the Earth's substances whatever they can snatch, in order to form their Eighth Sphere which then, when it is sufficiently advanced, will be detached from the Earth and go its own way in the Cosmos together with Lucifer and Ahriman. [8]
"This alchemy by which mineral substance is sent over into the Eighth Sphere is taking place all the time behind the scenes of our existence." [9] [His use of "alchemy" seems to imply that when matter is stolen from Earth, it is transformed into some alien form of matter, which might explain why the Eighth Sphere must be perceived clairvoyantly. However, this might be reading too much into it.]
Lucifer and Ahriman find their greatest success in seizing physical matter from the human brain, because, as Steiner puts it, "physical substance there is more spiritualized that anywhere else." He also states that "everything that is similar to the head ... is equally exposed to the danger of being dispatched to the Eighth Sphere." [10]
"New Age" gang spreads confusion about the 8th Sphere
In the Occult Movement in the 19th Century, Steiner devotes considerable time to the spin put on the 8th Sphere by A.P. Sinnett's book Esoteric Buddhism. Sinnett essentially states that the present Moon is the 8th Sphere, when in fact the physical aspect of the Moon was created by Jahve to prevent Lucifer and Ahriman from obtaining sufficient matter to achieve their ultimate goal. Steiner claims that Sinnett's distortion was intended to convey a materialistic version of reincarnation, which he does not describe. I'll take his word for it, but I think it's safe to say that it also tends to conceal a major aspect of what Lucifer and Ahriman are doing.
Steiner also mentions that H.P. Blavatsky, upon realizing that she was being used by so-called left-hand initiates (who pursue selfish interests, but aren't the same as black magicians) to give the impression that their propaganda was coming from benevolent higher beings, tried to correct Sinnett's error. But she wasn't a very good writer, and Sinnett's teachings became the generally accepted view among theosophists.
Seducing and driving us to the 8th Sphere
"If Rome had developed in such a way that a great all-embracing mechanized empire had arisen, it would only have been habitable for egoless human beings who would have remained on earth after Lucifer had drawn out their souls on the path of Greek culture and art. You see how Ahriman and Lucifer work together. Lucifer wants to take men's souls away and found a planet with them of his own. Ahriman has to help him. While Lucifer sucks the juice out of the lemon, as it were, Ahriman presses it out, thereby hardening what remains. This is what he tried to do to the civilization of Rome. Here we have an important cosmic process going on all due to the intention and resolve of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. As I have said, they were disappointed. They have continued their efforts, however, and our fifth post-Atlantean age has yet [as of 1916] to learn how strong these attacks are. They are now only beginning but they will become stronger and stronger. This age must learn, too, that the necessity to understand these attacks will become ever greater." [11]
"But the endeavor of Lucifer and Ahriman is to drag the free will of man, and whatever stems from it, into the Eighth Sphere. This means that man is perpetually exposed to the danger of having his free will wrested from him and dragged by Lucifer and Ahriman into the Eighth Sphere.
"This happens if the element of free will is transformed, for example, into visionary clairvoyance [this might be a reference to astral projection, a major aspect of witchcraft]. When this is the case, a man is already in the Eighth Sphere. This is a matter of which occultists are reluctant to speak, because it is an awful, terrible truth.
[...]
"Lucifer and Ahriman are engaged perpetually in shackling man's free will and in conjuring all sorts of things before him in order to tear away what he makes out of these things and let it disappear into the Eighth Sphere." [12]
"Shackling man's free will" implies a limitation of choices, such as by foisting certain macroeconomic configurations upon society (such as our drug-based "health care" system, and our transportation system). I presume that by "conjuring all sorts of things before him," Steiner meant that L&A directly or indirectly arrange stimuli which are intended to produce certain states of mind which facilitate the theft of will, or matter from related brain-regions. This might be one of the purposes of the extreme isolation of "enhanced interrogation," which produces hallucinations, which might be equivalent to "visionary clairvoyance" for Lucifer and Ahriman's purposes. Also note that hallucinogens are sometimes given to victims of EI, and that the CIA's dirty Dulles-Angleton faction was instrumental in popularizing LSD (which interestingly converts to 35, and then 8, as in 8th Sphere).
Satan and Lucifer's basic strategy for leading our higher souls or egos to the 8th Sphere is to cause humans to become disenchanted with Earth by creating an onerous, "mechanistic" society (such as that depicted in Orwell's 1984, with its perpetual warfare based on lies) and unwittingly enchanted with the Eighth Sphere, partly by cultivating a tendency for us to escape into fantasy (another aspect of 1984). Mankind would then become a race of talking animals, which is how the Synarchist financial oligarchy views us. They think of themselves as a race of supermen - not because they're especially intelligent, but because, due to sociopathy or possession, they're willing to commit monstrous deeds which the vast majority of humans would never consider, such as lying us into a world-destroying war and calling themselves Christians.
Notes
*Essentially a revised version of The Eighth Sphere: Lucifer's Dream. Revised for clarity, and expanded concept by adding opening quotation.
[1] Rudolf Steiner: Foundations of Esotericism, Lecture XIV
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/FoundEsoter/19051009p01.html [This might be the basis of the mainstream concept of Hell, but it still doesn't amount to eternal torture of the worst kind.]
[2] Rudolf Steiner, Inner Impulses of Evolution, Lecture 5
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Lectures/InnerImpul/191609
24p01.html
[3] Rudolf Steiner, The Occult Movement in the 19th Century, p 83
[4] An Outline of Occult Science, Book IV
The Evolution of The Cosmos and Man (Part 5)
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA013/English/AP1972/GA013_c04-05.html
[5] Rudolf Steiner, The Occult Movement in the 19th Century, p 80
[6] ibid. p 85
[7] ibid. p 85
[8] ibid. p 85
[9] ibid. p 86
[10] ibid. p 86
[11] Rudolf Steiner, Inner Impulses of Evolution, Lecture 2
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Lectures/InnerImpul/19160917p01.html
[12] Rudolf Steiner, The Occult Movement in the 19th Century, p 90