Current fifth cultural age

The current cultural age describes a period between 1413 and 3573 where the center of human cultural development lies with the German and Anglo cultures, it is the fifth cultural age in the Current Postatlantean epoch and a time characterized by the end of the dark age or kali yuga age around 1899. It is the cultural age where the consciousness soul develops and matures to be fructified by the Christ Impulse (see Schemas FMC00.438 and FMC00.468).

Aspects

characteristics of the age

• The essential characteristic of our present fifth cultural age is the development of intellect, of reason (1911-09-21-GA130)
• development of the consciousness soul, see Development of the I and Human character - the I and threefold soul
• rise of a new clairvoyance, with start of the Abraham age after the end of the dark age or kali yuga age around 1899 (see also Schema FMC00.013), and the arising of new faculties, also called the Second Coming or 'Christ in the etheric'
• current fifth cultural age as a reversal of the third cultural age.
  • souls in current cultural age have a remembrance of the Chaldean and Egyptian times, examples of Kepler and Copernicus are given (1908-09-14-GA106, 1909-08-30-GA113 on Remembrance)
  • In the third age, there was an impulse from the Orient to the West wanting to impose what they had on others, spiritually. In the current fifth age, a mirror reverse of this is happening, purely materially: the West (British-American people) want to conquer the material world of the Earth of their own accord, to take it away from other people. (1918-06-30-GA182, see Remembrance#1918-06-30-GA182)

• task to come to grips with evil as an impulse in world evolution (1917-11-19-GA178), see a.o.
  • It is in the current fifth cultural age that humanity must wrestle with the powers of evil ... evil will approach the human being of this fifth cultural age in every conceivable form. We have to solve in the widest sense, in a living and energetic way, what we may call the problem of Evil, by addressing its nature and essence. This is an essential task of the fifth postatlantean age (1917-11-03-GA273)
  • rise of the the adverse powers of opposition: Ahrimanic (untruthfulness, materialism, Mammon .. ), Asuric (black magic, pornography, ..)
  • fall of the spirits of darkness after the battle with Michael in period 1840-1879
  • physical wars and conflicts, see topic page Wars
• spiritual guidance of mankind by angels (GA015), an intellectual age focused on thinking (1911-11-10-GA130) see Schema FMC00.047 on Current Postatlantean epoch)
• human development up to age of approx 27 in current age of consciousness soul
  • "Today intellectual development ceases before middle life. The majority of people one meets today, especially amongst the middle classes, do not mature after the age of twenty-seven; thereafter they are content to plough the same furrow. .. A Man who is prepared to continue his studies, to expand his knowledge, a Man who remains plastic and capable of transformation is a rarity today." and in terms of Man's inner psychic development: "The thread linking birth and death is broken to some extent between the ages of twenty-six to twenty-seven and thirty-seven to thirty-eight. In this decade of Man's evolution the forces of birth and death are not fully in harmony." (1918-10-25-GA185, see Humanity is getting younger#1918-10-25-GA185)

future times

• karmic debt of the West
  • whilst carrying out a historically necessary task, Western Europe committed countless acts of injustice against the Eastern cultures (and its occult secrets). It bears a weighty karmic debt, and cannot penetrate the secrets of existence without activating this. (see 1912-04-11-GA158 and 1913-06-05-GA158 below, explanations in context of Helena Blavatsky). See also the 'necessity' of great conflict between West and East; see the many reference quotes on Nostradamus#2.1 - War between the West and Asia and World catastrophe
• see Schema FMC00.534A
  • period around 2200-2600: Future Oriphiel age as a hefty cleansing period central in the fifth cultural age followed by a transition period
  • around 2500: "will be a critical moment in the development of civilisation, for then a point will be reached when human nature will have progressed so far that it will be thrown back into decay unless it has acquired the vision of repeated earth-lives and karma .. It will not enter completely until the middle of the third millennium; but little by little it will make its presence felt, and humanity must now consciously be alive to and prepare for its inevitable advent." (1918-06-25-GA181)
  • impulses at turn of millenia: "in the year 3000, one will again expect the end of the world, but the world will have become such that people will long for this end. One can say without sentimentality: European humankind is heading toward awful times" (1914-03-07-GA286)
• transition from current fifth to next sixth cultural age:
  • Sixth cultural age#Note 1 - Transition between the fifth and sixth cultural ages
• schema overview: see Schema FMC00.534 and Schema FMC00.052: the grey block on FMC00.534 shows the transition phase after the old has ended and been destroyed, and before the new can emerge, see also Schema FMC00.449 on Future Oriphiel age.

timeline past

• what preceded
  • transition from previous fourth to current fifth cultural age:
    • Transition between 4th and 14th century and also Central European cultural basin
    • Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams
• 15th century
  • start of new mineral science, see Mineral science#Historical development
  • start of rosecrucianism, see oa Individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz#Christian Rosenkreutz
• importance of the age 1720-1721
  • see The human heart#1919-04-05-GA190 as related to Christ in the etheric
• importance of 1840-1879-1899
  • see topic page 1840 and 1879
  • 1899 - end of dark age kali yuga, see also Sources of spiritual science
• sorat impulses: 1998 and 2664
  • about 1998, see: Mineral plant like spiders#2.3 - On 1998
• wars
  • 1618-1648, see oa Jacob Boehme#Note 1 - Historical perspective - waves and counterwaves
  • 1914-1944, see oa Schema FMC00.489 and the above

various other

• gospel that maps to cultural age: (Matthew to fourth), Mark to current fifth, (Luke sixth age, John's gospel to the seventh) (1905-08-14-GA091, 1911-03-07-GA124)
• comparative pattern: in the previous fourth Greco-Latin cultural age, there was first the greek culture followed by the roman culture; in the current fifth cultural age similarly, the age started with the german culture (not meant as a country, but as a larger central european folk soul), followed by the anglo-american culture).
• related topic pages
  • different substreams, currents or influences in the current age
    • Current Postatlantean epoch#Note 1 - About merging of various influence currents in current Postatlantean epoch
    • Contemporary worldview war

Inspirational quotes

1910-GA013

But among human beings not everyone will without more ado prove equal to the new conditions then prevailing.

• It will only be those in whom souls are incarnated who have duly benefited by the influences of the Graeco-Latin and the succeeding fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean ages. Their inner lie will be in harmony with what the Earth will have become.
• The others will perforce remain behind, while formerly they had been free to choose whether they were making themselves fit to go forward with the world's progressive evolution or were neglecting to do so.

For the conditions that will prevail after the coming cataclysm, those above all will be well fitted who, in their incarnations between the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and the sixth, succeed in integrating the supersensible wisdom and their own human powers of intelligence and feeling. The fifth and sixth are the decisive cultural ages.

In the seventh, the souls who have reached the evolutionary goal of the sixth will go on evolving. For those who have not, even the surrounding worlds will be too greatly altered; they will find little opportunity to recover their lost ground, and must await a more distant future when the conditions will again be favorable.

1918-06-25-GA181

The middle of the third millennium will be a critical moment in the development of civilisation, for then a point will be reached when human nature will have progressed so far that it will be thrown back into decay unless it has acquired the vision of repeated earth-lives and karma, lost since the seventh or eighth century before Christ.

...

Naturally the change will be slow and gradual. But anyone who does not want to dream through the most important things of our age in a dull, sleepy way, but wishes to live in conscious wakefulness — it behooves him to mark what is seeking entry into human life. It will not enter completely until the middle of the third millennium; but little by little it will make its presence felt, and humanity must now consciously be alive to and prepare for its inevitable advent.

1918-10-26-GA185

The purpose of the forces of evil which are perverted by the social order is to enable Man to break through to the life of the spirit at the level of the consciousness soul. ... These forces of evil do not exist in the universe for the sole purpose of inducing Man to commit criminal acts any more than the forces of death exist simply to bring death to Man; their function is to awaken in Man, when he is called upon to develop the consciousness soul, the tendency to open himself to the life of the spirit ..

1918-10-19-GA185 see: Reconquista#1918-10-19-GA185

The age of the consciousness soul demands that Man should stand on his own feet, be self-sufficient and, as personality, emancipate himself. He must abandon the old supports. He can no longer allow himself to be persuaded into what he should believe; he must work out for himself his own religious faith.

1918-10-25-GA185

Only a genuine concern of each Man for his neighbour can bring salvation to mankind in the future - I mean to his community life. The characteristic feature of the age of the consciousness soul is Man's isolation. That he is inwardly isolated from his neighbour is the consequence of Individuality, of the development of Personality. But this separative tendency must have a reciprocal pole and this counterpole must consist in the cultivation of an active concern of every Man for his neighbour.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.438 illustrates the essential agenda for humanity in the Current Postatlantean epoch to develop the first spiritual principle of Man's higher triad, the spirit-self (or manas) - see Schema FMC00.130. This will be achieved for a large part of humanity in the sixth cultural age (light yellow) as the fruits of the fructification of the consciousness soul by the Christ Impulse (see text in red, and the two mini infographics - see also Schema FMC00.428A).

This critical period of the fourth to the sixth cultural ages was prepared in the first four cultural ages (see Recapitulation - Schema FMC00.168), in parallel in a Southeastern and Northwestern stream (see Two streams of development). Both streams relate to the Atlantean migrations and the development of body and soul in the different populations (see also Human races). The Northwestern stream was in a preparatory waiting mode for four ages, see what is discussed on the topic pages available from both Germanic mythology and Mystery School tradition, a.o. but not limited to Ragnarok, Nibelungen, Druidic and Trotten Mysteries, Wotan Impulse, etc). The two streams met in the fourth cultural age, see Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams.

The spiral below (see also Schema FMC00.169) illustrates how evolution proceeds in discrete jumps, and the whole Schema is a concrete example of that in more detail. The central node of the spiral happens between the fourth to sixth cultural ages, of which the fifth is pivotal or central.

This positions the truly pivotal nature and importance of the current times, as the Christ Impulse is to fructify the consciousness soul so as to get the fruits required for this whole epoch in the next cultural age (Schema FMC00.169A). See also Schema FMC00.052: the next three millenia are crucial, and the current (and next) incarnation(s) is and are therefore pivotal.

Additional schemas that complement this schema: Schema FMC00.432, Schema FMC00.205B and Schema FMC00.441 below

Last, the Mystery of Golgatha in the center of the spiral is not just central to the current epoch, but to the whole Earth cycle and the evolution of the solar system cosmos: it is the start of a new creation, see Schema FMC00.400 on Cosmic breath of Brahma. For perspective, see also the PDF file The great journey of humanity.

Schema FMC00.428A adds the explanation from Rudolf Steiner's narrative in the sources listed, against the background of Schema FMC00.428.

It shows how "the Christ Impulse triggered a reversal of the influences of the two crossing streams", and gave Man independence in love and allowed for a spiritualization of love, as love without true freedom is not love.

Note: all texts originate from the GA244 sources listed, but were aggregated into a single schema explanation.

Schema FMC00.052 shows the dephased Christ solar impulse in red (dephased versus the cultural ages and timing of the regular hierarchies, called lunar/stellar astronomy). See Schema FMC00.052A for the original BBD (blackboard drawings). The timebar shows an interesting correlation between these impulses and two key periods for humanity: the first the next future Oriphiel age which will be a hardship test for humanity, and then the period in the next sixth cultural age where we have the Michael age and the impulse of the Maitreya Buddha .. a key period for the cohort of human beings that will provide the foundation for the next great Sixth epoch.

These two key periods are put in perspective to show - in yellow bars - the fact that "the fifth and sixth cultural ages are decisive" (1910-GA013), as "only a third of the population reaches the developmental goal at the end of the fifth epoch" (1904-10-24-GA090A).

To overlay schemas with a similar time-chart layout as below, see also:

• Schema FMC00.013 on this page, which uses the same layout
• Schema FMC00.167 on Transition between 4th and 14th century

.

Schema FMC00.534A: adds some quotes to Schema FMC00.534 about the next millennium with the future age of archangel Oriphiel (between approx. 2235 and 2590), and the very dark period that humanity will face in the transition phase before the Sixth cultural age in the period of approx. 3000 to 3500.

Schema FMC00.534: is a schema intended to support study of the fourth and fifth cultural ages and gain insights of the patterns underlying evolutionary development of humanity, see also Schema FMC00.059 on History. This schema has:

• a) a lower section with key dates and phases described in Rudolf Steiner's lectures, and focus on i) the period of the 4th century (see also 325) and the Transition between 4th and 14th century (including aspects such as Central European cultural basin and Migrations but also 869, the Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams, Academy of Gondishapur, and more); and ii) the period 1840 and it's relation to the new start in the age of the consciousness soul (see 1840 and 1879)
• b) an upper section showing the inhale-exhale cycle of cosmic breathing and the two halves of an evolutionary cycle related to this. In this case focus is on a cultural age corresponding to an archai time spirit, whereby certain centuries or periods represent crucial transitions on the timeline of the development of mankind. History and evolution does not progress linearly but with jumps or step changes represented by the spiral symbol. This is linked to the activity of spiritual activities (above) and their emanation that can be observed (below).
  • For example: the year 333 is described (in 1918-10-16-GA182) as the time the intellectual soul was coming to its prime, up to then it was developing on the ascending arc, then began the arc of descent.

Notes

• Discussion Note The two halves of an evolutionary cycle#Note 1 - First and second half of a cultural age provides a narrative to the schema with explanations and relevant lecture excerpts and references, to explain the point the schema conveys, and how it helps to understand the 'jump' in Schema FMC00.535.
• See also related Schema FMC00.052 and Schema FMC00.052A.
• Regarding the pivotal importance of the 4th century for worldview, see also Mystery School tradition#Note 1 - Regarding the timing of the "college for destruction of initiation and spirit" and related Threefold Sun#Note 2 - The Palladium as a symbol of the secret of the sun
• For purposes of personal study, this scaled down image on the site can be saved as high resolution JPG file and printed on A3 format for readability, so one can add personal annotations.

Schema FMC00.239: shows the archangelic rulers of approximately 354 year periods for the current cultural age (plus and minus one cultural age).

Rudolf Steiner uses this period to describe the nature of current Michael age (see Archangel Michael and The Michaelic stream) and the future Oriphiel age.

See also Spiritual hierarchies and their eigenperiods for more info on the 354 year rhythm.

Lecture coverage and references

1907-06-05-GA099

(SWCC)

Thus you see that with the densification of man in the cosmos is connected a descent into the world of matter. And another force is connected with it which could never have developed without it: — egoism. Egoism has a good and a bad side. It is the foundation of human independence and freedom, but in its reverse aspect the foundation too of all that is bad and evil. But man had to go through this force of egoism if he was to learn to do good of his own freewill. Through the forces which had guided him previously, he would always have been impelled to the good; it had, however, to be possible for him to go his own way. Just as he has descended he must now ascend again to spirituality; and as the descent is linked with the predominance of egoism so does the ascent depend on men's selflessness, their feeling of sympathy for one another, becoming stronger and stronger.

Mankind has evolved through various epochs, first through the old Indian, then the Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian, the Greco-Latin to the present Fifth epoch. And this will be replaced by a sixth. And as human evolution is working towards this, it is working at the same time at the overcoming of the principle which has been strongest since the time when the etheric body united with the point in the brain of which I spoke to you yesterday. That was the time of the fall into the deepest egoism.

Man was also egotistic in his earlier evolution, but it was then in a different way. The egoism which enters so deeply into the soul as in our present age is inseparable from the predominating materialism; a spiritual age will denote the overcoming of this egoism. Therefore Christianity and all movements imbued with genuine religious life have worked consciously towards breaking through all the old blood-ties.

1908-08-05-GA105

And now we, in the fifth cultural age, have nothing to repeat.

Let these thoughts lead us to the soul: we have nothing to repeat, no old memory. For we have come forth a fifth time, while the four previous times were repetitions.

Our time must not give birth to ancient wisdom, but a new wisdom that can not only point into the past, but must have prophetic, apocalyptic effect into the future. We see an ancient wisdom, preserved in the mysteries of cultural eras past; an apocalyptic wisdom to which we must lay the seed must be our wisdom. We need a principle of initiation again so that the original connection with the spiritual world can be restored. This is the task of the anthroposophical world movement.

1910-GA013

The things and creatures of the Earth apart from man are also undergoing change — changes related to the evolution of mankind.

When the seventh epoch has run its course, another great convulsion will overwhelm the Earth, comparable to the catastrophe between the end of Atlantean and the beginning of post-Atlantean time.

Under the altered conditions following upon this event the life of man will once again evolve through a succession of seven ages. The souls who will then be incarnated will experience in an enhanced degree the community with spiritual worlds enjoyed by the Atlanteans on a lower level.

But among human beings not everyone will without more ado prove equal to the new conditions then prevailing.

• It will only be those in whom souls are incarnated who have duly benefited by the influences of the Graeco-Latin and the succeeding fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean ages. Their inner lie will be in harmony with what the Earth will have become.
• The others will perforce remain behind, while formerly they had been free to choose whether they were making themselves fit to go forward with the world's progressive evolution or were neglecting to do so.

For the conditions that will prevail after the coming cataclysm, those above all will be well fitted who, in their incarnations between the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and the sixth, succeed in integrating the supersensible wisdom and their own human powers of intelligence and feeling. The fifth and sixth are the decisive cultural ages.

In the seventh, the souls who have reached the evolutionary goal of the sixth will go on evolving. For those who have not, even the surrounding worlds will be too greatly altered; they will find little opportunity to recover their lost ground, and must await a more distant future when the conditions will again be favorable.

1912-04-11-GA158 also in 1913-06-05-GA158

on the karmic debt of western europe

And it needed the completely selfish, egotistical kind, because in the coarse, materialistic way of life in Western Europe at that time, there was no possibility of doing otherwise than to make, one might say, iron fists out of such a radical state of mind, out of such delicate hands, which had to cultivate and care for the occultism of modern times. It is a peculiar phenomenon. But, my dear friends, Helena Blavatsky went to the West, went to that cultural center which, in all its idiosyncrasy, in its entire structure and configuration in all fields, except America, is the most materialistic cultural area of our time, a cultural area that lives in its language, in its thinking, absolutely in materialistic thoughts and in materialistic feelings.

