shepherd aug 2023

                                                                WAR AND PEACE 

                                                                 Alfred Heidenreich 

 By the same author THE CATACOMBS 

 GROWING POINT 

 HEALINGS IN THE GOSPELS 

 THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS 

 War and Peace was first published by the Christian Community Press in 1967 * Alfred Heidenreich (1898-1969) was a soldier in the First World War and experienced life at the front before being taken prisoner in France. In 1922 he trained as a Priest in the Christian Community, ‘the movement for religious renewal’. He moved from Germany to England in 1929 and helped develop its work in the English speaking world. He was popular as a lecturer and was author of several books on Christianity. 

 * 

 WAR AND PEACE by Alfred Heidenreich 

 Every age in the long course of human history needs to look afresh at war and peace. There is no once and for all answer to this tragic problem. Our century has been overtaken by warfare in its most devastating form. It came upon us like a thief in the night. It caused a split in millions of souls who abhorred the slaughter but could not escape being involved in it. This schizophrenia is still with us, unhealed. It causes us to take sides, sometimes violently, mostly ineffectually. In this study an effort is made to explore a solution on the level of inward action rather than by analysing political and economical causes. A purely pragmatic handling of political and economical power does not measure up to the threat of war and its tragedy, neither can it assure peace. In the last analysis, war is an almost occult issue. It involves a relapse into a collective state of consciousness which we have failed to outgrow. How can we understand this; how can we deal with this; these are the questions with which this study is concerned. "The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man". Thus runs one of the striking sentences in William Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell". As so many of Blake's sayings it is, under the disguise of a "Proverb of Hell", a penetrating and original remark of a mature mind. 

Faced with the almost universal cruelty which seems to be a built-in fact of Nature and the seemingly unending record of man's warfare from times immemorial, we might well conclude that this is the last word on the subject. But we stand today at a turning point of time. If war would today escalate - to use the fashionable phrase- to its fullness, it could mean the total annihilation of life on earth. At the same time we have reasons to wonder whether it is not becoming possible for the eye of man to extend its range of vision and its depth of perception so as to behold at least a slightly greater portion of "eternity" than Blake allowed for. Taking these new factors into consideration, the outward and the inward one, it is tempting to take a fresh look at the matter. In order to have a broader basis and a wider background, we start with a short history. It will provide material for thought and throw our present position more clearly into relief. We need not confine ourselves to secular documents for the records of human warfare. On the contrary, perhaps to our surprise, we find abundant material in the ancient spiritual documents of mankind. 

 A very illuminating and characteristic incident is recorded in the Bhagavad Gita which offers us a deep insight into the nature and significance of war at the outset of documented history. Arjuna, the disciple and prophet of Krishna, finds himself in a distressing predicament. at the prospect of an impending battle. Seeing "the uncles and grandfathers, teachers, mother's brothers, cousins, sons and grandsons, comrades, fathers-in-law and benefactors also in both armies; seeing all these kinsmen thus standing arrayed, Arjuna, deeply moved to pity, this uttered in sadness: 'Seeing these my kinsmen, 0 Krishna, arrayed, eager to fight, my limbs fail and my mouth is parched, my body quivers, and my hair stands on end, Gandiva slips from my hand, and my skin burns all over; I am not able to stand, my mind is whirling ..... For I desire not victory, 0 Krishna, nor kingdom nor pleasures . . . I do not wish to kill, though myself slain, 0 Madhusudana, even for the sake of the kingship of those worlds; how then for earth' .... Having thus spoken on the battlefield, Arjuna sank down on the seat of the chariot, casting away his bow and arrow, his mind overborne by grief." "The Blessed Lord (Krishna) said: 'Whence hath this dejection befallen thee in this perilous strait, ignoble, heaven-closing, infamous, 0 Arjuna? Yield not to impotence, 0 Partha! It doth not befit thee. Shake off this paltry faint heartedness! Stand up, Parantapa!" Krishna then proceeds to instruct Arjuna in the way in which he, the God, views the facts. ''The Blessed Lord said : 'Thou grievest for those that should not be grieved for .... Nor at any time verily was I not, nor thou, nor these princes of men, nor verily shall we ever cease to be, hereafter .... Know THAT to be indestructible by whom all this is pervaded .... Therefore fight, 0 Bharata. He who regardeth this as a slayer, and he who thinketh he is slain, both of them are ignorant. He slayeth not nor is he slain .... , he is not slain when the body is slaughtered. Who knoweth him indestructibly perpetual, unborn, undiminishing, how can that man slay, 0 Partha, or cause to be slain? As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth in to others that are new .... For certain is death for the born and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable thou should'st not grieve." 

