The Spiritual Scientist Podcast · Mick Young

Is Evil Necessary? Solving the Lucifer vs Satan Riddle. with Andrew Linnell

·1 hr 23 min·5 clips

Andrew says Ahriman’s incarnation will coincide with perfected brain-computer interfaces.

After a few technical difficulties, the host and Andrew Linnell settle into a patient conversation about Ahriman. Andrew is introduced as an author, speaker, lecturer, and the founder of Mystech, an organization focused on moral-human-machine interaction and technology. The first theme is a conference coming up through Mystech on Ahriman. From there the discussion opens into questions about evil, human evolution, and the role this being has in anthroposophical thought. The host keeps the subject tentative, and Andrew matches that caution with a slow, explanatory register. He treats Ahriman as a force or being with a particular role in human evolution rather than as a simple label. The conversation then moves into earth evolution on a very large scale. Andrew says that when humanity's work on earth is finished, human beings become the cosmic janitors who dissolve the earth before a sleep called pralaya and the forming of the fifth solar system. He traces that picture back through Eden and into the Lemurian stage. In that account, humanity is not yet fully physical until earlier stages of earth history. First there is airy substance, then an image of fire-breathing dragons. The earth at that stage is still forming, watery, and full of life. Rock once held living substance. It had to become lifeless so people could stand on it. Uprightness matters here. Human beings stand differently from the animals, and that posture becomes a spiritual clue in the discussion. Andrew then turns to the idea that a heaven on earth can be imagined for everyone. He connects that hope to the contemporary belief that earthly order can solve everything, and says Steiner's threefold social order stays open-ended, always carrying challenges. The closing exchange returns to the value of going back to basics, especially for listeners who have already spent years with Steiner and still find old material worth reopening.

As heard by us

A careful tour through Ahriman, evil, and human evolution.

Andrew Linnell and the host spend this episode in anthroposophy's thornier territory, using Ahriman as an entry point into evil, human evolution, and the strange problem of matter.

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Why you'd press play

You get a careful Ahriman conversation, plus wider detours through Lemurian, Atlantean, and pralaya territory.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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