...

Within this European West, the fate of this occultism was initially sealed in a certain direction, because there was no way around the fulfillment of a significant karma in this materialistic European West with the founding of the Theosophical Society. This karma was also fulfilled. This Western Europe has a heavy karmic debt; it cannot penetrate the secrets of existence without this karmic debt asserting itself in a certain way. When occultism is involved somewhere, karma immediately deepens, and forces are brought to the surface that would otherwise remain hidden. And not to criticize anything in particular, but to characterize, it is said what is to be said: The European West, in carrying out something that is historically necessary, has perpetrated countless injustices against the bearer of ancient spiritual culture, against the bearer of ancient occult secrets, in whose life, although spiritual things have become rigid and no longer exist for the present, they live at the bottom of the soul.

For that is the truth in India, in South Asia. The moment occult impulses came to Western Europe, a reaction immediately set in against the spiritual forces at work in the depths of Indian culture, and it became impossible – it was already impossible in the time of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – to retain what was indeed intended by certain spiritual powers as the actual spiritual movement necessary in our present time. It was impossible to hold on to that. The intention was to give humanity a body of occult teachings that could fit all people, all hearts, that everyone could go along with.

But because of certain necessities, the impulse was transplanted to Western Europe, and an egoistic reaction asserted itself. Those spiritual powers that wanted to give the world a new impulse without distinction of any human differences were pushed back, and India, once suppressed in its occultism, took revenge karmically by infiltrating its own national egoistic occultism at the first opportunity when occultism appeared in the West. And that happened in the days of Helena Blavatsky. This was already happening when Helena Blavatsky summarized the great truths and wisdoms of her “The Secret Doctrine”. Her first work, “Isis Unveiled”, shows only the very chaotic and illogical and passionate and confused nature of her being, but shows everywhere that behind her there are watching powers that want to guide her towards the general human. In the “Secret Doctrine,” alongside the self-evident greatest good, there is everywhere a human special interest, such an interest that emanates from certain occult centers that do not have the general human interest in mind today, but a partial, a special interest. Tibetan, Indian, and also Egyptian initiations today everywhere have only a partial human interest in mind, and want only to avenge the suppressed Eastern occultism in the Western world, to avenge the fact that the Western world has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors. It has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors; it has triumphed in so far as Christianity has been adopted into the actual progressive culture of human development. Christianity has not gone east of Asia, nor south of Asia; Christianity has gone west.

1914-03-07-GA286

from RSH

(Note of an esoteric lesson by K. Stockmeyer)

The significance of the turns of millennia. At this time, the ahrimanic and luciferic spirits have particular power. This is connected with the numerical system:

“The ahrimanic impulses work very strongly in the decimal system. It is evident that with every millennium – thus in the years 1000, 2000, and so on – an especially strong attack by Lucifer and Ahriman, working together, takes place.”

...

“Evolution proceeds like a swing of a pendulum: in the year 1000 A.D., one expected the end of the world; in 2000 one will expect exactly the opposite; and in the year 3000, one will again expect the end of the world, but the world will have become such that people will long for this end. One can say without sentimentality: European humankind is heading toward awful times.”

In pre-Christian time, the effect of the counter-powers was paralysed by the beneficent powers: 3000 B.C.: constructions of the pyramids, 2000 B.C.: Abraham’s age, 1000 B.C.: David’s age, year 1: Christ. There will be a persecution of Christians about 2000:

“There will be confusion and havoc when the year 2000 approaches. And at that time, there will not be one piece of wood of our Dornach building resting on the other. Everything will be destroyed and laid waste. We will look down upon this from the spiritual world. However, when the year 2086 arrives, one will see all over Europe buildings arise that are dedicated to spiritual goals and which will be reflections of our Dornach building with its two cupolas. That will be the golden age for such buildings in which the spiritual life will flourish.”

Note: Steiner said to some older English anthroposophists (in Stratford-on-Avon in 1922), they would reincarnate relatively soon “in German countries at a time when one will walk barefoot in Central Europe” [George Adams in lit. 18, p. 25]. 1918-01-08-GA180 (SWCC)

.. on the one hand that we are now living in the materialistic age, to which is added abstraction in the sense we have come to know it, namely estrangement from reality; furthermore, all that must break into our age catastrophically is connected with this divorce from reality.

On the other hand, however, it may also be said that compared with the other cultural ages in this epoch, our current fifth period is in a certain respect the greatest age, one that brings most of all to humanity, one that harbours within it immense possibilities for the evolution and existence of mankind.

...

In this fifth postatlantean age Man has the greatest possibility of making himself spiritual. No age has been so favourable to spirituality as this fifth cultural age.

Courage must only be found to drive the money-changers out of the Temple.

Courage must be found to confront with the real, abstractions and things estranged from reality, to set against them full reality and therewith the spiritual reality.

1915-02-13-GA174B

for more context, see also:

• Sixth cultural age#Note 1 - Transition between the fifth and sixth cultural ages
• Nostradamus#2.1 - War between the West and Asia and World catastrophe

  In the sixth cultural age of the post-Atlantean epoch, the task will be to recognize the spirit more in the elemental world than directly in itself, to recognize the spirit more in the elemental world, because this sixth cultural age has the task of preparing the recognition of the spirit in the physical environment.

This cannot be achieved without difficulty if ancient atavistic forces are not preserved that recognize the spirit in its purely elementary life.

But these things do not happen in the world without the most fierce struggles.

• White humanity is still on the path of absorbing the spirit deeper and deeper into its own being.
• The yellow race is on the way to preserving those ages in which the spirit is kept far from the body, in which the spirit is sought outside of the human physical organization, only there.

But this must lead to the fact that the transition from the fifth cultural age into the sixth cultural age cannot take place otherwise than as a fierce struggle between the white race and the colored race in the most diverse fields.

And what precedes these struggles, which will take place between the white and the colored humanity, will occupy world history until the great struggles between the white and the colored humanity are fought out.

Future events are reflected in multiple ways in previous events. When we look at what we have acquired through the most diverse considerations in a spiritual-scientific sense, we are faced with something colossal that we can see as necessarily taking place in the future.

• On the one hand, we have a part of humanity with the mission of introducing the spirit into physical life in such a way that the spirit permeates everything in physical life.
• And on the other hand, we have a part of humanity with the necessity of now, so to speak, taking over the descending development.

[editor: this is the great bifurcation - see Schema FMC00.591 .. it is also why Rudolf Steiner states the current cultural age and the next are crucial - see quote on Schema FMC00.052 ... the incarnations that a human being are decisive in which current one will end up. See also Schema FMC00.422A.jpg and the text with Schema FMC00.422

This cannot happen otherwise than through that which truly professes to permeate the physical with the spiritual, to bring forth cultural impulses, to bring forth living impulses that are lasting for the Earth, that cannot disappear from the Earth again.

For what follows as the sixth, as the seventh cultural age, must live spiritually from the creations of the fifth, must absorb the creations of the fifth cultural age. The fifth cultural age has the task of deepening the external idealistic life into a spiritual life. But that which is thus conquered as a spiritual life by idealism must be accepted later, must live on. For in the East there will not be the strength to productively create one's own spiritual life, but only to absorb what has been created. Thus, history must unfold in such a way that a spiritual culture is created by present-day humanity, which carries the actual cultural impulses within itself. This spiritual culture is the actual historical successor to the fifth culture, and it will be assimilated by what follows.

1916-04-04-GA167

... human beings in our 5th post-Atlantean period are not advanced enough to experience all that can actually be experienced; that will come later, that will come gradually. You must know that since the year 1413 we stand in the 5th post-Atlantean age. This will last 2160 years and will be ended in the year 3573. Hence we really stand in the beginning of our period and in the course of this 5th age a great deal will happen. This must occur through the development of spiritual science. This, however, can only reveal itself gradually step by step. Today we can impart only the great lines of it and we can also learn many details about it, but a great deal will only come when it has strengthened itself on the resistances; and these resistances will become greater and greater.

Today we live in a relatively idealistic spiritual age compared with that which will come in the future. We are living at the end of the second post-Christian millennium and it will not be long until we reach the year 2.000 and then mankind will have to experience something of a special nature. Things which are preparing themselves very gradually right now are so prepared that there are two polarities which we are going to meet as time goes on. Two polarities are being prepared, one pole from the East and another from the West.

[east]

In the East things will gradually develop in such a way that another kind of thinking will dominate. Whenever a child is born, one will attempt to say: “What comes of this child? We have to deal with a hidden spiritual being who wants gradually to develop this child.” You will want to solve the riddle of this child, and in the first place you will unite a kind of cult dealing with the growing up of this child. This sort of thing prepares itself in the East. Naturally it will pass over towards Europe and the consequence will be that an immense reverence will develop for that which one calls genius, a seeking for genius. This is what will come from the East. However this will affect only the smaller portion of mankind.

[west]

The larger part of mankind will be influenced from America, from the West, and this proceeds along an entirely different line of development.

We might say that the present time is doing very well compared with that which will come in the future when the Western development blossoms more and more. Very shortly, when one will have written the year 2000, there will come from America not a direct prohibition, but a kind of prohibition against all thinking, a sort of law which will have the aim of suppressing all individual thinking. On the other hand there is the beginning achieved in this direction of suppressing all individual thinking into pure materialistic thinking where one does not need to work upon the soul on the basis of external experiments, in which the human being is handled as if he were a machine.

• Now, I hope you will not misunderstand me, my dear friends, because in this domain a great deal is precisely sinned against on the so-called spiritual side. For example, you can experience the following: People will come and say: “Yes, I have been exposed to all sorts of things in medicine and I was not healed; so I went to a healer who treated me quite spiritually.” Then I asked him what the healer did with him and he answered: “There are evil spirits in my body and I must pray them out of myself.” I asked if this helped. “No, I became worse and worse.” I ask you to just imagine how the situation stands. Do not just imagine that this person has said something incorrect. It is quite correct that there were spiritual beings in him that were the cause of what happened to him. But precisely because that healer told him something correct, this damaged the human being. Now, just think of it in this way. A scamp destroys a machine. He is the cause of the machine no longer running. How can I bring this machine back into proper working order? According to the method of your spiritual healer, I must get hold of this scamp and give him a thorough thrashing so that he will run away and then everything should be in order. Obviously the spiritual healer told you that as soon as the evil spirits have gone away your machine is in order. However, just as little as the machine is now in order because the scamp was thrashed and has run away, so now I must work putting machine back order. And so it is with the person who was sick. Of course, this spiritual healer was able to drive the evil spirits out, but the damage had been done and now you must heal the body. You can see that so much has been sinned against from this other side, because today people have lost the ability to think. For example we have machines today which add and subtract; everything is convenient.

Now, in the future you will not get a law passed which says you must not think. No. What will happen is that things will be done the effect of which will be to exclude all individual thinking. This is the other pole to which we are proceeding. This is connected with the development of the West.

You have to develop a certain counter weight against this tendency in the world development; and anthroposophical spiritual science is this counter-weight. What do we have instead?

1916-12-17-GA173A

see also related: Central European cultural basin#1916-12-26-GA173B

Herewith we touch on conditions which are well-known in circles familiar with the realities of life, conditions which may be reckoned with and which may be used as forces if one wants to do certain things. These conditions are by no means unknown to the secret brotherhoods, neither in their rightful use, nor in that other direction which uses secret knowledge in one way or another in the service of some group egoism. For the secret of how the three consecutive layers — which are exceedingly meaningful, mainly for Europe — work together, is discussed most carefully in all secret brotherhoods worthy of the name, though naturally in some cases in a manner which deflects from what might be termed the good direction.

Please be sure not to forget that knowledge about such things exists, and that it is taught — even though, in the external, clever world no one wants to know much about it — very systematically and with great care, especially in the western and American secret brotherhoods.

Having now prepared the way and brought to your attention the teaching about what is, in a certain way, a mystery of evolution and which is taught, albeit with the most varying aims, I shall now point to some further teachings simply by describing them to you. These teachings formed the content of the instruction given in certain occult schools, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century. They continued into the twentieth century, but it was particularly in the nineteenth century that they were taken up, at which time they gained a considerable degree of influence. Efforts were made to bring them into all kinds of situations in which it was felt necessary to use them for certain ends.

So to start with I shall simply report, quite uncritically, on certain teachings from the secret brotherhoods of England, whereby I shall be alluding to what I have prepared.

The following was taught and is still taught:

[1 - introduction]

• The evolution of Europe can be comprehended if, to start with, one looks at the transition from the Roman, the fourth post-Atlantean cultural age, to the current fifth post-Atlantean age . The teaching was — please remember that I am merely reporting — that the mystery of the transition from the fourth to the fifth age or, as was said in these brotherhoods, from the fourth to the fifth sub-race, must be understood. You know that we cannot use the term ‘sub-race’ for the reasons I have frequently expressed, for to use this term means to pursue one-sided group aims, whereas group aims can never be our concern, but solely the general aims of mankind. So the teaching was that the fourth sub-race is represented mainly by the Roman, the Latin peoples. Throughout human evolution it is the case that when things develop in sequence it is not a question of what comes after taking its place behind what came before. What came before remains and takes its place side by side with what comes afterwards, so that they remain side by side in space. Thus, the stragglers of the fourth sub-race, consisting chiefly of the Roman and Latin elements, have remained during the period of the fifth sub-race.

[2 - fifth cultural age and 'rightful' expected dominance English speaking culture]

• The fifth sub-race, which began at the start of the fifteenth century, is composed of those peoples who are called upon to speak English in the world. The English-speaking peoples represent the fifth sub-race, and the whole task of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural age consists in conquering the world for the English-speaking peoples. It will be evident that the stragglers of the fourth sub-race, the peoples touched by the Latin element, will fall more and more into a certain materialism. They bear within themselves the element of their own inner dissolution, and even in the physical sense bear their own decadence within them. As I said, I am merely reporting and not saying anything which I myself maintain to be true. Further, it is said that the fifth sub-race bears within it a germ of spirituality, of a capacity to comprehend the spiritual world.

[3 - learning from transition between fourth to fifth cultural ages]

• It is necessary, it is said, to understand how the fourth sub-race affected the fifth, and for this purpose one must look back to where the Nordic peoples, who later became the Britons, the Gauls, the Germans, came towards the Roman Empire. The question was asked: What were these peoples at the time when the Roman Empire was making war on them; in other words, when the conflict between the fourth and the fifth sub-race began? As peoples they were at the stage of infancy! The important point is that the Romans, the Roman element, the fourth sub-race, came in order to be their wet-nurse. These expressions are needed to enable us to draw the analogy between the folk element and the element of the individual human being. So the Romans became wet-nurses and they remained so for approximately as long as they maintained their dominance over the peoples of the North who were going through their infancy.
• Infants grow to be children. This is the age in which the Papacy is founded in Rome and in which the Pope in his reign becomes the guardian of the child, just as the Roman Empire was the wet-nurse of the infant. Again, I am merely reporting, and not maintaining that this is the case. So now we have the interplay between the Papacy and what is going on in the North, what developed through Central Europe right out as far as Britain. This is the education of these people under the guardianship of the Papacy, out of which the Roman element from the fourth post-Atlantean age is still working.
• Round about the twelfth century, when the Papacy began to be no longer what it had been, the youth of these various people commenced, this being characterized by the awakening of their own intelligence. The guardian now withdraws. The youth of these peoples continues until roughly the end of the eighteenth century. As a rule, when such things are taught the present is omitted, because for certain reasons this is thought to be a good thing to do. People must not be told too clearly what one thinks about the present time; they learn about this more through suggestion.

[4 - recap and current situation 20th century]

Thus, in the course of time in the North, under the rule of the wet-nurse, the guardian, and so on, the present mature condition grew. This bears within it the germ of rendering Britain the ruling nation of the fifth post-Atlantean age, in the same way as were not only the Romans but also the Roman element in the form of the Papacy, which was derived from them. So, according to this doctrine, while the remains of the Latin element crumble away from the human race, a new fruitful element expands from the factor in which lives the British element.

Now it is hinted that all external actions and measures which are to serve any purpose and be fruitful, must be made under the sign of these views. Anything that is undertaken without these views, anything that does not take into account that the Latin element is in decline and the British element ascending, is doomed to wither. Of course such things may be undertaken, say these people, but they are condemned to remain meaningless, they will not grow. It is like sowing seeds in the wrong soil.

In the doctrine I have sketched for you we have a foundation which seeped into all the brotherhoods, even the more esoteric ones — those who worked in the West as so-called high grade Freemasons and suchlike.

These things were insinuated into public affairs by people who had either close or loose connections with these brotherhoods, often in such a veiled way that those concerned had no idea how they had come by their knowledge. Particularly since the sixteenth century these things have been carried from the West into much that can be experienced in human evolution.

[5 - looking ahead to sixth cultural age]

Other things are also taught. It is said:

• Just as those people in the North during the time of the Roman element were preparing themselves to be the fifth sub-race, so today, in a similar way, the Slav people are coming towards the West as the developing sixth sub-race; in the same way the Germanic peoples came out of the North to meet the Roman element. Thus it is said that living in the East, under a despotic rule that is doomed to destruction, are a number of individual peoples who, like the Germanic peoples when the Roman Empire started to spread northwards, are not yet nations as such but still tribal peoples. These tribal peoples constitute the separate elements of the so-called Slav people, which for the moment is only held together in an external way by a despotic government which is to be swept away. I am using the terms which are customary within these secret brotherhoods.