This is a perfect example of warfare while man's days on earth were yet young. Strange and incomprehensible as it may seem to modern minds, war was in reality a battle of the gods who in their wisdom arranged and fought wars for the benefit of human evolution. This was the real issue; the battles with all their cruelty and suffering - real enough in terms of temporal experience - were only the physical acts, the outward show in which inward developments were clothed and covered. For thus spake Krishna to Arjuna: "I am Time, which destroys all worlds. I have appeared to carry men away, and even if thou shalt bring death to them in battle, yet all these warriors standing there in line would die even without thee. Rise up, therefore, fearlessly. Thou shalt acquire fame and conquer the foe. Exult over the coming victory and mastery. Thou wilt not have killed them when they fall dead in the battle; by Me they are all killed already, before thou canst bring death to them. Thou art only the instrument, thou fightest only with the hand! The Dronas, the Jayadanas, the Bhishmas, the Karnas, and the other warrior heroes whom I have killed, who are already dead - now kill thou them, that my actions may appear externally when they fall dead in Maya; those whom I have already killed, kill thou them. That which I have done will appear to have been done by thee. Tremble not! Thou art not able to do anything which I have not done already. Fight! Those whom I have already killed will fall by thy sword."* (* Quoted from "The Bible of The World" London, Kegan Paul, French, Trubner & Co Ltd.) 

 We see that in those far-off days it was the gods who said to men: "yours is not to reason why, yours is but to do and die." This conception of the nature of war is not only found in pagan documents. It is clearly implied in the Old Testament. From the moment Joshua and his people cross the Jordan and the walls of Jericho come tumbling down war is of the essence of the corporate life of Israel. Jaweh was indeed a concentrated spirit-reflection of the great Father God of the World, but he was at the same time the tribal God of the Hebrew race, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. "His" people fought "the Lord's battles". And "the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle" fought the wars of his people. For the individual, death in battle was nothing deadly serious because the dividing line between life and death was fluid, and the individual soul embedded in the tribal blood-community on earth remained in the tribal community- "Abraham's bosom"- after death. 

 We must recognise and respect this early conception of war as extremely real at the time and as a challenge to our thinking about these matters. In the history of Greece it was also local deity fighting local deity. Homer's great epics reveal the share of the gods in the battle for Troy; and an oblique reference to the spiritual background of the wars of emerging Europe against Mother Asia is even found in the Old Testament. What we may fairly call the Genius of Humanity speaks to the prophet Daniel: "Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come. But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth: none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince." (Daniel 10, 21 and 21). When the Romans ultimately brought together the peoples of the ancient world into one Empire, they knew what they were doing when they established a Pantheon, the temple in which all the tribal gods of the world were assembled and worshipped. At the sunset of the ancient world the Romans collected a United Nations Assembly of Gods and believed- perhaps by that time it was no longer much more than a superstition - that this assembly divinely sanctioned the Pax Romana. 

 At the height of the classical "Age of Faith" in the Christian era the schoolmen of the 13th century and above all the great Thomas Aquinas developed a Christian philosophy of war. They explained the fact of war in human history as derived from the mysterium.iniquitatisi. They did not go back behind this. This was for them "the portion of eternity too great for the eye of man". They saw an archetypal pattern of war implicit in the divine order of things and revealed in such biblical pictures as the War in Heaven which the archangel Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon and his angels (Apoc. 12, 7) or the Rider on the White Horse who "in righteousness doth judge and make war". (Apo~. 19, 11} War was interpreted as a judgment of God and the doctrine of the ‘just war’ developed on this basis. Instead of the tribal instinct and the voice of the tribal god speaking through his prophets, it was now the Church which assumed the authority to declare which war was just and which side fought the Lord's battles. That this often led to abuse, when the Church became a temporal power and promoted its own political and commercial interests, is common knowledge. A third chapter in the history of warfare opened with the formation of the modern Nation States when the king became the symbol and embodiment of the folk soul, of "la Nation", "this England", "das Reich". In the earlier stages these dynastic wars were fought by paid mercenaries led by a professional officer class. In special situation the armies were augmented by numbers of volunteers, particularly in "wars of liberation" like those against Napoleon.

