Researcher Donald Hoffman calls it a headset, biophysicist Wilhelm Reich called it a sieve, Plato called it a cave wall, the Buddhists and Hindus called it ‘Maya’ and the Quran called it ‘The Lowest Heaven’. They point to the timeless knowledge that the world of our senses is not fundamental, that a supersensible world is the driver of all individual and shared realities, that the observer is uniquely and inherently related to the observed –which was the very point of contention that caused the Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud split in 1912–, that materialistic science can not access the sources of degeneration or prosperity if it continues to reject, deny or exclude the spiritual realm.
The historical era in which this knowledge was most widely and commonly understood is seldom mentioned nowadays, even though it holds the answers to so many of our modern questions. How can that be? History should serve our lives and our actions, Friedrich Nietzsche said, or else it is incapacitating. History should study the evolution of soul, spirit and consciousness, Rudolf Steiner said, or else it is superficial. So, the most helpful, essential histories remain hidden and concealed: The times in which art, science and religion were one, in which the characteristics of consciousness were the opposite of ours today.
Goethe and Steiner, among only a few others during the last few centuries(1), explained what reality was like during these times. Dreaming, sleeping and wakefulness were not as sharply differentiated as today. Humans were not yet as fully individualized. Community and cooperation were important means to achieving a virtuous earthly life. Reality was mainly experienced through images and wisdom was captured in myths of the kind we are no longer capable of producing today.
Nothing was mysterious except the intellectual realm, while today everything is mysterious except the intellectual realm.
But then if you’re so smart, tell me why are you still so afraid?
~Billy Joel, Vienna, 1977
The vague memories people hold of old wisdom and truth, of the meanings of symbols and myths, of the value of community, all these subconscious longings, desires and associations are being sorely exploited in modern society, through political ideologies, commercial seduction and other ways.(2)
Between the 8th and 15th centuries our materialistic age gradually emerged, then fully kicked into gear at the end of the 18th century. In 2025, humanity has not yet thrown off the reins of the lowest heaven, on the contrary, it is fearfully clinging to it, creating a place much lower than the lowest heaven.
1. For example: Mary Settegast (1934-2020) Plato, Prehistorian: Myth, Religion, Archeology, Rotenberg Press, 1986; Ingrid Klerk, Turkse Mythologie, 2003; or Martin A. Larson (1897-1994) The Essene Heritage, or The Teacher of the Scrolls and the Gospel Christ, 1967.
2. For example: William Pfaff on the longing for a lost ‘chivalric code’ that in his view lead to the First World War, The Bullet’s Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia, Simon and Schuster, 2005; or Wilhelm Reich on the causes of unnatural, robotic behavior: People in Trouble. Volume II of Wilhelm Reich Biographical Material. History of the Discovery of the Life Energy. The Emotional Plague of Mankind. Orgone Institute Press, Rangeley, Maine, 1953. First written in 1936-37 under the German manuscript title Menschen im Staat.
Sigmund Freud’s nephew launched the first PR company in the US in 1919.
The forced migration of people and children in Europe and the US during the 19th century permanently uprooted hundreds of thousands families and cut ties with heritage.