[parenthesis]

After saying so many positive things about the Slavs, let me just add in parentheses: It is true that these peoples are still tribal in a certain way. This became evident at the Slav Congress in Prague in 1848. Each group wanted to speak in their own language, but this proved impossible because they were then incomprehensible to the others; so they were forced to use standard German instead. I do not say this to amuse you but in order to show that what is taught in the West about the Slavs does have a certain basis of truth.

[continued on slavic people]

It is said further in the English brotherhoods that

• the Poles have evolved ahead of the other Slavs, for they have developed a homogeneous cultural and religious life of a relatively high calibre. The destinies of the Poles are described to some extent, but it is then maintained that they really belong to the Russian Empire.
• Then the Balkan Slavs are discussed. Of them it is said that they have thrown off the yoke of Turkish oppression and formed themselves into individual Slav states which, however — and this is repeated over and over again — are destined to remain as they are only until the next great European war. In the nineties particularly, these brotherhoods held this great European war to be imminent, and it was linked especially to evolutionary impulses which were to emanate from the Balkan Slavs, born of the fact that these states, which had come into being as a result of their disengagement from the Turkish Empire, had to undergo a transition to new forms. Only until the next great European war, it was said, would these Balkan Slavs be able to maintain their independence. After that they would meet with quite other destinies.

[6 - coming full circle]

These peoples are at present, so it is taught, in their infancy. So it is hinted that since they are the future sixth sub-race, while the Britons are the present fifth sub-race, the Britons will have to play a role towards them similar to that played by the Romans towards the northern Germanic peoples, namely that of wet-nurse; to be a wet-nurse to these peoples is their primary task.

This role of wet-nurse will cease to be necessary, it is said, at the moment when these peoples will have reached a point when the Russian Empire no longer exists and they have succeeded in creating their own forms out of their own dawning intelligence. But gradually the wet-nurse must be replaced by the guardian. This means that in the West a kind of papacy must develop out of those who form the fifth sub-race. For this, a strong spirituality must develop and, just as the Papacy stood in relation to Central Europe, so a configuration will have to come about which works comprehensively from the West over towards the East. This must result in the East being used as a place where certain institutions can be created in a manner similar to that in which the Papacy created its institutions in Europe.

Of course we have now progressed by one sub-race. The Papacy created churches and religious communities of all sorts. But now the western ‘papacy’, which is to develop out of the British element, will have the task of carrying out certain quite definite economic experiments, that is, of instituting a certain form of economic society of a socialist nature which, it is assumed, cannot be founded in the West because there the fifth and not the sixth sub-race has its being. The East, experimentally at first, must be used for such experiments for the future. Political, cultural and economic experiments must be carried out.

[editor: see Russian revolution and communism, Lenin Stalin Khrushchev]

Of course these people are not so stupid as to maintain that the dominance of the West will last forever, for no serious student of spiritual matters would believe that. But they are quite clear about the fact that just as at first the services of the wet-nurse were offered, so must these be metamorphosed into the role of the guardian — in other words a kind of future ‘papacy’ on the part of western culture.

I have been reporting, my dear friends! These things are buried deeply in the teachings of western Freemasonry and it is a matter of recognizing whether the ones I have mentioned, which are very influential, are really justified as being for the good of mankind in general in its evolution, or whether it is necessary to think of them as needing correction in some way.

This is what we are concerned with. We shall return to all this again.

1916-12-18-GA173A

Mankind is now faced with having to solve certain quite specific problems.

1/ This applies, above all, to something I have already spoken about, which is connected with today's much-admired technology—a consequence of natural science - which is also much admired by spiritual science.

In the comparatively near future, this much-admired modern technology will reach a final stage where it will, in a certain way, cancel itself out.

In contrast, something will come into being - I have mentioned it in passing here - which will enable people to make use of the delicate vibrations in their etheric bodies as a driving force with which to run machines. Machines will exist which are dependent on people and people will transfer their own vibrations to the machines. People alone will be capable of setting these machines in motion by means of certain vibrations stimulated by themselves. People who today see themselves as practitioners of science will, in the not too distant future, find themselves faced with a complete transformation of what they today call the practical application of science; for the human being is to be tuned in with his will to the objective sphere of feeling in the universe. This is one of the problems.

[see: Hints of future etheric force technology]

2/ The second is, that people will, in a certain way, understand what we call the forces of coming-into-being and dying-away, the forces of birth and death. First of all they will have to make themselves morally ready for this. And to this will belong the gaining of insight into things about which nothing but nonsense is talked today. I have pointed this out before in connection with the questions people ask about how to improve the birthrate when it is declining. But they talk utter nonsense because they know nothing about the matter, and because the methods they suggest will certainly not achieve what they are talking about.

3/ The third matter I want to mention is, that in the not too distant future a total reversal in the whole way people think about sickness and health will become apparent. Medicine will become filled with what can be understood spiritually when one learns to see illness as the consequence of spiritual causes.

1917-11-19-GA178

(SWCC)

I have mentioned in the course of these studies that every cultural age in the Postatlantean age has its particular task. I have characterized in general the task of the fifth cultural age, indicating that it is humanity's task in this period to come to grips with evil as an impulse in the evolution of the world.

We have frequently discussed what this means. It cannot be otherwise than that forces that appear at the wrong place appear as evil. They can be conquered for humanity, however, through the exertions of human beings in the current fifth cultural age, so that with these forces of evil something good for the future of the evolution of the whole world is in the position to unfold.

For this reason, the task for the fifth Postatlantean age is a particularly difficult one. As you see, a great many temptations face humanity. When the powers of evil gradually appear, it is natural that Man is more likely under the circumstances to give in to this evil in all realms, rather than taking up the struggle to allow what appears to him as evil to be put in the service of the good in world evolution.

Yet this must happen: the evil must to a certain degree be placed at the service of the good in world evolution. Without this, it would be impossible to enter the sixth cultural age, which will have a completely different task. It will have the task of allowing humanity to live above all in a continuous contemplation of the spiritual world, of spiritual impulses, in spite of the fact that it is still connected with the earth.

Just this task in the fifth cultural age, that of opposing evil, is connected with the new possibility of a certain kind of personal darkening for humanity.

1918-06-25-GA181

The middle of the third millennium will be a critical moment in the development of civilisation, for then a point will be reached when human nature will have progressed so far that it will be thrown back into decay unless it has acquired the vision of repeated earth-lives and karma, lost since the seventh or eighth century before Christ. In earlier times, human nature had a healthy power of response; knowledge came naturally to it. In future it will become diseased unless it takes this teaching into itself.

We understand our age only if we keep in mind that it lies between two poles.

• One pole lies far back, beyond the seventh or eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha. Those were the times when knowledge of the soul’s super-sensible experience was given by human nature itself.
• The other pole will be in the third millennium, when (as described in “Knowledge of Higher Worlds”) Man must acquire super-sensible knowledge in spiritual ways, so that health, and not sickness, may stream into the body.

Our age can be understood in both its inner and its outer aspects only if we keep this in mind.

Naturally the change will be slow and gradual. But anyone who does not want to dream through the most important things of our age in a dull, sleepy way, but wishes to live in conscious wakefulness — it behooves him to mark what is seeking entry into human life. It will not enter completely until the middle of the third millennium; but little by little it will make its presence felt, and humanity must now consciously be alive to and prepare for its inevitable advent.

1918-08-19-GA183

continuation from Waking Consciousness#1918-08-19-GA183

[discussing the evolution of waking consciousness across cultural ages]

It may be said on the other hand that another tendency makes itself increasingly felt, and will make itself still more felt as the sixth post-Atlantean age approaches—the zone here(left) will become penetrable. The time will come when out of the depths of human nature whet I described to you yesterday as something seething, into which man should not look (above all should not look in the sense of what the imaginative, the fantastic, mystic wants), out of this sphere from the sixth post-Atlantean age onwards all manner of things will seep through.

This time indeed will begin before the end of the fifth post-Atlantean age, our age; all kinds of things will want to leak through. This will show itself above all in far more people than we think today understanding from purely inner experience that there are repeated lives on earth, and things of that kind. One may say that already today these things are breaking through, though not very often.

...

Today a real distinction has to be made between

• the understanding of the world that is scientific and in accordance with time, an understanding that is easy and universally popular;
• and the true understanding of the world. This true understanding of the world must be able to recognise such contrasting things as I have here been discussing, namely, the entering in of something from the peoples of the east that lies there outside (see right of diagram 8) and the arising of something from the American people that lies here (left).

And what arises here is not necessarily something to be looked down upon, in a certain sense it can be a majestic ahrimanic, manifestation. For it is essentially an ahrimanic manifestation which is given in this excellent utterance of Woodrow Wilson's upon the evolution of the American people.

The initiates of the East and the initiates of the American people know what it is necessary to make of these things. There is the will absolutely to guide the evolution of mankind from both directions into a certain course.

[East]

[editor note: this statement dates from early 20th century ... interestingly, early 21st century, eastern countries such as China, Japan, India are not less technically advanced or mechanized than the West, on the contrary]

The eastern peoples, that is to say their initiates, have quite definite views for the future evolution of mankind. These people see what is right for evolution and, as far as it lies in man's power, seek to influence this right evolution. They try to give it a definite direction, a definite impulse. And the impulse that the initiates of the East wish to give to evolution rests essentially upon man no longer reclining on human generation after the first half of the sixth post-Atlantean age.

After this time it will be sought to renounce the earthly human race. The desire will be to bring human evolution to the point when man no longer returns to a physical body, when souls are so spiritualised that they do not descend to earth any more in bodily form. From the middle of the sixth post-Atlantean age man will already be seeking to found for himself the kingdom of the spirit. This would be possible only were certain ingredients of culture rejected. It is not only the initiates of the East who feel a decided aversion to certain European characteristics but every cultured oriental instinctively feels it also—he feels an aversion for just those characteristics on which the European particularly prides himself. For example, he has no use for the purely technical, material culture which has arisen both in Europe and in its off-shoot America. Those who study man's evolution, particularly in the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth, find they have to admit that technics has carried things very far, that technics has deprived man of his power for work.

When it is said today that the earth has so and so many hundred millions of inhabitants, this is not, actually entirely correct, for it can also be reckoned how many inhabitants the earth has according to how much work is done. Now we are perfectly justified in saying that since the last third of the eighteenth century man's power of labour has been fixed by the machines that have been increasingly produced. It can be reckoned, and reckoned pretty exactly, how many millions more men would have to be apportioned to the earth if all the work produced by machines were to be produced by men. The earth would have to have 500,000,000 more men. It can indeed be said that the earth today has not so many men if they are to be counted according to their two legs and their head, but according to labour power the earth has 500,000,000 more men; machines do duty as labour-power.

But, my dear friends, there is nothing material that has not behind it what is spiritual. These 500,000,000 human forces are the opportunity for the same number of ahrimanic demons to take up their abode in human culture! These ahrimanic demons are certainly there. And the man of the East instinctively turns right away from these ahrimanic demons, and will have nothing to do with them. You see this in every manifestation of a highly culture oriental; he turns from this ahrimanic demonology. For this ahrimanic demonology weighs men down, weighs them down and deprives them of the possibility to bring about the aim of oriental initiation, namely, the end of the human race on earth from the middle of the sixth post-Atlantean age. This will be held back by what is developed in this demoniacal ahrimanic way.

[American]

American initiates are striving towards another goal; they strive towards the opposite goal. They endeavour to form a more inner bond than is normal in the course of man's evolution between the human soul and that bodily nature that is to be found upon Earth, the dense, coarse corporeality which from the sixth post-Atlantean age on, will be found on earth. The culture of the soul will be deepened, what is of a bodily nature will coarsen. A more inward connection with this bodily nature then is normal is, however, striven for in the least, in America, a more intensive descent into the body. Man will go towards what seeps through, will approach it by an intensive penetration into what is of the body.

Whereas the Orientals wish to found a culture that takes no account of the human body, in the future earthly evolution, in the American culture of the West there will be an endeavor to chain the soul to the future evolution of the earth. There is a desire so to form the body that when souls have passed through the gate of death, they will be able to return as quickly as possible into a body and spend as short a time as possible from sojourning in the spiritual world and there will be the desire to return to earth as soon as possible, to be as closely united as possible with earthly life.

These are tendencies that must be recognised, my dear friends. Strange as it may seem to man today when one speaks of such tendencies, it will all the same be harmful to him should they happen. For it is necessary for man to take his stand consciously where he himself is concerned, in what is sought after, and in connection with which he is, unfortunately, often placed in a position to justify the remark that he lets just anything happen to him.

This western ideal, however, to give man over to demonology, will be possible only should the American tendency, this soul and spirit tendency in America, receive the support of another stream of world-outlook far more closely connected with that of America then is recognised. The most striking feature of the American tendency, as you have seen, is essentially its leaning towards an ahrimanic culture. But this American characteristic would be increased were it supported by another world conception, and the relation between the two is closer than is supposed. I refer to Jesuitism.

The outlook of the Jesuits and that of the Americans are very closely related. For at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantic age it was a question of an impulse having been found in which man was placed in a position to be lead as far as possible from the understanding of Christ. And the endeavor in cultural development that took on the task of obliterating the understanding of Christ, of completely eradicating all understanding of Christ, this is Jesuitism. Jesuitism strives gradually to root out every possibility of understanding the Christ. For what lies at the bottom of this is indeed closely connected with a deep mystery.

[continued, read further in online lecture]

1918-10-26-GA185

quote A

Men must learn to see through words; they will have to acquire the capacity to grasp the gesture in language. Before this cultural age, before this fourth millennium has run its course, men will have learnt to listen to one another differently from the way they do at the present moment; they will find in language an external expression of Man's relation to the third Hierarchy, to the angels, archangels and archai, a means whereby he can attain to the super-sensible, to the spirit.

quote B

In the present age of the consciousness soul two mysteries are of particular importance for the evolution of mankind — the Mystery of Death and the Mystery of Evil.

1/ From a certain angle the Mystery of Death which is related to the Mystery of Evil during the present epoch, immediately raises the vital question: what is the meaning of death for human evolution?

….

We can only understand the phenomenon of death against the background of those forces which are operative in the universe and which, when they lay hold of Man, are responsible for his physical death.

The question now arises; what do these forces which are active in the universe accomplish apart from bringing death to Man?

It would be a mistake to imagine that their sole purpose is to bring death to Man; that is only a secondary effect…. Certain forces, certain impulses are active in the universe: but for them Man could not suffer death. Man is part of the universe; these forces also permeate Man and when they are active in man they cause his death.

The question now arises; what do these forces which are active in the universe accomplish apart from bringing death to Man? ….

For the task of the forces which as a secondary effect bring death to Man is to implant in him, in the course of his evolution, not the consciousness soul, but the CAPACITY to develop the consciousness soul….

For the remainder of his Earth evolution Man must assimilate these forces of death, and in the course of the present age their influence upon him will be such that he brings to full expression in himself the faculty of the consciousness soul.

2/ Even the forces of evil are not designed to promote evil actions within the human order — that again is only a secondary effect.

If these forces did not exist in the universe, Man could not develop the consciousness soul; he would be unable to receive as he should in the course of his future evolution the forces of the spirit-self, the life-spirit and the spirit-man. He must first pass through the stage of the consciousness soul if he wishes to receive after his own fashion the forces of the spirit-self, the life-spirit and the spirit-man

3/ And to this end he must, in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean age, fully unite his being with the forces of death. This lies within his power.

But he cannot unite his own being with the forces of evil in the same way. The forces of evil in the cosmos are such that only in the Future Jupiter stage will he be able to assimilate them as he now assimilates the forces of death.

Since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age, evil tendencies are subconsciously present in all men. It is precisely this influx of evil tendencies into men that marks his entrance into the fifth post-Atlantean age.

Expressed somewhat radically one could say with every justification: He who crosses the threshold of the spiritual world discovers that there is not a crime in the calendar to which every Man, in so far as he belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, is not subconsciously prone. Whether in a particular case this tendency leads to an evil action depends upon wholly different circumstances and not upon the tendency itself.

If we are to tell mankind the plain unvarnished truth today, we cannot escape unpalatable facts. Perhaps we shall best achieve our purpose if we start from a concrete phenomenon.

I spoke yesterday of an important impulse in the age of the consciousness soul: the development of an active concern on the part of every Man for his neighbour. This mutual concern for each other must grow and develop in the course of Man's subsequent evolution on Earth… Today, when a little over a fifth of the ageh of the consciousness soul has run its course, Man still shows little inclination to see his fellow Man as he will have to learn to see him in the course of the epoch of the consciousness soul, up to the fourth millennium.

1918-12-21-GA186

As I have often said, we have no reason to comfort ourselves too lightly about the misfortunes of our time, still less to shut our eyes to them.

But we have also no reason to be pessimistic. Only consider the following. We can say to ourselves: immense and terrible events have taken place in the last four or five years over the Earth.

And yet, what is the essential thing in all these terrors?

It is what human souls have experienced through them. That is the essential thing: what human souls have experienced through these events, with respect to their soul's evolution, needless to say throughout all Earth-existence.

This quote is useful in view of the atrocities of wars and other horrible challenges that humanity is still to face. See e.g. Schema FMC00.650A, and also the PDF deck 'Living as an Individuality'.

1919-04-05-GA190

Now I have said that a wave of confusion is passing over the world.

Why is this so? Recollect that our present-day 5th post-Atlantean epoch, the age of the consciousness-soul, began in 1413.

Since that time mankind is before all else striving to develop the consciousness-soul. If one speaks in this way about this epoch of ours, one is speaking as a man who stands within the development of the earth. For something is manifesting itself in the physical development of the earth which, expressed in words, runs just like this: since the middle of the 15th century mankind has been in the age of the development of the consciousness-soul.