The nineteenth century added a new feature. Conscription became a law in most countries of the world. The concept of "a nation in arms" was born and held up as a glorious ideal. This was the state of things when war overtook the world in 1914. There was once more an astonishing upsurge of patriotism, a genuine spirit of going to war for a righteous cause; and the few souls which felt grave doubts and a painful sense of bewilderment, found them-selves in sad isolation or even in prison. Grave words like "the arbitrament of war" were solemnly quoted and war once more presented as an ordeal in which God would bless the right side with victory. Volunteers entered the armies in the spirit of knights entering the lists and the whole splendour and romance of gold-braided masculinity raised its head once more. 

But half way through the first war of the century things changed. 

In personal conversations and in lectures Rudolf Steiner was one of the first to notice the change and to warn his friends and followers. Never before had millions of men, sons of a common Christian civilisation, opposed each other for years in the indescribable squalor of trench warfare and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives for a few yards one way or the other. The war became a war of attrition. The place of "the destructive sword" with its power of selective judgment and a certain nobility of execution was taken by anonymous instruments of mechanical and indiscriminate destruction. "Scorched earth" became a concept of strategy and poison gas a tactical weapon. "In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitten as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, - My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The Old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori." 

 These lines by Wilfrid Owen speaking for the young generation of the first war are an epitome of the stark horror which decent and sensitive souls began to suffer and yet remained caught up in the relentless machine, and powerless to stop the senseless slaughter and the interminable sacrifices to Moloch. This destructive war could only be followed by a destructive peace, which eventually bred Hitler. And with Hitler the destructive sword became fully and finally the abomination of desolation. Where do we go from here? It is tacitly assumed that the sheer fear of the atomic bomb restrains us today from venturing on a further major war. Only the knowledge that this might really be the end of life as we know it prevents us from allowing the tension of the cold war to burst and set aflame another hot war. But there are serious minded people who have second thoughts about this. What makes young people in their teens and early twenties restless and prone to destructive excesses is the fact, so these people say, that they need a third war and cannot have it. 

Others talk about war as a necessary 'laxative' for our civilisation. A laxative indeed! Let us examine the idea. No doubt our civilisation can be described as constipated in all spheres of life; in economics, in politics, in the production of ideas. Let us remember what happened at the beginning of the last war. Very soon this country produced a National Government of all parties, which many people think would be today the only way out of the impasse which no party government seems to be able to overcome. We would soon again have ration cards which would control our imports. We would have direction of labour, strikes would be illegal, and redundancy would disappear overnight through "the war effort". War would stimulate inventions as it did last time - radar, atomic energy, and other achievements which we are commemorating at the moment with a curious set of postal stamps. And the juvenile belligerency of Mods and Rockers could be channeled into commandos and win the Victoria Cross instead of a prison sentence. The prospects are truly exciting, and it is understandable that some people, perhaps in a mood of frustration and despair, ask: Is war a psychological, maybe even a biological necessity? This poignant challenge goes right to the heart of the question of war and peace. 

Before answering it with Yes or No we must examine alternatives. This means a radical turn from the outward fields of life to the inner region, a determined move away from the extrovert mental climate of our Age into the field of inward experience and inward action. At the risk of alienating some of our readers and losing their sympathy, at the risk of being dismissed as impractical idealists, we must try to go to the inner root of the matter. In the second of Rudolf Steiner's Mystery Plays "The Soul's Probation" we are led into a medieval castle. Without precisely saying so, the context implies that it is one of the seats of the Order of the Knights Templars. The Grand Master is aware that the persecution and eventual destruction of the Order is imminent. In this situation he is engaged in a conversation with Simon, a Jewish alchemist and physician, who has taken refuge in the castle. (The fact that he is a Jew is not to be taken as specially relevant to what follows.) Grand Master: .... The battle which our mortal foes prepare Is but the emblem of that greater strife Waged in the heart incessantly by powers Which are at enmity amongst themselves. 

Simon: My lord, in very truth these words of thine Arouse an echo in my deepest soul. Indeed my nature is not prone to dreams; Yet when I walk alone through wood and field A picture often riseth in my soul Which with my will I can no more control Than any object which mine eye beholds. A human form appears in front of me Which fain would grasp my hand in fellowship. Such suffering on his features is expressed As never yet I saw in any face. The greatness and the beauty of this man Seize firmly hold of all my powers of soul; I fain would sink to earth and humbly bow Before this messenger from other worlds. 

