A devil: Asuras
Asurian beings The Archai went through their humanity stage, their development, at ancient Saturn. Those Archai who stayed back then, who did not develop their ego, are called Asuras. They work against the spirits of the personality (archai), against the ego development and against the ego of the people. They want to take away the ego from us humans, want to make us not only believe we are animals, but make us live as if we were animals. The animal has no ego, the animal has the astral body as the highest member of its being, its development only continues until sexual maturity and then lives out its drives and passions. The animal can be trained to change its instinctive behaviour. But the animal cannot educate itself about its ego in the same way as man himself. Man has an I our I can see to do something one way or another, we can do things of our own free will, the animal cannot. The Asuras want to take away the freedom from us humans, to make us into beings who can only be guided by instincts, drives and passions. Man has an ego, it gives us independence. The ego gives us abilities that go beyond the predestination of the world and fate. Where we create something new and unprecedented from our ego, we work from our ego. When we two people see ourselves rejoicing over their being (B037, 17.6.1909), this is something new for the world, when we recognize from our moral intuition a duty to act, then we create something new from nothing. The Asuras want to prevent such abilities and actions. They try to create a feeling of moral impotence in people, as if they were surrounded only by problems. Their place of action in humans is the physical body. They want to drive man into an abyss of despair and thus into a second, a moral death. Where cultural disease and cultural death are at home, there also work Asurian beings. Where we humans live in the terrible orgies, parties, debauchery and other lowly behaviour, we form thought forms in our astral bodies from which the Asuras get their food (B126, page 148). Their goal is the destruction of the human ego. To weaken our ego so that it can be replaced. Then demonic forces penetrate. People become like animals, not human without morals, conscience, pity. Thus destroying the connection of the ego with the spiritual world and thereby preventing the encounter with Christ. The place of confrontation with them is the consciousness soul, in the development of which man comes to the decision of turning to the divine, to devotional virtuousness, or to the instinctive denial of self and ego. Wherever they have an effect, they take away people's prospects for the future. Without connecting to the spiritual, the hopes for the future are missing, that is their aim, hopelessness in the entanglement with the earthly-physical. People experience the world only in the sensations of the moment. The work of the Asuras, their creeping into our consciousness soul, begins with our age. "The Asuras will develop evil with a much more intensive power than even the satanic (n. ahrimanic spirits) powers of the Atlantic or even the Luciferian spirits of the Lemurian age" (B037, lecture 22.3.1909). To find a balance for their work will be much more difficult for mankind and for the good spirits than it is the case with the Luciferian and Ahrimanic spirits. People will then find a way to deal with them when they can connect with the Holy Spirit through the spiritual-scientific knowledge of Christ. When we can establish free spirit-supported communities through our spiritual work.
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