But now we could put the question from another point of view as well, one which we must again and again adopt when dealing with spiritual science. We could also put it from the point of view of the discarnate souls who are living between death and a new birth. It is of great importance for many things which must be spoken of by anthroposophical spiritual science always to consider, in addition to our own point of view, that the discarnate souls of men and even that of the other spirits of the various spiritual hierarchies. It is only by this means that we can rightly check whether we are bringing to expression the judgments which we make as earthy men — which must, of course, always be one-sided — in the right spiritual-scientific way. Anyone who now surveys this period of the 5th post-Atlantean cultural age by means of spiritual-scientific investigation finds that, from a quite definite point of time, the life of the living, who are taking their stand to an ever greater extent on the basis of consciousness, the summit of the personality.

At first we can only consider in how far this life of the dead changes in intercourse with human beings living on the Earth. With regard to the relationship of the living towards the dead it is, to be sure, so extraordinarily difficult to bring anything into human consciousness because what we experience there is certainly remarkably different from what can be experienced here within the physical circumference of the earth. Human beings are accustomed to form their ideas within the physical circumference of the earth must be corrected in the light of our experience with discarnate souls. In these, we experience in an extraordinarily living way the relationship of the dead to human speech.

At first, however, it is difficult to understand how the fact works which I have indicated here in those recent lectures in which I said to you that nouns are hardly understood by the dead. (The Social Question as a Question of Soul: The Inner Experience of Speech. 28-30 Mar. 1919. Dornach.) I have described to you how the other parts of speech are understood by the dead, but there are also, nevertheless, distinctions within these. It is clearly perceptible that human speech, as it is spoken here on the earth, is becoming less and less intelligible to the dead. Certainly the dead understand verbs: they also understand prepositions. They understand everything in which we are compelled to develop pictorial representations. But, generally, the ability to comprehend what can be grasped in speech, the understanding of it, is becoming ever more lost to them.

Before all else, something stands out with quite special clearness — of course, only for certain men: that, the dead understand nothing at all of what we call “Natural Science”, what is carried on as Natural Science here on Earth. If we talk to the dead about all other imaginable things, we find understanding. But if we dress up what is supposed to be suitable for the dead in a natural-scientific form of presentation, the dead person merely experiences it as pain. This is of extraordinary significance and confirms what can be learned from other spiritual sources, that everything which is done here with regard to knowledge of nature is really only produced by means of the physical human organism. And as soon as a human being leaves this physical organism after death, everything which he had developed in the physical organism about nature as Natural Science is no longer of any value to him. It has no importance for him. He no longer accounts it: it no longer exists.

One can acquire very clear ideas about these things. Take a purely natural-scientifically written book by a real natural-scientist, let us say about botany. Read a chapter, and try to impart to the dead what is written purely in the sense of the Natural Science of today: it gives him a pain. He does not know at all whence this pain comes. He has absolutely nothing in common with it: he cannot receive it. But in the moment when you recall to yourself how you once saw a dandelion — of which, perhaps, the investigator of nature is speaking — and you set the yellow colour of the dandelion before you in a living way, and its peculiar, indented leaves, in the moment when you really inwardly feel what your eye sees, then the dead begins to understand it. But you must, of course, feel it, for the visual image does not exist for the dead.

This is very remarkable. The dead person can share with earthly human beings their pleasure about a green meadow. He cannot share the ideas of Natural Science about a green meadow. It is true that the natural-scientists of the present-day say that they can form no idea at all about what is living. But then, at some time in the future, some especially perfect Natural Science must find out, from all possible combinations of atoms, how living matter is put together. But if you grasp ideas about what is living, for example Goethe does in his Theory of Metamorphosis, and make this kind of idea living in yourself, then, once again, the dead person understands it. These, again, are ideas which the dead understand.

For a quite definite, spiritual historical fact lies at the basis of all that I am explaining to you here. The development which I have just characterised really only began to appear about the year 1721. If you go back to the time before 1720 and immerse yourself in the writings about nature which were produced then — most people do not notice such things, but it is, nevertheless, the case — you will see that people then speak in a much more living way about nature. The way in which in one speaks about nature today — I may now say, unintelligibly to the dead — really only began in the early part of the 16th century. Only then did this wave break in on mankind. Previously, men found themselves under the necessity of writing about nature in a much more living way, so that the dead with the living took place. Only since then have scientific ideas been such that they are ideas for earthly men alone and only for so long as these are in the physical body, no longer forming any bond upward into the spiritual world.

This is an extraordinarily significant fact in the history of spiritual development. For now, certainly, you can easily imagine how we are entering on a process in which the discarnate will be out adrift from the Earth as a result of the science which is the one and only thing which men are prepared to accept as valid, as a result of what appears to them as the most valuable thing of all. Just imagine this with great vividness! For it is of no avail to shut one's eyes — I mean one's spiritual eyes — to such things. Imagine that, at universities over the whole Earth, everything is being gradually effaced which is not admitted by so-called exact Natural Science. The universities are thus islands on the Earth where everything which is not exact science is being effaced in the completest possible way. But as a result these universities become places from which the spirit — that is to say, everything essential which exists in the Spiritual — flees. They are islands in the culture of mankind where unspirituality, the unspiritual life, is to the greatest extent taking its origin. Looked at from another point of view, surely, the universities are simply our spiritual centres. But think how we earth-men really talk. Since the 18th century we designate as our spiritual centres the very places where the Spirit receives its dismissal, where the Spirit is least of all to be found! Today is no longer the time to close our eyes to these things; we must contemplate them much more — I should like say — coldly, in conformity with true reality. If we look away from things like this, we are shutting our eyes to what must be understood if we are to look into the heart of the true reality of the time.

This development which began in the 18th century has reached its culmination in our time. Now it is necessary to return to the other spiritual wave, as a result of which a real spiritual life can develop in mankind.

There is only one type of spirit which has a special inclination, as it were, to saturate themselves in what is thus unspiritual on our Earth. These are the Ahrimanic spirits. The ordinary, discarnate souls of men in the life between death and a new birth feel this nature-knowledge — I should like to say — negatively, so that they feel it as a pain: they thus have a sort of negative experience. The Luciferic spirits have a terrible fury at it; they just hate it. Only the Ahrimanic spirits have an inclination for it and seek to reach their aim just through nature-knowledge, so that this forms a bond of attraction for the Ahrimanic spirits.

Now Ahriman is just the Spirit of Illusion, of Deceit. And I pointed out to you at the time when I explained this that since the beginning of the 18th century the Ahrimanic influences have become ever greater and greater. But as a result this wave of confusion has come upon humanity, which has seized on human beings like a whirlpool and which displays itself in the colossal superficiality of which I gave you an example at the opening of today's lecture.

We must know this kind of thing because it is just anthroposophically-oriented spiritual science which puts us into the position to protect ourselves against this confusion. One way to take care of ourselves against it is to be critical, attentive towards what can approach us from every direction in order to throw us into confusion, as happened in the case which I quoted, without being noticed by the greater number of people.

Yet another thing must be observed: we cannot, so to say, get away from a universal world-phenomenon which is with us as things now stand.

This wave of chaos is quite clearly with us today. It is of no help whatever to shut our souls' eyes against it. Only one thing is of assistance — to draw our attention to it! And we become attentive if we first of all always say to ourselves regarding what refers to the spiritual worlds the chaos is there, it will keep us from the right knowledge of the spiritual world! If we always have a sort of suspicion, when people speak to us about the Spiritual World, that what they say might be erroneous, if we accustom ourselves to observe the utmost caution, we shall certainly by no means fall into the wave of chaos which holds sway at the present time. We must find courage to pass through this chaos and to raise ourselves above it, while we partake very, very much in real, sound common-sense. This sound common-sense will only be ours if we are primarily on our guard against a mistake which is so common in the present time: at the present time, when men have attained a certain age, they really wish only to admit the validity of what is already familiar to them.

It is a very nearly universal phenomenon that men who have attained a certain age can hardly be convinced of anything new.

If they meet with an opinion, they only ask themselves whether they have already thought of it and if this is the case they are in agreement with it, but if they have not yet thought of it then it is false or abstract to them. In short, this is then a reason why they have nothing to do with the matter. But, in contrast to this, present-day men have the serious task — I will not say always to let themselves be convinced of new things, but at least to let themselves come in contact with new things without presupposition or prejudice, to participate in the new things which are entering the world.

It could appear as though this were a trivial remark. It is not so, because what I have described is sinned against to such an extraordinary extent at the present time. Much would improve if more power of conviction could develop in the intercourse of human beings with one another, if human beings were not so antipathetic towards one another, not so pigheadedly fixed in their own opinions which they received during a certain period of their lives

What is the reason for this?

At the same point of time when natural-scientifically oriented ideas made their appearances, a quite definite process begins in the development of mankind, which is based on the following.

As you know, Man has a physical body, which is embedded in an etheric body; we need not consider the rest today. The intimacy of the connection between these — I am not now referring to the fact that they occupy the same space but to what is dynamic in the connection — changes in the course of earth-evolution.

• The intimate relationship between the etheric head and the human physical head which, for example, existed in the centuries of Greek culture no longer have existed since the 3rd century B.C. Since this time, the old, intimate relationship between man's etheric head and his physical head has been lost.
• On the other hand, a really intimate relationship has until now remained in being between the human physical heart and the etheric heart. Since the year 1721, this relationship has been loosening to an ever-increasing degree. If the physical heart is here (see diagram) and the etheric here, then in earlier times the etheric heart and the physical heart were more a single entity. Now the etheric heart can be excited to activity in an etheric way: the two are no longer so inwardly, dynamically bound together as they were before.
• Later, still other human organs will loosen themselves from the etheric.

[Effects of loosening of etheric and physical heart]

But, with regard to human development as well, something very important results from the fact that the heart is gradually separating itself from its etheric part, and will have completely separated itself in the third millenium, about the year 2100.

We can describe the characteristics of this by saying since the recent past, humanity must seek in the path of spiritual life something which in former times came about of its own accord as a result of the natural relationship between the physical heart and the etheric heart. This etheric heart, separated from the physical heart, will only gain its correct relationship to the spiritual world if man seeks spiritual knowledge, if man seeks anthroposophically-oriented spiritual thoughts. These must be sought to an ever greater extent.

Now something most remarkable is present in our time. How often is it said when reference is made to anthroposophical spiritual science: yes, but this has a systematic interconnection, this is complicated, one must do a lot of thinking about it!

[Dangers with faith]

Christianity, they say, makes all this much simpler: it has Faith! But this faith, which does not want to soar up to real thoughts about the Spiritual World, is extraordinarily dangerous just since the time of the separation of the etheric heart from the physical heart.

For this faith, which does not want to gain a real understanding of the spiritual world, which really only wants to develop a simple relationship-in-feeling towards the spiritual world, is materializing the heart of mankind, is a means by which culture is being led into materialism in a sphere where one would not think that this would occur. It is just the religious people who are so dreadfully materialistic in our time, because the lean on mere faith. Faith must be soaked through and spiritually permeated by real ideas about the spiritual world, and it is an Ahrimanic trick to impress this on people in the age of confusion — that they are not by any means to come to a real vision of the spiritual world, but are to remain stationary in mere faith.

Something also indicated by this, which is of untold importance in our time. What I have said today at the beginning and what I am now saying at the end of today's explanation are interlocked.

Only look in an unprejudiced way at the dreadful absence of thinking, at the boundless superficiality out of which our sad circumstances have developed: look deeply into what can be stated spiritual-scientifically — the separation of the etheric heart from the physical heart, and from these explanations derive impulses towards that seriousness which, in our time, in so necessary for further development.

The men are becoming ever more and more numerous who, as a result of superficial confusion, really no longer know what they are talking about. In the case of a man like David it is quite clear he does not know what he is talking about, for he is talking about something which does not exist at all, and that because he no longer knows how to read. And on the other side the men are becoming ever more numerous who want to fish in troubled waters, who are exploiting the confusion in men's hearts and minds in order to drop into these all sorts of things which further their aims — for one can implant all sorts of impulses into confused spirits. Among the spirits which still have a relationship with the confusion on earth are the spirits of deceit, the Ahrimanic spirits. And one can implant into human beings the opposite of what is reasonable and healthy if one takes account of the confusion existing in them.

Beinsa Douno - quote B

from longer quote: Earthquakes and emergence continent sixth epoch#Beinsa Douno - quote B

"The great wave that is coming into the world shatters the ice and turns it into water."... "The axis of the Earth will begin to straighten gradually from 2002. A more substantial alignment of the axis will happen in 2029, as a result of which the white caps of the North and South Poles will melt and the Earth in its lower parts will be flooded by large amount of water. "

...

The water will flood and leave 1/10 of the land. The population of [on Earth] from 5-6 billion will be left around 120 million in 2080. These are the great disasters which are to come for humans on Earth."

Note:

Beinsa Douno places this remarkably early, for a commentary see Earthquakes and emergence continent sixth epoch#Note 1 - Climatological changes and the end of the fifth epoch.

Discussion

Note 1 - Transition between the fifth and sixth cultural ages

Introduction

Given the sketch that the sixth cultural age will be so vastly different than the fifth .. how are we to imagine getting there? how will this happen; and how can we imagine the transition?

Meanwhile a support Schema has been made to accompany and illustrate this Note, see Schema FMC00.534A

Overview sketch

Rudolf Steiner gives some hints, eg read the extracts above from these lectures:*"It will be preceded by mighty cataclysms and physical catastrophes" (1906-06-14-GA094)

• "The transition to this cannot take place without a violent struggle between white and coloured mankind in many regions, which will be foreshadowed in earlier events. We stand here before something colossal." and ".. a great war will have to take place between the white and coloured humanity in the transition between the fifth and sixth cultural ages, and this in the most manifold ways." (1915-02-13-GA174B)

1/ In that context, now see what is mentioned under the topic page on the Future Oriphiel age (approx 2230-2590). This however still leaves a period of approx 1000 years until the start of the sixth age in 3570.

One way to see this is that it also took about 1000 years after the fall of the roman empire (say around the 4th century AD) to reach again a similar level of civilization (starting again 14th century). This allows one to get a feel for the nature of such a transition phase of 1000 years.

Furthermore, this is imaginatively not so different from what farmers do to make fields fertile again by burning them after a harvest. They destroy what was before because it needs to be done out of necessity, preparing for the next thing to come. Knowing it takes time to recover.

See Schema FMC00.449 on Future Oriphiel age for an illustration.

Not an image but just analoguously, in cancer chemo therapy the body is brought to the border of survival in order to kill the tumor.

2/ For further info on the East-West conflict, see Nostradamus#2.1 - War between the West and Asia and World catastrophy where lecture quotes stipulate explicitly that the conflict will take place between America and China.

3/ And this may well map to Future Oriphiel age#1933-01-15-BD .28Beinsa Douno.29, requoted here below:

• [if humanity does not learn, after WW1 and WW2...] .. "there will be another war, even more fierce, in which 550 million people will die. After that there will be no wars, because it will result in a wonder that people never expected. All communications, railroads, telephones will be disrupted and it will take at least 100 years, for the relations between peoples to be restored. Until then they will be completely isolated. .. If peoples do not humble themselves, there will be famine, chill, great earthquakes, pestilence and only after that they will humble themselves, i.e. such fearsome things will happen, that will make them humble themselves."

4/ Last, Virginia Sease writes (in lecture 7 published in the book 'Thinkers, Saints, Heretics'):

Rudolf Steiner said that by the third millenium, around the year 3000, circumstances will become so bad that many, many people will wish never again to incarnate.

The lecture reference or source for this statement was not given, but it is stated in:

1914-03-07-GA286

im Jahre 3000 wird man wiederum das Ende der Welt erwarten, aber die Welt wird dann so geworden sein, daß ganze Völkerschaften die­ses Ende der Welt herbeisehnen werden. Man kann es ohne Sentimen­talität sagen: die europäische Menschheit geht furchtbaren Zeiten entgegen.

with machine translation

in the year 3000 the end of the world will again be expected, but the world will then have become such that entire peoples will long for this end of the world. It can be said without sentimentality: European humanity is facing terrible times.

For another quote (and link to this lecture), also stating "terrible times are ahead for mankind in Europe" see also Contemporary worldview war#1914-03-07-GA286

5/ Note, regarding prophecies, one can read about the 'terrible times ahead' in many places.

Shelly Trimmer

quote from book by Steven J. Cozzi, quoting Shelly Trimmer(1917-1996):

"It is difficult to look into the future and point out exact reference points relative to the time scale we have now. I have likened it to having 1000-watt and 60-watt light bulbs that are out in front of you at a distance. Both represent a future event. Now you tell me which one is actually the closest? Sure the 1000 watt bulb may “appear” to be closer but is it really closer?”

In one sense the future is already written. Time and space are moving toward each other. The Aquarian Age was written before it began. If you have enough self-conscious awareness then you can alter the future. But you have to know about the possibilities first. In the average person, what we call the present overlaps the past and the future. When someone is more spiritually developed the overlap is greater. So there is less uncertainty because they can see farther. They see more of the representative symbols. When the symbol sequence is changed you can alter future events.  But to what degree can this be done, that is the big question?"

...

"Now a large number of seers have seen very difficult times ahead at the closing of this present age. Many, many of possibilities have been written about. What exactly will happen is open. But one thing we can be sure of is that when so many over a long period of time have seen trouble, then we know that something of a difficult nature will likely transpire."

Then he related a frightening probability.

“Do you know what a electro-magnetic pulse is?”

I kind of know, was my answer.

“Everyday, more and more information is being stored on computers. Well this pulse will wipe out all the stored information if you are in its range. Any atomic bomb or even asteroid hit will do this.

A number of worldwide plagues and famine are other possibilities. Look at what happens to the population curves with any organism. There are, just too many people on the planet, something has to give.

Look at how nations act as little children and how religions cause people to go to war. All this shows you the low maturity level of humanity in general."

Conflict between East and West

This section will group additional references on the conflict between East and West - to be extended further in the future.

1914-09-30-GA174B

These are the very days when important decisions in the East and the West are on a knife edge. It is heartbreaking to consider what is facing each other, and especially in these days, when the decision, so to speak, stands before man's gaze as something uncertain, attention may be drawn to something else that is of tremendous importance to be remembered.