Next moment like a raging flame, there comes The wildest anger searing through my heart; Nor can I gain the mastery o'er the power That fans the opposition of my soul, And I am forced to thrust aside the hand Which is so lovingly held out to me. So soon as to my senses I return The radiant form hath vanished from my sight. The primal form of our humanity In that great Spirit being I admit; But still my individual self rebels When I would turn to him in faith and love. So must I ever wage an inward war The archetype of every outer strife. 

The German original of the last two lines brings out the relevant climax of this confession still more clearly: So muss ich in mir selbst den Krieg erleben Der aller äussern Kämpfe Urbild ist. "Aller äussern Kämpfe Urbild" - the archetype i.e. the inciting cause, the hidden spring, the ultimate poison, which is at the bottom of all warfare. And as factually and unsentimentally as can possibly be imagined Steiner lets us see that this ultimate cause is nothing else but man's rejection of Christ; not an intellectual refusal, a "humanist" philosophy, the doubt of a materialist, but a deeply built-in, chronic and constitutional factor in man's spiritual condition. Seen from another angle and in another context it is the inherited biological "Cain" instinct, about which there is more illumination and help found in Steiner than anywhere else. Steiner describes a stage of spiritual development where the disciple gains a first hand experience of the pictorial visions of Genesis, creation, paradise, the expulsion, and the first murder. No one, who has gone through this experience can fail to see, he says, how strongly and actively Cain is still alive in every human being. The disciple himself becomes Cain and goes through the whole agonising experience in a form of inward, spiritual existentialism. Of course, sensitive souls, artists, philosophers have given frequent expression to this fact. 

Rather innocently, perhaps, Vladimir Solovieff, the Russian philosopher writes: "No. trace of the institution of soldiers existed when innocent Abel was killed in anger by his brother Cain. Wisely fearing, however, that the same might soon happen also to Seth, good guardian angels took clay, copper and iron, mixed them, and. formed with them a soldier and a policeman. And as long as the conditions of Cain have not vanished from the hearts of men, soldier and policeman will be a good, not a bad thing." 

More profoundly Christopher Fry evokes a sense of this tragic reality in his play "A Sleep of Prisoners." In a church where they are temporarily housed, four prisoners of war have haunting dreams. The background of war is never far from their minds, and the murder of Abel comes through in distorted fragments. When the deed is done Adams, one of the characters, says: Nothing has happened except silence where sound was, Stillness where movement was. Nothing has happened, But the future is like a great pit. To which Meadows, another character, adds What you have done. It does it to you. Nowhere rest. Cage of the world Holds your prowling. Howl, Cain, jackal afraid. And nowhere, Cain, nowhere Escape the fear of what men fear in you. None of us can escape the fear of what men fear in us, since we all are still Cain. 

This is the stark basic truth in human relationships today, as much between individuals as between groups, communities, nations and power blocks. The novelty is that this condition working today increasingly even between single individuals is becoming stronger than the blood-tie of family or race. It provides the making of a war of all against all. If It is argued, that this desire to attack and murder is stronger in men than in women, it is doubtful whether this is going to remain so. Or the urge can appear in women, as Dostoevski tried to show in his "Idiot", in a perverted form. Be this as it may, there is little disagreement on the general picture and although some may prefer a less mythological formula for the diagnosis, the diagnosis as such will be hardly disputed. A new and as we think uniquely helpful contribution of Rudolf Steiner consists however in a fresh analysis of the condition and arising from this, above all, in a fresh therapy. In the course of extrasensory research Steiner found that it is the bodily vessel of man which holds in check the Cain instinct rampant in the soul. Without being "incarnated", souls would be plainly murderous. But the body works like a resistance, it reduces the high voltage of the murderous instinct, and what generally remains as a universal, but greatly tamed ‘basic’ impulse is intellectual cognition. 

A startling idea. Or is it really so startling? Who was the great psychologist who said that the human intellect is a kleptomaniac? Whoever it was, he showed great insight. But our intellect does not only "steal" information from every possible quarter and amasses it, the intellect kills also the life of the knowledge which it gathers. Our brain is a vast graveyard of facts rather than a well-spring of creative ideas. We store dead facts in order to solve cross-word puzzles or to pass examinations. None of this "knowledge" survives with us when we die. Its worst effect is shown in human relations. 

