The Rise of the Machines
"Well, that is indeed the correct way to think about it from that perspective, in the broadest sense. And I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss something that I ask you to take to heart, so that you are aware: When such things are spoken of today, they are spoken of under the pressure and urgency of current events and truly must not be taken lightly. What I am saying here is kept most carefully secret by the centers in the West, which I have often alluded to. And in the West, it is taken for granted that the people of the East are not allowed to know anything about these matters, which the West itself—as I said earlier—possesses as knowledge through methods I may yet discuss, and possesses this knowledge in such a way that, precisely because others are not supposed to know these things—and this is the only way it can be—it intends to use this knowledge to establish world domination.
You see, beginning with this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, very specific forces will arise in the evolution of humanity. Humanity is, after all, evolving forward. One can never form a judgment about the forces that arise in human evolution based on the brief period that is surveyed anthropologically or historically in external, materialistic science. For in this brief period, which is surveyed anthropologically or historically within external development, very little has actually changed. With this science, one does not know, for example, how things looked quite differently as early as the second period, let alone the first, or even further back. This can only be known through spiritual science. And so it is only through spiritual science that one can point to those forces that will develop in the future from human nature itself in a very elementary way. That such forces—which will transform life on Earth—will develop from within the human being is known in those secret centers. This is precisely what they wish to conceal from the East, what they wish to keep as knowledge for themselves. And it is also known that these abilities—which humanity is only just beginning to develop today—will be of a threefold nature. They will develop from human nature in the same way that other abilities have emerged in the course of human evolution.
I must explain to you this threefold ability—which every initiate within these secret circles speaks of and which will develop within human nature—in the following way. First, there are the abilities related to what is known as “material occultism.” Through this ability—and this is precisely the ideal of the British secret societies—certain social forms that today underlie industrialization are to be placed on an entirely different foundation. Every knowledgeable member of these secret circles knows that simply through certain abilities—which are still latent in human beings today but are developing—it is possible, with the help of the law of resonant vibrations, to set machines, mechanical devices, and other things in motion on a large scale. You will find a small hint of this in what I have linked to the character of Strader in my Mystery Dramas.
These things are currently in the making. Within those secret circles in the field of material occultism, these things are kept as a closely guarded secret. There are motors that, once the relevant vibration curve is known, can be set in motion with very minimal human intervention. This will make it possible to replace much of what currently requires human labor with purely mechanical forces. Today, there are already fourteen hundred million people on Earth; but it is not merely these fourteen hundred million who perform work—as I have explained here before—but so much work is performed by purely mechanical means that one can say the Earth is actually populated by two thousand million people today; the others are simply machines; that is to say, if the work performed by machines had to be done by human beings without machines, there would have to be six hundred million more people living on Earth. But when what I now call “mechanical occultism” before you enters the realm of practical effectiveness—which is an ideal of those secret centers—we will not only be able to provide work for five or six hundred million people, but we will be able to provide work for a thousand million or more people.
This will make it possible for nine-tenths of human labor to become unnecessary within the English-speaking world. But mechanical occultism makes it possible not only to dispense with nine-tenths of the work still performed by human hands today, but also to paralyze any insurrectionary movement by the then-dissatisfied masses. The ability to set motors in motion according to the law of resonating vibrations—this ability will develop to a particularly extensive degree among the English-speaking population. This is known in those secret circles. It is counted on as the very factor that will grant them supremacy over the rest of the Earth’s population during the course of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch."
Read more: Rudolf Steiner, The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Time, Lecture 3, GA 186, 1 December 1918, Dornach