The people in the East are different, and so is the triad that currently stands at the forefront of German intellectualism there: tsarism, Russian militarism, which has suffered a defeat, and the lying pan-Slavism.

One need not close one's eyes to the unnaturalness of the alliance between Europe's west and northwest and the east if one stands on anthroposophical ground of justice. Let us only try to continue to practice in these difficult times what we have learned through spiritual science itself and through some of what has been forced upon us.

1915-02-13-GA174B

this is the main lecture, see Nostradamus#1915-02-13-GA174B

1915-02-14-GA174B

What the etheric body undergoes after death means less for the soul of the East. But this has a very definite, profound, significant effect on what happens behind the scenes of our existence in the present, so to speak.

This fight in heaven, as it were, takes place between Russia and France in the spiritual world, a living fight between East and West. And this fight is the truth, and that which takes place in the physical world, that is the outer maya, that is the distortion of the truth.

And now we have also seen what the exact harmony of what is contained in evolution is: we have seen how involved the East and West of Europe are in the coming Christ event. If we consider the struggle of Central European culture with its unification, as I characterized it yesterday, of the spiritual and the physical, then we also have the special development of the Christ impulse, which is, after all, the bearer of this unification of the spiritual and the physical

Note

In various lectures, the differences between East and West are sketched, and the East–West polarity is described as the central issue of the coming centuries.

• the East and Oriental worldview seeks the spirit in the past, has preserved ancient wisdom. Its challengs is to awaken its spiritual inheritance in freedom
• the West has developed intellectualism and external science, seeks mastery over matter in the future. Its challenge or mission is to spiritualize its science and economics. A Christ-centered spiritual science is offered in this context.

The conflict is a deeply rooted one, not just a tragic misunderstanding but also a karmic conflict (between soul streams) arising from untruthfulness in modern civilization.

The central question: how can truthfulness reconcile these divergent human tendencies?

It will give rise to major conflicts, but the resolution can not come through any national or racial domination.

Imagery

Sidenote:

There may or may not be interesting links that could be made between the above and contemporary art and culture. An example is the 2009 movie The Road after Cormac McCarthy's (born 1933) tenth novel of 2006, that won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in the category fiction. After studying all the above, one may wonder how McCarthy got the inspiration for writing such book, and viewing the movie has quite a different effect depending on whether one has knowledge such as the above of what is to come for humanity. The movie takes place in a post-catastrophic world without civilisation, in which elements of human morality are projected (seeing the needs of the other human being and caring for the other rather than oneself; survival choices between cannibalism and suicide; and 'faith', between dispair and hope).

PS: the theme of the movie is a recurrent one

In the 1959 episode 'Two' of 'The Twilight Zone', Elizabeth Montgomery delivers a memorable performance in a story that explores themes of isolation and human connection.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, 'Two' follows the story of a lone woman, portrayed by Montgomery, who encounters a solitary man played by actor Charles Bronson. The setting is stark and desolate, reflecting the aftermath of a devastating war that has left the world in ruins. The woman, who has survived on her own, comes across the man in a deserted town, and the two must navigate their mutual suspicion and loneliness.

Montgomery's character is initially wary and guarded, a result of the harsh conditions and solitude she has endured. Her performance captures the resilience and vulnerability of someone who has been alone for a long time, struggling with the emotional and psychological scars of isolation. As the story progresses, her interactions with Bronson’s character reveal her deep-seated fear and hope for companionship.

Note 2 - King James 1 and the age of the consciousness soul

Introduction

King James 1 (1566-1625) is a remarkable historical figure that lived in the same time as other individuals that provided important cultural impulses, such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Jacob Boehme (1575-1624)

Rudolf Steiner talks about "James I, in whom an extraordinary initiate-soul lived" and calls him "one of the greatest, most gigantic spirits of the British realm", but also makes some cryptic comments when referencing his influence. He calls him a strange and enigmatic figure and mentions "the many mysteries associated with the personality of James I"

Several researchers (o.a. see Richard Ramsbotham below) have put forth the hypothesis (based on and derived from statements by Rudolf Steiner) that James I was the adept that was the inspiring force or influence behind o.a. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Jacob Boehme (1575-1624).

This Note brings together relevant quotes by Steiner and other sources (wikipedia, Richard Ramsbotham, ...) with the goal to provide a positioning of King James I in context of Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls.

Aspects

• King James I (1566-1625)
  • After the Union of the Crowns (union of the Scottish and English crowns 1603-1625), he styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland" and reigned in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625.
  • He advocated for a single parliament for England and Scotland .. he long attempted to get both countries to adopt a closer political union, but the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained sovereign states, with own parliaments, judiciaries, and laws, ruled by James in personal union.
  • In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and English colonisation of the Americas began
  • under James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture.
  • James was a prolific writer, authoring works such as Daemonologie (1597), The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), and Basilikon Doron (1599).
  • He sponsored the translation of the Bible into English (later named after him, the Authorized King James Version), and the 1604 revision of the Book of Common Prayer.
  • He was strongly committed to a peace policy, and tried to avoid involvement in religious wars, especially the Thirty Years' War that devastated much of Central Europe. He tried but failed to prevent the rise of hawkish elements in the English Parliament who wanted war with Spain.

• Francisco Suarez (1548—1617)
  • Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian. Joined Society of Jesus (1564), and became successor of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) who founded the Society of Jesus in 1539. Though not so well known, his philosophy o.a. of metaphysics proved quite influential seemingly down to figures such as Leibniz, Schopenhauer and Heidegger
• initiate that was the same source of inspiration behind Bacon, Shakespeare, Boehme and Baldus
  • various sources (Richard Ramsbotham mentions Carl Unger and Sergei Prokofieff) provide the (further unqualified) information that Rudolf Steiner called this Individuality a "strange and troublesome patron”. For Ramsbotham this is a wordplay, as King James was indeed literally the patron of Bacon and Shakespeare in life.
  • for background
    • King James I and Francis Bacon: had a close working and courtly relationship, as numerous letters conform. Bacon was knighted by James and became King’s Counsel in 1603, the same year James entered London as king. Bacon wrote highly of him and dedicated several works to him. So King James I was Bacon’s patron and direct superior in the political and intellectual sense.
    • King James I and William Shakespeare probably had a patronage but no further personal relationship. When James ascended the English throne in 1603, he granted Shakespeare’s acting company royal patronage, formalized by royal letters patent, signed by James himself. Under this patronage, the company performed frequently at court and received royal livery, pay, and privileges directly from the Crown.
• related: it has long been argued that William Shakespeare, based on his origin, background and life, could not have written the works attributed to him. One hypothesis dating from the 18th and 19th centuries is that Bacon was the author, see wikipedia - Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship

consciousness soul

• introduction
  • beneath the surface of what takes place on the physical plane there works what is to bring about harmony ... One of the greatest, most gigantic spirits of the British realm stands quite close to the opposition against what is merely commercial within the British commercial empire, and that is James I. James I brings in a new element by continuously inoculating into the substance of the British people something that they will have forever, something that they must not lose if they are not to fall utterly into materialism. What it is that he inoculates into them is something that is linked by underground channels to the whole of the rest of European culture. Here we are confronted by a significant mystery. (1917-01-15-GA173C)
• James I as characteristic for the consciousness soul impulse
  • "there is a personality who is especially characteristic of the emergence of the impulse of the consciousness soul in Western Europe, both on account of his personal development and on account of the place he occupies in contemporary history" (1918-10-18-GA185)
  • "if we look more closely at what characterizes the entire post-Atlantean age from the point of view of the birth of the consciousness soul, we shall have a clearer understanding of James I" (1918-10-19-GA185)
  • "if we do not consider him from an esoteric point of view he remains a great enigma on the threshold of the seventeenth century, occupying a position which, from a certain point of view, revealed in the most radical fashion the dawn of the impulse of modern times." (1918-10-19-GA185)
• nature of the impulse: James I is a personality who exhibits that radical contradiction that we so easily associate with personalities of the era of the consciousness soul. (1918-10-19-GA185)
  • before: The personality expressed itself instinctively, it had not yet emerged from the group soul. In earlier ages the personality expressed itself with elemental or brute, nearly animal force nonetheless endowed with soul and human attributes.
  • then: The personality lost the value it owed in former times to the instinctive life (because it had not yet fully developed self-awareness).
  • now the Personality had to break free, become self-sufficient and stand on its own feet: the soul had to take full command. Henceforth the soul had gradually to become the seat of the personality. (paradoxical situation: instincts were blunted, everything that had formerly existed for the purposes of personal satisfaction was sloughed off).

various

• "James I made an effort to save the old dominion of the priesthood ... one best understands James I if one looks on him as a conservator, a man who was trying to conserve the rule of the priesthood. ... Only, his plans were thwarted by others." (1919-10-12-GA191)
• secret brotherhoods and role of anglo-saxon/american cultures in current cultural age
  • from the English Reformation under James I ... central and Western Europeans were able to separate themselves in a sense ... and now a quite definite dogma arose within the occult schools which was very strongly held, the dogma that just as the Greco-Latin peoples were the leading peoples of the 4th, now in the 5th post-Atlantean age the Anglo-Saxon culture has to take the lead. This was impressed again and again. (1916-03-28-GA167)
  • You can see how systematic is this conquering, this almost exterminating, of other seafaring powers when you remember how I told you some time ago that in the secret brotherhoods, especially those which grew so powerful from the time of James I onwards, it was taught as an obvious truth that the Anglo-Saxon race—as they put it—will have to be given dominance over the world in the fifth post-Atlantean page. You will see how systematic the historical process has been when you consider what I have also mentioned and what was also taught: that this fifth post-Atlantean race of the English-speaking peoples will have to overcome the peoples of the Latin race. (1916-12-26-GA173B)
  • related – example taken from 30 years war (1618-1648)
    • selection of Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, as counter-King of Bohemia in 1619 ... “because he was the son-in-law of James I, who stands at the beginning of the renewal of the brotherhoods!” Here, then, we may discern an important finger in the pie if we are trying to look at history symptomatically. Attempts were being made to steer events in a particular direction. They failed. But you see that there is a finger in the pie. The most significant sign of what kind of impulses were to be brought to bear in this situation is that the son-in-law of one of the most important occultists, James I, was thrown into this position. (1916-12-26-GA173B)
• it was the karmic destiny of James I to occupy the throne (1918-10-19-GA185)

positioning - two key impulses

• Two streams developed at the end of the 16th and start of the 17th century ... "Their combined influence, and particularly their fights against each other, shaped much of what lives and weaves in the present age."( 1916-07-18-GA169))
  • At the time of James I, ... in whom an extraordinary initiate-soul lived ... a very ahrimanic new development was inaugurated.
  • Another development began with Suarez that was very luciferic ... a great deal of what these days is called historical materialism or Marxism, the Social Democratic outlook, can be traced directly to Suarez
  • Qualification by Rudolf Steiner: “The facts are clear, and when we connect them, we can answer one of biggest questions of modern history. ... Particularly in occult communities you find two main streams, and from these flows something that is not occult. ... Here we come to mysterious connections.”
• and: "precisely in the age when James I was King of England a hidden current rises to the surface and the symptoms manifested at that time are characteristic of the underlying reality" (1918-10-18-GA185)
• Both the biographies of Suarez and James I prove they both turned around, so to speak, and came from the unspiritual into the spiritual ... their development did not proceed in a straight line, but took place in a sudden jolt, produced either by karma or an influence on the person ... by receiving an impulse ... what is described is a sudden awakening (1916-07-18-GA169)

Commentary

Schema FMC00.646 points to something crucial, how the human soul incarnates and functions, operates in times before and after the MoG. More specifically, when souls still had a stronger connection to the group souls of humanity and the folk souls, and also after the 'inversion' caused by the MoG, and especially the age of the consciousness soul where Man is now set free and starts functioning as an independent spirit.

This Note connects to this theme, with the example of James I. Rudolf Steiner clearly positions him as a key example for the age of the consciousness soul (1918-10-18-GA185 and 1918-10-19-GA185).

First, a short recap for background, taken from Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls#Impulses through important Individualities

• advanced human Individualities are 'choosen'/'used' by the archai who 'are'/'own' or correspond to a single cultural age (one cultural age is their life cycle), and these human spirits are used by the archai to infuse an impulse through a certain life or incarnation ... spiritual influences, forces, impulses .. use the human being as an instrument (1910-12-29-GA126 quote A).
• Certain individualities incarnate as spearpoints to deliver a certain impulse, in such case it more a matter of higher intelligent guidance than individual human karma of the Individuality. Examples given Luther, Bismarck (1905-06-28-GA091)
• "Such is the law of human evolution. A faculty destined for development in the whole human race must, in the first place, be fully evolved in a single person; then by slow degrees, throughout the ages, maybe thousands of years, these faculties pass into mankind as a whole."(1910-09-07-GA123)

and also, from Schema FMC00.459, lower right

• late appearance of archai time spirit of Europe .. only in 16-17th century

Now, think of Schema FMC00.132 imagine an adept who has a strongly developed higher triad ... we could imagine the archai and archangel are shared by other souls, who would receive an influence subconsciously.

Reference extracts

1916-03-28-GA167

Above all it is interesting to realize that in this chapter of occult science there are facts which actually were taught in these British occult schools about the destiny of the European people. That formed a very important chapter in these occult schools. I will attempt to characterize what was taught there about the destiny of the European peoples. They said the following.

There was a 4th post-Atlantean age. This is what they had out of tradition. This 4th post-Atlantean age abounded with spiritual life. This 4th post-Atlantean age has brought forth the conceptual world for Man, the perception about social organization. This 4th post-Atlantean age brought forward all possible things; it abounded with spiritual life. It had developed itself in Southern Europe on the Greek and Italian Peninsulas and it radiated out from there.

Now, the people of Central and Western Europe were in their infancy in reference to spiritual connections at the time of the flowering of the 4th age. I am now telling you just what was taught there. Thus, the Central and Western Europeans were infants in reference to the spiritual life, infants in relation to that which could radiate out from the cultural results of the 4th post-Atlantean age. These Central AND Western Europeans very gradually worked themselves up out of their infancy until the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and they became maturer and maturer. When we say the Reformation, we do not mean the German Reformation but the English Reformation under James I, and so on. The central and Western Europeans were able to separate themselves in a sense and now a quite definite dogma arose within these occult schools, a dogma which was very strongly held, the dogma that just as the Greco-Latin peoples were the leading peoples of the 4th, now in the 5th post-Atlantean period the Anglo-Saxon culture has to take the lead. This was impressed again and again. The Anglo-Saxondom has to reign spiritually through the 5th postAtlantean age, and everything that was thought in reference to mankind's development had to be so arranged that this dogma of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon as the leaders of the 5th had to be effected.

They taught the following in these schools. There lives in East Europe today the people who are in the same condition in which the Central and Western Europeans were at the time of the Greco-Latin period; the Slavic people who are now in their infancy are in the East of Europe. They realize that these Slavic peoples must develop out of their infancy in a similar way as did the Central and Western Europeans. And just as the Romans were the wet nurse in spiritual connection in the West and Middle Europe, so must the Anglo-Saxon be the wet nurse for the East European peoples and lead them over to their later spiritual life period. It was also taught that just as the Germanic peoples differentiated themselves into Gothic and other tribes in the course of European history, so to speak, so do the Slavic peoples also differentiate themselves. Therefore they depicted how the present forces point to certain future configurations.

1916-07-18-GA169

The ideal we have in mind, my dear friends, is to let our thinking be carried by what spiritual science gives us. And it should be the same in life too, in our everyday life with each other. Spiritual science can be carried into everything. If we did not intend this, did not have this ideal, then spiritual science would not be able to bear fruit. The challenge to make it fruitful meets us everywhere.

• Just think, there are excellent historians who write about the history of England at the time of James I, let's say.
• Then there are excellent historians who write books about the life of Francisco Suarez, the Jesuit. As you know, I have to be careful what I say when I speak about Jesuitism. That is, I must not say too much that is positive—or at least what can be misunderstood as positive. Nevertheless, it is true that most people know about this Suarez only that in one of his writings he is supposed to have explicitly preached regicide. But this is not true. In general, people often know things that are untrue but don't as often and as thoroughly know things that are true. Now, excellent books about this Suarez are available nowadays; most of them are written by Jesuits. You can read these books about Suarez, the successor of Ignatius of Loyola, and understand them. That does not mean that you will become, or have been, a Jesuit, nor that you have to put up with people drawing such conclusions.

The facts are clear, and when we connect them, we can answer one of biggest questions of modern history.

These two individuals, James I and Francisco Suarez, the Jesuit philosopher, are complete opposites.

• At the time of James I, a very ahrimanic new development was inaugurated.
• Another development began with Suarez that was very luciferic.

Their combined influence, and particularly their fights against each other, shaped much of what lives and weaves in the present age.

Here we come to mysterious connections. I don't want to blame anyone with what I am going to say now.

• For example, we find that a great deal of what these days is called historical materialism or Marxism, the Social Democratic outlook, can be traced directly to Suarez. Now please do not take this to mean that I am saying the Social Democrats are Jesuits. Nevertheless, there are in a certain sense good reasons for connecting the Social Democrats with the Jesuits.
• By the same token, many members of the opposing party, that is, those who oppose social democracy, can be traced back directly to what was inaugurated by James I.

With this, I have indicated something that lives in many people's thoughts. Particularly in occult communities you find two main streams, and from these flows something that is not occult. These two main streams produce two typical, contrasting figures:

• James I of England, in whom an extraordinary initiate-soul lived,
• and Suarez.