Everyone knows the deadly effect of being sized up intellectually: if people have ready-made concepts of us, judgments derived from statistics, conclusions drawn from behaviour patterns. This is really a form of mental murder. But here also lies the point of change, the crossroads, the turning-about corner. There is great wisdom in those contemporary branches of Christian theology - despite their subjective limitations - which endeavour to rediscover the lost Christ first of all in human relationships. 

We need not at once be altogether "our brother's keeper," yet in a sense we should begin with it. We should develop that loving care, which accords freedom and growing space for our neighbour, which lets him come to himself and unfold his personality until that new knowledge of one another is born of which Christ says: "I know my sheep and I am known of mine." This is the total transformation of Cain's intellectual summing up into Christ's loving recognition. Perhaps, to start with, it is easier for women to achieve than for men. 

 Albert Steffen, the Swiss poet, who followed Rudolf Steiner as President of the General Anthroposophical Society, records a conversation in which Steiner made specific suggestions for a practical beginning. 

He referred to three main destructive qualities: 

Pride and ambition, jealousy, anger and hatred. 

None of these can be simply eradicated or directly combated. Direct attack only strengthens them. 

 Pride and ambition are transformed if we devote ourselves to a study of man's cosmic nature in general, his place in the Universe and his link with the whole of humanity. 

 

Jealousy can be healed if we contemplate great works of art. "Aesthetic education makes jealousy disappear." 

 

Anger, wrath, hatred yield to an interest in the great events of history, the glory of Greece, the ages of discovery, the story of inventions. 

An increased interest and sensitivity in our human relations awakens and widens also our awareness of the world in general, of events and facts in nature. We are willing to listen to what Nature has to tell us rather than follow Bacon's motto, which has been adopted wholesale by modern Science: "We must put Nature on the rack and extort from her the answers which are of interest to us"- a truly "Cain" method of research. In this manner we can gradually change ourselves from sons and daughters of Cain, haunted, afraid, eternally on the defensive, into bearers of peace. 

In the tenth chapter of St. Luke, Christ tells the Seventy when he sends them out: "In whatever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not it shall turn to you again." Obviously this greeting is not the conventional. Shalom of modern Israel or. The Salaam of the Arab. It is a real thing, a substance which can be given like a tangible presence - and taken back again. To achieve something like this in human relations is the beginning of a true No-more-war movement. It need not rule out an occasional meeting on Trafalgar Square or an Aldermaston march. But it gives the true background to such ad hoc demonstrations and gradually supersedes them. It is not by chance that the seventh, last and crowning beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount is pronounced for the peacemakers," for they shall be called the children of God." They are no. longer the children of a tribe, nation, race, party or other sectional interest but of God. 

At the end of the beatitudes Christ proceeds to utter another saying which is of immediate relevance, here: Addressing his disciples he says: "Ye are the salt of the earth”. This disposes of the illusion that peacemakers will be effective. only if they are a numerical majority. What would the earth be, If it were mostly salt? We could not live on it. Equally humanity need only be salted by a pinch, a small minority. But the existence of this minority is crucial. 

Modern biochemistry and its latest offshoot, microbiology, have demonstrated the vital significance of tracer elements. These minute quantities determine life or death in living organisms. In a similar manner the existence of the inward peacemakers - minimal though they be in numbers- is crucial for the salvation of humanity. They alone meet the mystery of iniquity on an adequate level. The flavouring power of the salt of the peacemakers is immense. Their alchemistic homoeopathic effect is far, far greater than pedestrian observation can ever measure. As a drop of dye may colour gallons of water, so the radiation of such spiritual-moral endeavours, such inward personal transformation may influence and colour massive groupings and societies. 

Besides, man does not live by day alone; he also sleeps by night. When in sleep h1s soul is disengaged from the body - albeit unconscious he communes with thousands of other sleeping souls. And one shining light will illumine many. 

Towards the end of "A Sleep of Prisoners", after Meadows has said that Behind us lie The thousand and the thousand and the thousand years Vexed and terrible. And still we use The cures which never cure. he says a little later as in meditation, Thank God our time is now when wrong Comes up to face us everywhere, Never to leave us till we take The longest stride of soul men ever took. Affairs are now soul size. Yes, and soul efforts are now affairs size. 

