What is behind the mask and what is unmasked?

by Eva Knausenberger
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Obviously behind every mask is a human face, its features half-hidden. I haven’t managed to imagine a priest celebrating and wearing a mask; it simply doesn’t work. Hidden from view under the mask are physical sense organs, without which life is not possible as we know it, like breathing, speaking, smelling, hearing clearly, seeing what is hidden, judging, cognition, recognition, etc. A mask impedes the flow of life-giving energies; it also makes us non-communicative – for fear of contagion and increases autism and depressions of all kinds.

Rudolf Steiner links the flow of air and breathing in and out to our astral body, our soul’s feeling life. (GA 202, lectures 10,11,12) and thence to our ‘I am’ development. But that is not what I want to write about, rather I want to address what is unmasked, robbed of its mask so to speak, for all to see, now during the Covid crisis.

Unmasking arises when all can see what has long been ignored, hidden, or suppressed, all that is wrong, is immoral, neglected, abused and has been for a long time. We have no immune system in place to combat it by physical means. It can’t be fixed by a vaccination; it creates a cemetery for moral behaviour, moral thinking, and love-seeking soul life.

Widerstandskräfte (resistance forces), Aufbaukräfte (forces that build up) are descriptive words for the immune system; it means “powers or strength to stand upright in the storms and rebuild what has been shattered”. And that is, as far as I can tell, the task now in this time of crisis, namely, to also ‘unmask’ so to speak what keeps us alive and healthy physically, mentally and spiritually, to recognise what is worth saving, and what is supportive of healing, how to use our energy and finances so that the Good may endure rather than to combat the “Wrong”. I think we can never be thankful enough for the healing medicine given to us with the Act of Consecration of Man.