Now, if you read the biography of Suarez, you will not understand it at all if you have not really grasped spiritual science. Suarez was one of those people who are at first bad students and don't learn anything. According to the contemporary materialist view, such people are hopeless cases and not good for anything. However, one can easily prove that many great geniuses did not learn anything when they were in school. Well, Suarez was also one of the bad students, and even in college he was not yet what one might call a bright man. Then all of a sudden he changed, and every biography of him describes this sudden awakening. The gift of brilliance suddenly awakened in him, and he wrote extraordinarily interesting books, which are, unfortunately, not widely known. This happened all of a sudden, kindled by some of the things I told you about in my lectures on the spiritual exercises of the Jesuits, which Suarez also practiced. Through these he awakened something in himself that enabled him to develop special mental and spiritual forces.

Thus, the biography of Suarez proves - as it can also be proved in the case of James I - that he turned around, so to speak, and came from the unspiritual into the spiritual. This soul, which later achieved outstanding accomplishments, was born at a certain moment. Its development did not proceed in a straight line, but took place in a sudden jolt, produced either by karma or by an influence on the person in question that can be compared to how we learn to read in elementary school: not by describing the shape of the letters, but by receiving an impulse through which we learn to understand the letters.

Here, you see again how spiritual science can guide us in understanding these historical connections, and then we can see life quite differently. If you take in spiritual science in a living way, then your attitude to life really changes, an you can think of other things to do than what you have been doing.

1916-12-26-GA173B

We have here a contrast arising out of the very nature of things. So long as Orient and Occident were connected by land routes, it was perfectly natural that the countries of Central Europe should take the lead. Life in these Central European countries was shaped accordingly. Much spiritual culture also travelled along these routes. It was quite different from what came later. As the centuries proceeded, the land routes were supplanted by ocean routes. As you know, England gradually took control of all the ocean connections which others had opened up. Spain, Holland and France were all conquered as far as their sea-faring capacities were concerned, so that in the end everything was held under the mighty dominance which encompassed a quarter of the earth's dry land, and gradually also all the earth's oceans.

You can see how systematic is this conquering, this almost exterminating, of other seafaring powers when you remember how I told you some time ago that in the secret brotherhoods, especially those which grew so powerful from the time of James I onwards, it was taught as an obvious truth that the Anglo-Saxon race—as they put it—will have to be given dominance over the world in the fifth post-Atlantean page. You will see how systematic the historical process has been when you consider what I have also mentioned and what was also taught: that this fifth post-Atlantean race of the English-speaking peoples will have to overcome the peoples of the Latin race.

To start with, the main thing is the interrelation between the English-speaking peoples and those whose languages are Latin in origin. Recent history cannot be understood without the realization that the important aim—which is also what is being striven for—is for world affairs to be arranged in such a way that the English-speaking peoples are favoured, while the influence of any peoples whose language is based on Latin fades out. Under certain circumstances something can be made to fade out by treating it favourably for a while, thus gaining power over it. This can then make it easy to engulf it.

In those secret brotherhoods, about which I have spoken so often, little significance is attached to Central Europe, for they are clever enough to realize that Germany, for instance, owns only one thirty-third of the Earth's land surface. This is very little indeed, compared with a whole quarter of the land surface plus dominance over the high seas. So not much importance is attached to Central Europe. A great deal of importance was attached, however—especially during the period when present events were being prepared—to the overcoming of all those impulses connected with the Latin races.

It is remarkable how short-sighted the modern historical view is and how little inclination there is to go more deeply into matters which are quite characteristic of situations. I have already pointed out that what has so long been practised as a pragmatic view of history is not important, reporting as it does on one event, followed by another, and another, and yet another. What is important is to recognize the facts characterized by the many interrelationships in the events which follow one another. What matters is to point out what is characteristic about the facts, namely, what reveals the forces lying behind maya. Pragmatic history must today give way to a history of symptoms.

Those who see through things in this way will be in a position to form judgements about certain events which differ considerably from those of people who reel off the events of world history—this fable convenue—one after the other, as is done in historical science today.

Consider some of the things you know well in connection with some others about which I shall tell you.

First of all, a simple fact: In 1618 the Thirty Years War began because certain ideas of a reformative kind developed within the Czech Slav element. Then certain aristocrats belonging to these Slav circles took up the movement and rebelled against what might be called the Counter-Reformation, namely, the Catholicism from Spain which was favoured by the Habsburgs.

The first thing usually told about the Thirty Years War is the story of the rebels going to the town hall in Prague and throwing the councillors Martinitz and Slavata and the secretary Fabrizius out of the window. Yet this is quite insignificant. The only interesting point is perhaps that the three gentlemen did not hurt themselves because they fell onto a dunghill. These are not things which can bring the Thirty Years' War to life for us or show us its real causes.

[election of Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, as counter-King of Bohemia in 1619]

The reformative party elected Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, as counter-King of Bohemia in 1619. Then followed, as you know, the battle of the White Mountain. Up to the election of the Elector Palatine, all the events were caused by the passionate feelings of these people for a reform movement, by a rebellion against arbitrary acts of power such as the closure or destruction of Protestant churches at Braunau and Kloster Grab. There is not enough time for me to tell you the whole story. But now think: Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, is elected King. Up to this point the events are based on human passions, human enthusiasm, it is even justified to say human idealism—I am quite happy to concede this.

But why, of all people, was the Elector Palatine of the Rhine chosen as King of Bohemia?

It was because he was the son-in-law of James I, who stands at the beginning of the renewal of the brotherhoods! Here, then, we may discern an important finger in the pie if we are trying to look at history symptomatically. Attempts were being made to steer events in a particular direction. They failed. But you see that there is a finger in the pie. The most significant sign of what kind of impulses were to be brought to bear in this situation is that the son-in-law of one of the most important occultists, James I, was thrown into this position.

You see, the fact is that the whole of recent history has to do with the contrast between the ancient Roman-Latin element and that element, not of the English people—for they would get on perfectly happily with the world—but that element which, as I have described sufficiently, is to be made out of the English people if they fail to put up any resistance. It is the conflict between these two elements that is at work.

Meanwhile something else is manipulated, for a great deal can be achieved in one place by bringing about events in another.

Let us look at a later date. You might pick up a history book and read the history of the Seven Years War. Of course the history of this war is read just as thoughtlessly as any other. For to understand what is really going on and investigate what forces of history are playing a part, you have to look properly at the various links between the different circumstances. You have to consider, for instance, that at that time the southern part of Central Europe, namely Austria, was linked with every aspect of the Latin element and even had a proper alliance with France, whereas the northern part of Middle Europe—not at first, but later on—was drawn to what was to be made, by certain quarters, into the English-speaking, fifth post-Atlantean age.

[cont'd]

1917-01-15-GA173C

This very clear differentiation only began more or less at the commencement of the fifth post-Atlantean age. Before that, things were still rather different. At first the universal Roman realm exercised its power, even as far as England, and the sharp differentiation between England and France only really came to the fore with the appearance of the Maid of Orleans.

But then everything began, everything which was to happen within the context of these differentiations. The remarkable thing is that, even within this context, the impulse appears which says that a link ought to be created with the opposite pole. Thus, as I have often shown, we see the utterly British philosopher Francis Bacon of Verulam, the founder of modern materialistic thinking, inspired from the same source as Shakespeare, working across so strongly into Central Europe, in the way I have described. Jakob Böhme, too, was inspired from the same source. He transforms the whole inspiration into the soul substance of Central Europe. And again from the same source comes the southern German Jesuit Jakobus Baldus.

You see, beneath the surface of what takes place on the physical plane there works what is to bring about harmony. But one must see things as clearly differentiated and not let it all disappear into a nebulous jumble. One of the greatest, most gigantic spirits of the British realm stands quite close to the opposition against what is merely commercial within the British commercial empire, and that is James I. James I brings in a new element by continuously inoculating into the substance of the British people something that they will have forever, something that they must not lose if they are not to fall utterly into materialism. What it is that he inoculates into them is something that is linked by underground channels to the whole of the rest of European culture.

Here we are confronted by a significant mystery.

You will agree—neither one thing nor the other can be called either justified or unjustified; things simply have to be comprehended as necessary facts. But we must be clear that we surely ought to understand these things properly.

It is easy to ask the question: What can I myself do in these painful times?

The first thing one can do is to endeavour to understand things, to really see through things. This brings up thoughts which are real forces and these will have an effect.

What about the question: Have the good forces no power against the evil forces we see all around us?

To answer this we have to remember how difficult human freedom makes it for the spiritual world to assert itself amid the surging waves of materialistic life. This is what it is all about. Is it to be made so very easy for human beings to enter fully into the life of the spirit?

Future ages will look back to today and say: How careless these people were with regard to adopting the life of spirit! The spiritual world is sending it down to us, but human beings resist it with all their might. Apart from all the sadness and suffering holding sway at present, the very fact that all this does hold sway is in itself a destiny signifying a trial. Above all it should be accepted and recognized as a trial. Later it will become apparent to what extent it is necessary for those who—so it is said—are guilty, to suffer together with those who are blameless. For after all, during the course of karma all these things are balanced out.

You cannot say: Are not the good spirits going to intervene? They do intervene to the extent that we open ourselves to them, if we have the courage to do so. But first of all we must be serious about understanding things; we must be deeply serious about trying to understand.

As a contribution to this understanding it is necessary that a number of people muster the strength to oppose the surging waves of materialism with their deepest personal being. For something else is going to unite with the materialism that works in the industrial, commercial impulse; something coming from other, retarded impulses from the Chinese and Japanese element, particularly the Japanese element, will become increasingly caught up in materialism.

1918-10-18-GA185

context and buildup to lecture of the next day

Thus you can sense, if you really wish to, the forces which are at work here; like the magician's apprentice the impulse of the consciousness soul conjures up national impulses which implant themselves in mankind in divers forms and with different nuances. We can only understand these things if we study the impulse of the consciousness soul in all its aspects, avoiding all prejudice and keeping our eyes open for what is important and what is unimportant and also for what is more or less characteristic so that from our observation of external symptoms we can then penetrate to the inner pattern of reality. For external appearances often belie the inner impulse of the personality, especially in an age when the personality is self-dependent. And this, too, becomes apparent when we study symptomatically the development of modern history. What is taught as history in our schools is quite unreal. The real facts are as follows: here is the surface movement of the water, here is the current (shaded red in the diagram.)

Now

• there are times when there breaks through into historical events—like the waves thrown up here, sometimes with the violence of a volcanic eruption—what lies beneath the surface.
• At other times, events emerge on the surface, and isolated historical events betray what lies beneath the surface. As symptoms they are especially characteristic.
• But sometimes there are symptoms where one must totally ignore external appearances when looking at the symptomatic fact.

[introducing King James I]

Now there is a personality who is especially characteristic of the emergence of the impulse of the consciousness soul in Western Europe, both on account of his personal development and on account of the place he occupies in contemporary history. At the beginning of the seventeenth century he was involved in this differentiation between the French impulse and the English impulse, a differentiation that had exercised a widespread influence upon the rest of Europe. In the seventeenth century this differentiation had been effective for some time and had become more pronounced. The personality who appeared on the stage of history at this time was a strange individual, whom we can depict in the following way: one could say that

• he was extremely generous, filled with deep and genuine gratitude for the knowledge imparted to him, infinitely grateful, in fact a model of gratitude for the kindness men showed towards him.
• He was a scholar who combined in his person almost the entire erudition of his day,
• a personality who was extremely peace-loving, a sovereign indifferent to the intrigues of the world, wholly devoted to the ideal of universal peace,
• extremely prudent in decisions and resolutions, and
• most kindly disposed towards his fellow men.

Such is the portrait that one could sketch of this personality. If one takes a partial view, it is possible to portray him in this way and this is the external view that history presents.

It is also possible to portray him from another angle which is equally partial. One could say that

• he was an outrageous spendthrift without the slightest notion of his financial resources,
• a pedant, a typical professor whose erudition was shot through with abstractions and pedantry. Or one could say that
• he was timid and irresolute, and whenever called upon to defend some principle he would evade the issue out of pusillanimity, preferring peace at any price. It could also be said of him that
• he was shrewd or crafty and wormed his way through life by artfully choosing the path that always guaranteed success. Or that
• he endeavoured to establish relationships with others as children are wont to do. His friendships betrayed a frankly childish element which, in his veneration for others and in the adulation others accorded him, was transformed into romantic infatuation.

One can adopt either of these points of view. And in fact there were some who described him from the one angle, others from the other angle, and many from both angles. Such was the historical personality of James I who reigned from 1603 to 1625.

Whichever point of view we take, in both cases the cap fits perfectly. In neither case do we know what he really felt or thought as a typical representative of contemporary evolution. And yet, precisely in the age when James I was King of England a hidden current rises to the surface and the symptoms manifested at that time are characteristic of the underlying reality. We will speak more of this tomorrow.

1918-10-19-GA185

is a crucial lecture to position the impulse related to the new age of the consciousness soul - again see Schema FMC00.646

Yesterday I attempted to sketch in broad outline the symptoms of the recent historical evolution of mankind and finally included in this complex of symptoms—at first not pursuing this in greater detail, for we shall have time for that later on, but confining ourselves more to the general characteristics—the strange figure of James I, King of England, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. This enigmatic figure appeared on the stage of history midway between the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age and the nineteenth century, a century that was important and decisive. It is not my task today—we can discuss this later—to speak of the many mysteries associated with the personality of James I. I must, however, draw your attention to the strange part, strange in a symptomatic manner, which James I plays in contemporary history. He was a man who was a bundle of contradictions and yesterday I attempted to show two contradictory aspects of his character. One can point to his virtues or his defects, according to one's point of view.

James's whole environment, the framework of the political and social conditions which developed out of the conditions I have described to you—his reign which saw the emergence of the idea of the state born of the national impulse and witnessed the rise of the parliamentary system of government or at least of a democratic system tending towards liberal ideas—this world was wholly alien to him, it was a world in which he was never really at home. If we look a little more closely at what characterizes the entire post-Atlantean age from the point of view of the birth of the consciousness soul, we shall have a clearer understanding of James I.

[characteristic of age of consciousness soul]

We then see him as a personality who exhibits that radical contradiction that we so easily associate with personalities of the era of the consciousness soul.

• In the age of the consciousness soul the personality lost the value it owed in former times to the instinctive life, because it had not yet fully developed self-awareness.
• In earlier ages the personality expressed itself with elemental force—and I hope I shall not be misunderstood if I say this—with brute force, with an animal force that was nonetheless endowed with soul and human attributes. The personality expressed itself instinctively, it had not yet emerged from the group soul.
• And now it had to break free, to become self-sufficient and stand on its own feet. Consequently the personality was faced with a strange and paradoxical situation. On the one hand, everything that had formerly existed for the purposes of personal satisfaction was sloughed off, the instincts were blunted and henceforth the soul had gradually to become the seat of the personality. In brief, the soul had to take full command.

That a contradiction exists is evident from what I said yesterday.

Whereas in earlier times, when the personality had not developed self-consciousness, men had been creative and had assimilated the creative forces of their culture, these creative energies were now exhausted and the soul had become sterile. And yet the soul occupies the central place in Man's being; for the essence of the personal element is that the self-sufficient soul becomes the focal point of Man's being.

Consequently great personalities of antiquity such as Augustus, Julius Caesar, Pericles—and I could mention many others—will never be seen again.

The dynamic, elemental energy of the personality declines and there emerges what is later called the democratic outlook which, with its egalitarian doctrine, standardizes the personality. And it is precisely in this egalitarian process that the personality seeks to manifest itself—truly a radical contradiction!

Now everyone's station in life is determined by his karma. It was the karmic destiny of James I to occupy the throne.

In the age of the Persian Kings, of the Mongol Khans and even in the century when the Pope crowned the Magyar Istwan I¹ with the sacred crown of St. Stephen, the personality counted for something in a position of authority, he regarded himself as the natural heir to his position. In the position he occupied, even in his position as Sovereign, James I resembled a man dressed in an ill-fitting garment. One could say that in relation to the duties and responsibilities that devolved upon him he was, in every respect, like a man dressed in a garment that ill became him. As a child he had been brought up as a Calvinist; later he was converted to Anglicanism, but fundamentally he was indifferent to both confessions. In his heart of hearts he felt all this to be a masquerade which was foreign to him. He was called upon to rule as sovereign in the coming age of parliamentary liberalism which had already been in existence for some time. In conversation with others he was intelligent and shrewd, but nobody really understood what he wanted because all the others wanted something different. He came of an old Catholic family, the Stuarts. But when he ascended the throne of England the Catholics were the first to realize that they had nothing to hope for from him. In 1605 a group of Catholics drew up plans to blow up the Houses of Parliament when the King and his chief ministers were present. They planted twenty barrels of gunpowder in the cellar beneath the parliamentary building. This was the famous Gunpowder Plot. The conspiracy failed because a Catholic fellow-conspirator betrayed the plot, otherwise James I would have been blown up together with his parliament. James I was a misfit because he was a personality, and the personality has something singular, something unusual in its make-up. It is characterized by a certain detachment, a certain self-sufficiency.

But in the era of the personality everyone wishes to be a personality and that is the inherent contradiction of this age. We must always bear this in mind. It is not that one rejects the idea of king or pope; it is not a question of suppressing these offices, but simply that if a king or a pope already exists, everyone would like to be pope, everyone would like to be king. Thus papacy, royalty and democracy would be realized at the same time.

All these things come to mind when we consider the symptom typified by this strange personality, James I. He was in every respect a man of the new age and was involved in this age with all the contradictions latent in the personality. As I mentioned yesterday those who characterized him from the one angle were mistaken, and those who characterized from the other angle were equally mistaken; and the picture of him which we derive from his writings is also misleading. For even what he himself wrote does not give us any clear insight into his soul. Thus, if we do not consider him from an esoteric point of view he remains a great enigma on the threshold of the seventeenth century, occupying a position which, from a certain point of view, revealed in the most radical fashion the dawn of the impulse of modern times.