Inward action can become outward fact as never before. But the fountainhead of peace in human souls need not be created and formed by personal solitary effort alone. No such thing as a purely " do-it-yourself" religion exists in reality. This Phrase, frequently used today, is a contradiction in terms. Religion, spiritual life and spiritual activity has of its very being also a communal side. Sacramental life is one of its forms. It is one of the many gifts of the sacramental acts of Christianity- if carried out with reality- that they work at redeeming Cain. Of necessity this is a slow process also on the communal level, but a tangible process all the same. 

Few people who have lived with the Act of Consecration of Man – the Communion Service of the Christian Community - would hesitate to witness to this process. Many would agree that the final act of the Service, when the celebrant says to each communicant "The Peace be with you," is immensely real. It may be that to the critical and perhaps cynical observer all this inward "pegging away" at peace does not amount to much. There is still Vietnam, war and rumours of war in the Middle East, the threat of racial violence in many parts of the Globe. This is true. But is it not also true that the world feels very differently about these tragedies than it did only 50 years ago? There is a lingering awareness that war is an atavistic relapse into a collective form of life, a sliding back into gog and magog, which we have really outgrown. One of the characters in the film "How I Won the War" - a curiously honest study - expresses this realisation in these words: 

"Once you have ceased to be an individual, because you have had to dress and behave in the same way as thousands of other people, you never totally become an individual again." 

And if we sense that Vietnam is no longer a "clean" war, is it only because Napalm bombs and other "unclean" weapons are used? Is it not also because we have a semi-conscious suspicion that where once the gods were involved m human warfare today it is the demons? History has never been made by man alone, although his conscious and responsible share in shaping it is on the increase. But a sinister change is at work. The ancient natural, tribal collectives were natural vehicles of gods who promoted the evolution of the human race. The unnatural collectives of today become instruments of destructive demons. This is why we feel uneasy if it is said of the fighting soldiers, "This was their finest hour."

Shall we risk here one more last glance behind the curtain into the supersensory world, as Rudolf Steiner reveals it to us? Of the many new factors which affect man's precarious balance between peace and war we concentrate on two, a negative and a positive one. It stands to reason that human souls who have lived a life wedded to a materialist outlook and to material values should feel a cataclysmic shock when confronted after death with the reality of the spiritual world. This shock tends to relieve itself by an intense desire to inspire deeds of destruction among the souls on earth, deeds by which that material world would be annihilated in which the departed materialist had so falsely believed as the only truth. Departed ex-materialist souls form today dark clouds in the spirit world from which impulses of destruction are sent out. They hit particularly young people in their teens when with puberty the individual "soul" is being born after it had lain latent in the yet undeveloped childish mind. But counter forces are also at work. Speaking on religious conversion, Steiner makes the obvious observation that there are "conversions" which go the normal way of New Year resolutions. But there is also the genuine conversion, where a young man or woman is totally changed in bearing and moral conduct and where the change lasts. 

In the manner of investigation open to him Steiner found that such young people usually met with a violent death in their previous life and the conversion in this life usually happens at about the age when the previous life was cut short. Even if we give to this result of occult research only the benefit of the doubt, what light does it shed on the 30 millions of fatal "casualties" which lost their young lives in the wars of this century! When they come again, they carry within them the power of lasting conversion to a life of active peace. 

War or peace today is the crucial issue for humanity; and as things are, it means total war or total peace. Peacemaking efforts are called for on all fronts and all levels, but let no one think that the level of which we have spoken is irrelevant or impractical. Let no one think that with such "spiritual ideas" we live in a self-chosen ghetto away from the broad habitations of ordinary men and women. The level of action of which we have spoken is decisive. But it is also crucial that we shall not cease from this "mental fight." Blake used this phrase when he thought of the means to build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land. Jerusalem, interpreted from the Hebrew into English, means the City of Peace. It is the ultimate goal of human history, the final vision of fulfilment in the last chapter of the Christian Bible. Since we have begun this study with a quotation from Blake, we may fittingly conclude it with the words of his own dedication to the goal of peace, with a small alteration or rather addition, of which Blake would no doubt approve if he lived today, 

 “I will not cease from Mental Fight 

 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 

 Till we have built Jerusalem In England's - and every other country's - green and pleasant land.” 

 End