I spoke yesterday of the developments in Western Europe and of the difference between the French and English character. This differentiation began to show itself in the fifteenth century, and this turning point was signalized by the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429. And we saw how, in England, the emancipation of the personality was associated with the aspiration to extend the principle of the personality to the whole world, how in France the emancipation of the personality—in both countries originating in the national idea—was associated with the aspiration to lay hold of the inner life as far as possible and to make it autonomous. This was the situation in which James I found himself at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a personality who typified all the contradictions inherent in the personal element. In characterizing symptoms one must never seek to be over scrupulously explicit, one must always leave room for something unexplained, otherwise one makes no headway. And this is why I prefer not to provide you with a neatly finished portrait of James I, but to leave something to the imagination, something to reflect upon.

A radical difference between the English and French make-up became increasingly evident. Out of the chaos of the Thirty Years' War there developed in France an increasing emphasis upon what may be called the idea of the state. If one wishes to study the consolidation of the state idea one need only take the example, though the example is somewhat unusual, of the French national state and its rise to power and splendour under Louis XIV and its subsequent decline. We see how within this national state the first shoots then develop into that widespread emancipation of the personality which is the legacy of the French Revolution.

...

I have been at great pains (and I have alluded to this on various occasions) to trace the soul of Napoleon. It is possible, as you know, to undertake these studies of the human soul in divers ways by means of spiritual scientific investigation. And you will recall no doubt how investigations were undertaken to discover the previous incarnations of Novalis. I have been at great pains to follow the destiny of Napoleon's soul in its journey after his death. I have been unable to find it and do not think I shall ever be able to find it, for it is probably not to be found. And this no doubt accounts for the enigma of Napoleon's life that unfolds with clockwork precision in seven-year rhythms. We can best understand this soul if we regard it as the complete antithesis of a soul such as that of James I, or again as the antithesis of the abstraction of the French Revolution: the Revolution all soul without body, Napoleon all body without soul, but a body compounded of all the contradictions of the age. In this strange juxtaposition of the Revolution and Napoleon lies one of the greatest enigmas of contemporary evolution. One has the impression that a soul wanted to incarnate in the world, appeared without a body, clamoured for incarnation amongst the revolutionaries of the eighteenth century, but was unable to find a body ... and that only externally a body offered itself, a body which for its part could not find a soul, i.e. Napoleon. In these things there are more than merely ingenious allusions or characterizations, they harbour important impulses of historical development. They must of course be regarded as symptoms. Here, amongst ourselves, I use the terminology of spiritual science. But what I have just said could equally well be said anywhere if clothed in slightly different terminology.

1919-10-12-GA191

The Economic type of man, who came up at the Reformation, regarded it as his special mission to make all intellectuality a matter merely of the body. What this business type of man really did during the Reformation period was to tear himself violently loose from the spiritual foundation of Man's life on Earth. One can see it illustrated in individual cases.

At the beginning and during the first half of the 15th century, there was a man in England, Thomas Cromwell,—not Oliver Cromwell, but Thomas Cromwell, quite a different person,—who played a very important part in introducing the principles of the Reformation into England.

There was one person, James I, who still made an effort to save the old dominion of the priesthood; and one best understands James I if one looks on him as a Conservator, a man who was trying to conserve the rule of the priesthood.

Only, his plans were thwarted by others. And amongst the people who came to the top at that time, and who were, so to speak, the earliest type of economic man, was Thomas Cromwell. It is impossible to understand Thomas Cromwell unless one recognises that he was one of those people who have a very short life between death and rebirth, before taking on a body here on Earth again. And it is just those people who are unusually numerous among the ruling types coming to the top in modern times, who have had but a short life in the spiritual world before their present life here on Earth.

2004 - Richard Ramsbotham

The extract below is taken from the public domain (posts in internet), copied here for sake of reference. Source is the book:

Richard Ramsbotham: 'Who Wrote Bacon?: William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and James I, a Mystery of the Twenty-first Century' (2004); also in DE 2008 as 'Jakob I. (1566–1625) – Inspirator von Shakespeare und Bacon: Ein Beitrag zur die Autorschaftsdebatte um Shakespeare'

[A rather troublesome patron - Rudolf Steiner's research]

Whenever Rudolf Steiner spoke of James I he did so in a strange, enigmatic way, always pointing to greater mysteries than he could, at that presented time unfold. The first time he speaks of him, in March 1916, he does not mention him by name at all.

• In October 1918 - in the first lecture of "From Symptom to Reality in Modern History' -- he discusses at some length a 'strange individual' who 'appeared on the stage of history' before eventually naming him as 'the historical personality of James I who reigned from 1603 - 1625'.
• In the following lecture he devotes four sides to speaking directly about James, but adds: 'It is not my task today -- we can discuss this later -- to speak of the many mysteries associated with the personality of James I'. It is not known what, if anything, was 'discussed later', but in the lecture itself Steiner tells us that although James was brought up as a Calvinist and had later converted to Anglicanism, "in his heart of hearts he felt all this to be a masquerade which was foreign to him'.

Nor, says Steiner, did any of James's contemporaries ever understood his point of view, as this seemed to be drowned out by all the other points of view jostling for attention: 'Nobody really understood what he wanted because all the others wanted something different.

James, born on 19th June (1566) under the two - sided sign of Gemini - the twins - has been described in history from startingly opposite perspectives. After describing both of these, one highly positive and one extremely negative, Steiner comments: 'Those who characterized him from the one angle were mistaken, and those who characterized him from the other angle were equally mistaken'.

As if this wasn't enough Steiner adds - most perplexingly of all, perhaps, in that James wrote several books - 'and the picture of him which we derive from his writings is also misleading. For even what he himself wrote does not give us any clear insight into his soul".

James thus appears as a gigantic riddle, which not even what he himself said or wrote is able to solve for us. We stand before a veil, which only spiritual perception can penetrate: 'If we do not consider him from an esoteric point of view he remains a great enigma at the threshold of the seventh century'.

In keeping with the mysterious nature of James we have already encountered, the slight lifting of this veil does not suddenly mean that all is 'explained', and unambiguously clear. Steiner seems to give us little glimpses, or fragments in various lectures, which it is up to us to try to piece together.

Unlike his original listeners, we are at least in the position of being able to try to do so, as all his lectures, diligently transcribed, are now published. It is characteristic of Steiner's comments about James that nothing is straightforward, nothing ever too directly stated or clear. And there is always ambiguity. It is as if we meet again all the same riddles concerning this individual, but now transposed to the realm of the spiritual realities behind historical events and personalities.

The double nature of James, the seemingly completely contradictory ways in which he may be perceived, is nowhere more strikingly presented than in Rudolf Steiner's lectures 'The Karma of Untruthfulness', given in December 1916 and January 1917. In Volume One Steiner calls James 'one of the most important occultists', and refers to him as 'James I who stands at the beginning of the renewable of the brotherhoods'.

In the context of all else that is being said here about these Western 'brotherhoods' and their interference in world politics, this is hardly to be as a complimentary reference, other than with regard to the sheer scale of the impulses working through him:

[note: A little later, for example, Steiner tells us that until the time of the Renaissance 'commerce was still under the influence of the spiritual world', but that around the time of the advent of our modern age 'everything commercial was drawn over into the occult sphere which is guided by the so - called 'Brothers of the Shadow'.

For further discussion of James I's relationship to those Western brotherhoods' see Sergei Prokofiev: 'The Spiritual Origins of Eastern Europe and the Future Mysteries of the Holy Grail'.]

The lectures translated as 'Toward Imagination', given in 1916, elaborate on this side of James I. Although Steiner now refers to him as an Initiate, or as: 'James I of England in whom an extraordinary initiated soul lived', he is described by means of his complete contrast to the Jesuit philosopher Francisco Suarez: 'At the time of James I, a very ahrimanic new development was inaugurated. Another development began with Suarez that was very luciferic. Thus says Steiner '...these two individuals, James and Francisco Suarez, are complete opposites'.

In Volume Two of 'The Karma of Untruthfulness', however, Rudolf Steiner speaks of James in completely different terms. Now we hear:

"One of the greatest, most gigantic spirits of the British realm stands quite close to the opposition against what is merely commercial within the British commercial Empire, and that is James I. James I brings in a new element by continuously inoculating into the substance of the British people something that they will have forever, something that must not lose if they are not to fall utterly into materialism'.

In Volume One, apart from the prime importance attached to commercialism by the brotherhoods, we also hear of their unambiguous intentions regarding the predominance of the Anglo-Saxon (we would now say Anglo-American) world:

In the secret brotherhoods, especially those which grew so powerful from the time of James I onwards, it was taught as an obvious truth that the Anglo-Saxon race - as they put it - will have to be given dominance over the world in the fifth post-Atlantean period'. This says Steiner, primarily involves dominion by the English-speaking world over all peoples whose language is Latin-based. The brotherhoods, at the time 'when present events were being prepared', barely found it necessary to pay any attention at all to Central Europe, and the German - speaking world:

'In those secret brotherhoods little significance is attached to Central Europe, for they are clever enough to realize that Germany, for instance, owns only one thirty - third of the Earth's land surface'. [ "The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol 1' ]

This aspect, too, is directly contradicted by the way Steiner speaks of James I in the second volume of these lectures. For the 'new element' that James I "inoculates into the substance of the British people' is , says Steiner '...something that is linked by underground channels to the whole of the rest of European culture. Here we are confronted by a significant mystery'.

We certainly are! In order to unravel this mystery a little, we must look more closely at the context in which this second, very different description of James appears. Rudolf Steiner has been speaking of the inner opposition that exists between the spiritual life of Central Europe and that of Britain. This opposition, he says, also sometimes takes the of assimilating the other, and he gives the example of Shakespeare, who has been '...totally absorbed into German culture. He is not merely translated, he is totally assimilated and lives in the spiritual life of the German nation'. [ ibid ] Thus: Standing in opposition can at the same time take the form of an absolute working together'.

As an example of the contrast between the cultures of Britain and Central Europe Steiner compares his own book 'The Riddle of Man' with one by the British physicist and spiritualist Sir Oliver Lodge: 'They are absolute opposites; it is impossible to conceive of any greater contrast'.

This constellation of diverging powers within Europe, says Steiner, only began after England and France had separated from each other, which Joan of Arc helped to achieve. Before that the whole of Europe, including England, had been to a great extent under the sway of what issued from Rome ( either in the form of the Roman Empire, or the Holy Roman Empire of the Roman Catholic Church )

Referring directly to this 'differentiation between England and France', Steiner describes how everything then came about 'which was able to happen within the context of this diffentiation'. And Steiner then tells us of 'the remarkable thing' even from within this context, the insight, the impulse springs up that a connection must be made with the opposite pole.'

What this leads to is the extraordinary phenomenon of 'the utterly British philosophy Francis Bacon of Verulam, the founder of modern materialistic thinking' being inspires from the same source as Shakespeare', who, in a manner quite opposite to Bacon, 'works across so strongly into Central Europe'. And this is not the only link made from 'within this [ western ] context' with the "opposite pole' -- i.e. with Central Europe. For 'Jakob Boehme too was inspired from the same source. He transforms the whole inspiration into the soul substance of Central Europe. And again from the same source comes the Southern German Jesuit, Jakobus Baldus'.

[see Schema FMC00.646, lower left, for more references]

Steiner beseeches us really to think through these differentiations, but not vaguely jumble them all together: and then suddenly speaks of "one of the greatest, most gigantic spirits of the British realm ... James I', which begins the quotation we are discussing. Besides what we have already referred to, it gives a particularly striking picture of the nature of James' activity - described as 'pouring something into the substance of the British people - and doing so continuously and lastingly'.

Let us summarize what Steiner is saying. The contrast is described between Britain and Central Europe. We are told that what is remarkable is that even within the western realm the impulse is born to create a link with the spiritual culture of Central Europe. This is achieved, we are told, through the fact that the same source that inspires the very British Bacon, also inspires Shakespeare, who has such an affinity with Central Europeans culture. This source also inspires Jakob Boehme, who transforms the same inspiration in a way suited to all that lives in Central Europe. It likewise inspires Jakob Balde.

James I, says Steiner, one of the most gigantic spirits of the British realm, pours something into the substance of the British people, something that they must not lose if they are not to fall prey completely to commercialism, and something that links them very deeply with the whole of Central European culture. And he concludes by saying that "Here we are confronted by a significant mystery'.

[1924-04-12-GA236 - KR Vol 2]

Seven years later, in April 1924, in his lectures on "Karmic Relationships', Rudolf Steiner returns to this theme. Almost as a digression within a discussion of Francis Bacon, Steiner refers to the 'Bacon - Shakespeare controversy', where 'all matters of arguments are brought forward which are supposed to show that Shakespeare the actor did not really write his dramas, but that they were written by Bacon the philosopher and Lord Chancellor, and so on....'

None of these arguments, says Steiner, 'get at the real truth', and he mentions once again the common inspiration behind Bacon, Shakespeare, Boehme and Balde, but this time is far more explicit about what he means by them sharing a common 'source':

'For the truth is that at the time when Bacon, Shakespeare, Jakob Boehme and a fourth were working on Earth, there was one initiate who really spoke through all four. Hence their kinship, for in reality it all goes back to one and the same source [ ...] Of course, these people who dispute and argue do not argue about the initiate who stood behind them, especially at this initiate - like many a modern initiate - is described to us by history as a rather intolerable fellow.

But he was not merely so. No doubt he was so in some of his external actions, but he was not merely so. He was an individuality from whom went out immense forces, and to whom were really due Bacon's philosophic works, as well as Shakespeare's dramas and the works of Jakob Boehme, and also the work of the Jesuit, Jakob Balde'.

If we superimpose this paragraph on that of 7 years earlier, we realise, with what can only come as a profound shock, that it ls James I who is described here - that James I is to be seen as the initiate standing behind both Shakespeare and Bacon.

Whereas in 1916, Steiner had directly mentioned James I, he now talks of an initiate 'described to us in history as a rather intolerable fellow". When he mentioned James by name in 1916, Steiner had not yet made clear that he was pointing to one Initiate. In 1924, where this is clear, he chooses not to announce the name so directly.

When we put the two passages together, however, the truth becomes clear. A little less clear, perhaps, in English - for the original German for 'a rather intolerable fellow' is 'ein ziemlich lästiger Patron'. Steiner's precise joke has completely vanished in translation. "Lästiger Patron' is a colloquial expression, which one might translate as 'intolerable fellow', but the literal meaning of 'Patron' is, course, patron - James's earthly relationship to both Shakespeare and Bacon.

[overview references]

To make the matter clear for ourselves, let us run through all of Steiner's few comments about King James in sequence.

Before we do so, however, we should remember another remark of Steiner's about King James. In 1916 Steiner describes how the development of both James and Francisco Suarez 'did not proceed in a straight line, but took place in a sudden jolt' through which they 'turned around, so to speak, and came from the unspiritual into the spiritual'. This kind of development 'can be compared to how we learn to read in elementary school - not by describing the shape of the letters, but by receiving an impulse through which we learn to understand the letters'. It is precisely in this way, and only in this way, I believe, that the 'significant mystery' of James I can be grasped. It will either leap into recognition for us, or it won't - it is not to be communicated by any too rigid spelling out of letters.

The very first time Rudolf Steiner spoke publicly about King James (28 March 1916) may be seen as a seed - description for everything else he said later. In the long first sentence, the description of James wraps around a description of Shakespeare:

'What is important is that at the beginning of the 17th Century, when Shakespeare had already created his plays which, in so far as they are History Plays deal in particular with the Wars of the Roses [ the whole battle of the Red Rose and the White Rose is in fact to be found in Shakespeare's plays ], that at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th Century, a soul incarnated into a physical body in the realm of Britain, which did not work outwardly in such a significant way, but which worked with immense influence, over wide distances -- over very wide distances spread an immense influence. This soul was able to work in a particularly stimulating way, which incarnated into a British body in which was mixed, in fact, not much British blood, but more French and Scottish blood. And from here something emanated that actually gave rise to the impulse both to external and to occult British cultural life'. ( 'From Symptom to Reality'? )

Only later on is James's name briefly mentioned in a lecture.

The next time Steiner speaks of James I is in July 1916 in the lecture cycle 'Toward Imagination'. Having spoken in one lecture of the symptoms which points to what 'prevails these days', namely to the "many occult movements in different societies', he says:

'To a large extent the direction and attitude of modern thinking go back to the beginning of the fifth post - Atlantean epoch, when one spirit was setting the tone, and lived in the achievements of Bacon, Shakespeare and even of Jakob Boehme'.

In the following lecture he then mentions James I by name, and discusses him directly. Speaking once again of the 'occult movements' which "prevail these days' Steiner points to their 'two main streams', which

...produce two typical, contrasting figures: James I of England, in whom was living an initiated soul of a quite extraordinary kind, and Francisco Suarez.  The facts are clear, and when we connect them, we can answer one of the biggest questions of modern history.

[ These 'two main streams" Steiner is speaking of come to expression in Jesuitism and Freemasonry, represented by Francisco Suarez and James I respectively. ]

The 'combined influence' of these two streams, 'and particularly their fights against each other, shaped much of what lives and weaves in the present age".

We next hear of James in the two lectures in 'The Karma of Untruthfulness' -- 26 December 1916 and 15 January 1917. In the first of these, James's connection with the "brotherhoods' is given once again. [ 'James I who stands at the beginning of the renewal of the brotherhoods' ]. In the second, which we have already discussed in detail above, the opposite profoundly positive picture of James is added. With regard to the evolving sequence of these comments about James I, there is a significant difference between 'Toward Imagination' ( July 1916 ) and here ( January 1917 ). In "Toward Imagination' Steiner spoke of the common inspiration behind Bacon, Shakespeare and Boehme in one lecture, and only a week later, in the next lecture, spokeof James I. Now in January 1917, Bacon, Shakespeare, Boehme and Balde and James I are spoken of in the same paragraph.

In October 1918, in 'From Symptom to Reality in Modern History', just as on the first occasion when he had spoken about James, Steiner discusses him at some length -- referring to 'a personality who is especially characteristic of the emergence of the consciousness soul in Western Europe -- before eventually telling us his name.

[ note: The Renaissance -- commonly seen as the beginning of the "modern era  ' and of the 'scientific age' -- led to, and paradoxically was itself the result of a massive change in human consciousness. Shakespeare and Bacon are almost archetypally representative of this change, which involves, among other things, a more detached awareness of the world, leading to a greater sense of human individuality and of the spiritual world. Rudolf Steiner describes that a new soul faculty began to emerge in humanity at this time, which he termed the 'consciousness soul'. There is perhaps no greater portrayal of this newly emerging consciousness than we find in Hamlet.]

We have already quoted Steiner's statement that it was not his 'task' in these lectures 'to speak of the many mysteries associated with the personality of James I. There is therefore no mention of the Bacon - Shakespeare mystery, as in the lectures of July 1916 and January 1917. However James is revealed as someone capable of combining the most radical opposites within himself. Having depicted the 'two contradictory aspects of his character', Steiner comments: 'Whichever point of view we take, in both cases the cap fits perfectly'. Steiner also tells us, as we saw, not to seek in James's own work to learn about him: 'Even what he himself wrote gives no clear insight into his soul'.

and ends his extensive historical discussion by saying that if we don't look at the mysteries behind James, he will remain a closed book to us,  'great enigma'.

In 1919 Steiner again mentioned King James in one of only two places where there is not some kind of riddle about the way James's name is mentioned. From then on Steiner never again mentioned James I by name in a public lecture.

[ note: The only place, to my knowledge, where Steiner mentioned James I after this is in some comments he made following a lecture by Count Ludwig Polzer, on 23 June 1920. There Steiner says: 'The real outer bearer of this English politics is King James I ]

In 1920, however, he gave a lecture solely devoted to the Bacon - Shakespeare - Boehme - Balde question. It offers us a key to the whole riddle, and is, in fact, the crucial link between the two passages of 1917 and 1924.

First of all, we see Steiner making the all - important shift from saying that these four individuals were inspired from a common 'source', to saying that they were inspired by the same 'initiate'. Steiner puts it as follows:

'The work of Bacon and the work of Shakespeare point to the same source -- a source that is beyond the earth, but which is represented in the earthly realm".

A few lines latter he elaborates on this:

From exactly the same source that the Bacon - Shakespeare inspiration stems from -- and even proceeding from the same initiated personality -- stem for Central Europe the spiritual stream of Jakob Boehme and of the Southern German Jacobus Baldus.'

The unusual expression -- an 'initiated personality' -- echoes with Steiner's earlier statement about James I, that he had within him an 'initiated soul' .

The lecture is in many ways exactly the opposite of the one contained in the lectures on modern history. There the discussion was only about James I as a personality -- or historical individual -- and very specifically not about the "many mysteries' connected with James I, such as the Bacon - Shakespeare mystery. Here, the discussion is only about that mystery and the historical personality of James I is never mentioned. What Steiner does give us though -- in a kind of apologia at the beginning of the lecture for everything else he is about to say -- is the whole basis of how we are to understand 'personality' in a connection such as this.

The lecture addresses directly all the resistance we are likely to feel on hearing that the initiate referred to is James I. As this resistance is still as strong today I shall quote from it in some detail

Having told us that we need to think very differently than we usually do about 'the influence of individual personalities in history', Steiner says:

'It is usually imagined that a great man in history -- be he distinguished in art, in statemanship, in religion, or however -- works through the impulses that he himself consciously brings to expression; it is generally assumed that this is the sole channel of his influence. And one then goes on to consider his activity, and to ask: 'What did he do? What did he say? What kind of relation did he have to other men? And so on. "

'As a matter of fact, when we considering men of outstanding significance in the evolution of history, the thing is not so simple. His real influence upon the evolution of mankind depends on driving spiritual forces, which are active behind history and which come from the spiritual world. Personalities are in a sense no more than the channel through which these driving spiritual forces are able to work into and influence the course of earthly history."

'This does not preclude the fact that there is at the same time a considerable admixture of individual subjectivity in the influence of such leading personalities. Obviously that is generally the case. But we shall only acquire a right idea of history when we recognize that whenever a so - called great man speaks, the leading spiritual powers in human evolution are speaking through him, that he is, as it were, merely the symptom of the presence of certain driving spiritual forces. He is the door through which these forces find entry into the course of history'.

We are not to be put off then by a historical individual's personality, but should focus instead on the spiritual impulses working through him. Steiner reiterates:

'And so when we cite some leading personality of a particular period in history and try to characterize his influence upon the whole configuration of his age, this does not imply -- if we speaking from the perspective of spiritual science -- that we want to lead you to believe that this man's influence was to be traced entirely to the force of his personality'.

The influence of such a leading individual cannot be confined only to those people who directly encounter his work:

'...for the person in question is only the expression of forces which stand behind him, and the wider circles of mankind are also being influenced and impressed by these same forces. In this personality one only sees what is working in the age'.

One might ask, in the light of the last sentence, what the actual achievements is of such an individual. Steiner clarifies this in words which may also help us to understand how a spiritual stream can be 'represented in the earthly world':

'Some spiritual stream, some spiritual tendency might be working in a particular direction, perhaps quite subconsciously, among wider circles of human souls. And the presence of this spiritual stream might come to expression in one single person in such a way that what the rest only dimly divine, what wide circles of people, perhaps whole peoples, dimly divine, he formulates in clear ideas'.

When we remember that Steiner said of King James that 'even what he himself wrote does not give us any clear insight into his soul', the words that follow also become particularly pertinent: 'This person might never commit his ideas to writing and perhaps never even speak of them at all'.

Of course, says Steiner, 'the very opposite is also quite possible, that a personality may exercise a widespread influence among the people of his age'. But in this particular lecture, 'it was necessary to put the other side quite clearly and explicitly, to prevent misunderstanding'.

I find it possible to imagine that Steiner was quite prepared in this lecture to name James as the initiate behind Bacon and Shakespeare ( and Boehme and Balde ), and that it shows us all the efforts Steiner needed to make in order to prevent the misunderstandings that could arise, and the resistance people would be likely to feel, should he do so.

One further possible misunderstanding is that if the initiate referred to is King James, this might seem to infer that this impulse, which also deeply permeated Central European culture, through the works of Jakob Boehme, is to be seen primarily as a "British' impulse:

'Someone might say that when we describe a person as having significance for a particular epoch, we are giving a description of something that is happening in one small corner of the world, whereas the real interest lies in hearing a description of what is taken place among the wide masses of mankind. As you will see, the thing is not to be taken in this way at all.'

It is only once all these misunderstandings are out of the way that Steiner begins the main part of his lecture. The rest of the lecture gives us further insight into the whole Bacon - Shakespeare ( Boehme - Balde ) question, particularly regarding the relationship it reveals between the cultural life and spirituality of Central Europe and Britain. Such is the significance of this that at the end of the lecture Steiner directly counters any suggestion that the matters he is discussing are 'remote from everyday life':

'The questions upon which I have here touched lie in reality at the foundation of the urgent would problems that face us today. We shall never be able to find an answer to the great question as to the true relation between East and West, between Europe, Asia and America, unless we go right back to the things of which we have spoken today'.

The two crucial points this lecture raises -- that one "initiated personality' stood behind the four, and that we must not let ourselves be put off by what we know of the earthly 'personality' of leading individuals -- are picked up and taken even further in 1924, in Steiner's last and mosr complete treatment of this theme. Knowing this background our ears should now be far more sensitized to Steiner's words than when we merely hear them out of context.

Going even further than the phrase "initiated personality', he now speaks directly of 'an Initiate'.

"The truth is that at the time when Bacon, Shakespeare, Jakob Boehme and a fourth were working on the earth, there was one Initiate who really spoke through all four. Hence their kinship, for in reality it all goes back to one and the same source'.

And now he is able to relate what he said about the potential hindrance to us of our knowledge of someone's earthly personality to the historical personality who was this Initiate'.

Of course, these people who dispute and argue [ about the authorship question ] do not argue about the Initiate in the background, especially as this Initiate -- like many a modern initiate -- is depicted in history as a rather troublesome patron.

Steiner could not have been any clearer on the matter than this. He goes on:

'But he was not merely so. No doubt he was so sometimes in his external actions, but he was not merely so. He was an individuality from whom immense forces proceeded, and to whom were really due Bacon's philosophical works as well as Shakespeare's dramas and the works of Jakob Boehme, and also the works of the Jesuit , Jacob Balde'.

We know also of a few private conversations Rudolf Steiner had on this theme. The last of these was a mere three days before he died, with Albert Steffen.

Counterwise we learn little more than that Steiner spoke of his research into 'Shakespeare, Jakob Boehme, Balde and Bacon' and 'pointed to their common source of inspiration".

Steiner had first spoken directly on the issue of Bacon and Shakespeare in 1900, when he said: 'I am today not yet in a position to form a judgement on this great question'. Thus Steiner's concern with the question lasted from at least 1900 until the very end of his life. Knowing how ill Steiner was, one cannot help being struck by Steffen's experience of the conversation: 'While he was speaking, so forcefully and full of joy, it was possible to believe that his crisis would be overcome".

The most extraordinary thing of all, though, about this conversation, is its date -- 27 March 1925 -- 300 years to the day, after the death of James I.

[ James was born on 19 June 1566 and died on 27 March 1625. Coincidentally, or not, Steiner mentioned James I for the first time in a lecture on almost exactly the same day  --  28 March 1916 ]

..As i said earlier, the thing cannot be proved in a  normal way, but can only 'leap across the wires' to us. Once this has happened, however, and we read the whole sequence of Steiner's remarks, it is no longer possible for us to be in doubt which historical figure Steiner is referring to.

2023-04-20 - Richard Ramsbotham

youtube movie titled 'Shakespeare, Bacon, James I & Rosenkreutz' for the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch

the following is a chatgpt stuctured cleanup based on the transcript available online

[Science and Conscience — Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Consciousness Soul]

Let me begin with a few questions to carry through the next hour.

The first is the relationship between science and conscience.

In German, as in English, the two words share a root: Wissenschaft and Gewissen. There is something profound in that — science and conscience are connected, but are they still connected today? Do we have a science without conscience? Or what would it mean if conscience itself became a science? That’s the first riddle I’d like to leave with you.

The second question concerns technology — and where it is taking us.

We’re told that we’re entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which, if followed to its logical end, would mean human beings merging with machines. We would begin to take on the qualities of machines. Technology, in other words, is developing toward a mechanization of humanity. We need to ask: how are we with that?

I would say that Francis Bacon stands at the root of this development. He is, in a sense, its spiritual ancestor. To go back to Bacon is to approach the root of our modern predicament.

The third question is one we’ve all heard often these last years — the phrase: “Follow the science.” But what does that actually mean?

Do you follow science? My sense is that you practice it, or you think through it. You might follow orders or follow the church, but to “follow science” is already to misunderstand it. The phrase itself raises questions of freedom and obedience, which have become pressing in our time.

You may recall a disturbing interview with Anthony Fauci at Washington Cathedral in 2021, where he said that people had become accustomed to “a lot of freedom and making their own decisions,” but now they would have to “get used to doing what they’re told.” That’s the spirit of “following the science.”

But what happens to science when it demands obedience?

Rudolf Steiner foresaw this very clearly. In a lecture, he described how medicine would become something to which people would be required to submit as rigidly as they once obeyed the decrees of the Church in the Middle Ages. He called this the principle of Jesuitism, and he warned that it would appear not only in religion, but in medicine, politics, and science itself.

He said this would continue until humanity learns to live up to the demands of the Consciousness Soul age — the epoch we are in now.

Until we awaken the Consciousness Soul — that faculty which allows each individual to perceive truth freely and inwardly — we will be subject to external authority. But if we do awaken it, we can overcome these trials.

That’s the optimistic challenge before us. To “let the Consciousness Soul be what it is” (die Bewusstseinsseele zu ihrem Sein bringen), to develop it fully — that’s our task.

[Back to the Roots: Bacon, Shakespeare, and James I]

To explore this, we need to go back — back over 400 years, to the turn of the 17th century. Around 1600 to 1605, we find three figures who form a kind of triad: Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, and King James I.

This was the birth of the modern English-speaking world — and in Steiner’s view, the moment when the Consciousness Soul age truly took hold. The meeting of these three in England marks a key spiritual constellation for our time.

Steiner gave the curious date of 1413 as the beginning of the Consciousness Soul epoch. Many question that date, but there’s an extraordinary correlation: in the Rosicrucian manifestos, Christian Rosenkreutz is said to have been born in 1378, traveled east for seven years, and returned to Europe at the age of 35 — the same year 1413.

Steiner often said that age 35 marks the birth of the Consciousness Soul in the individual. So, Rosenkreutz returning at 35 in 1413 becomes a picture of humanity itself entering this new phase of self-awareness.

[James I and the Riddle of Duality]

In the lectures History as Symptomatology (1918), Steiner says that if we want to understand the Consciousness Soul, we must look at James I of England.

Steiner calls James an occult figure — an initiate, but a deeply contradictory one. Everything James wrote or said, Steiner tells us, gives no indication of what was truly working within him. People have called James both a saint and a villain — and Steiner says both descriptions are true.

He calls James “the beginning of the renewal of the brotherhoods,” referring to Western occult orders. But Steiner also says that “a very Ahrimanic new development was inaugurated under him.” At the same time, he says, “One of the greatest, most gigantic spirits of the British realm is James I,” who “inoculated into the English-speaking peoples something they must never lose, lest they fall utterly into materialism.”

So James stands as both light and shadow — a figure carrying within himself the dual nature of our age: the potential for spiritual independence and the danger of mechanistic descent.

[Bacon and Shakespeare: Two Streams]

At the same time, in London, Bacon and Shakespeare were both active under James’s patronage. Bacon published The Advancement of Learning in 1605; Shakespeare staged Hamlet around 1603 and later The Tempest; and the King James Bible appeared in 1605.

These three — King, Poet, and Philosopher — form a kind of trinity for the modern age.

Bacon is the founder of modern natural science — empirical, material, analytical.

Shakespeare is the great revealer of the human soul — creative, moral, and imaginative.

In Bacon we see the principle of death, analysis, dissection; in Shakespeare, the principle of life, metamorphosis, and renewal.

Steiner, late in life, said that after Bacon’s death, “a host of demonic idols” issued forth from his etheric body into the spiritual world, so powerfully did his materialistic thought impress itself on the etheric realm that spiritual beings had to cleanse it. That’s how devastatingly strong the Baconian impulse was.

Shakespeare, by contrast, expresses life in all its fullness — the soul wrestling with destiny, conscience, and transformation.

And Steiner said something even more astonishing: that behind Bacon, Shakespeare, Jacob Boehme, and Jakob Balde stood one and the same initiate, who inspired all four. He would not name this being but said that, if he did, people would be put off by the person’s earthly personality — “a rather troublesome fellow,” as Steiner put it.

After much reflection, some researchers (including the lecturer here) have concluded that this initiate was James I — the same contradictory figure Steiner called both “gigantic” and “Ahrimanic.”

[Bacon’s “New Atlantis” and Shakespeare’s “Tempest”]

Let’s now look at the end of both men’s work.

Bacon’s final book, The New Atlantis (published posthumously in 1626), describes a scientific utopia: an island dedicated to experimentation — prolonging life, transforming species, altering weather, manufacturing new materials.

It speaks of “the prolongation of life, curing of incurable diseases, transmutation of bodies, acceleration of time, raising of tempests, and artificial minerals.”

It’s a prophetic sketch of our modern technological world — even of genetic manipulation and climate engineering. Bacon’s science is an inspired but dangerous vision: the dream of total control over nature.

Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, is also set on an island — but it ends in renunciation, not domination.

Prospero, the magician, having raised storms and commanded spirits, lays down his staff and says:

“This rough magic I here abjure.

I’ll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet sound,

I’ll drown my book.”

It’s an act of conscience — a conscious sacrifice of power.

In that moment, Shakespeare’s art transcends magic; it turns to freedom. It’s a gesture of Rosicrucian renunciation — a voluntary surrender of old wisdom so that it may reappear later in freedom.

Steiner describes such an act in his 1924 lecture Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation: that in the late 15th century, true Rosicrucians offered up their knowledge of the stars for a season, so that it could return purified in a new epoch.

In that sense, The Tempest stands in that same stream.

Two centuries later, Goethe would fulfill what Shakespeare began — harmonizing science and art in a “science of the living,” leading eventually to spiritual science, or Anthroposophy.

[The Great Usurpation]

However, the story doesn’t end there.

Soon after Bacon’s death, a theory arose that Bacon himself wrote Shakespeare’s plays. This idea has persisted for centuries, often within Masonic and esoteric circles, claiming that Bacon — not Shakespeare — was the true genius behind both the Rosicrucian movement and modern science.

In that narrative, Bacon even becomes Christian Rosenkreutz himself — the founder of the Rosicrucians!

Some go so far as to say that Bacon was also Johann Valentin Andreae, author of the Rosicrucian Manifestos.

It’s a spiritual usurpation: the Western, material stream claiming the heritage of the central, spiritual one.

The lecturer points out that this “Bacon-as-Rosenkreutz” view appears in Annie Besant and Alice Bailey, who both stated that Christian Rosenkreutz reincarnated as Francis Bacon. Steiner, however, strongly opposed this. For him, the Rosicrucian impulse was born in Central Europe, not the West, and its purpose was to balance East and West — not to let the West absorb everything.

[The Choice Before Us]

So we stand at a crossroads.

The Baconian path — science without conscience, control without reverence — leads to the mechanization of life.

The Shakespearean path — science tempered by conscience, imagination, and renunciation — leads toward the transformation of knowledge into wisdom.

[the above covers up until about mid of the talk, only]

Related pages

• Evolution
• Current Postatlantean epoch
• Central European cultural basin
• Transition between 4th and 14th century
• Future of humanity