Sixth cultural age

The next cultural age after the current fifth anglo-german (timed approx from 1413 to 3570) is called the sixth 'russian' or 'slavic' cultural age, timed approx. to the period between the years 3570 and 5070. It is the most important age of the Current Postatlantean epoch, where humanity will blossom to the development of this epoch, and a seed cohort of souls of this sixth cultural age will be the basis for the next great Sixth epoch.

Aspects

Culture, science, and spirituality

• this sixth cultural age will be radically different and as spiritual as our current fifth has been material, an age that will see the development of brotherhood among men, clairvoyance and creative power (1906-06-14-GA094)
• Main characteristic of the sixth cultural age will be that very definite feelings regarding what is moral and what is immoral will arise in the souls of men. Delicate feelings of sympathy will be aroused by compassionate, kindly deeds and feelings of antipathy by malicious actions. Nobody living at the present time can have the faintest conception of the intensity of these feelings. (1911-09-21-GA130)
• human beings will already understand better how to arrange their lives; concepts of race will no longer have validity. Men will no longer order their lives according to external, physical considerations but rather on a spiritual basis (1909-06-12-GA109)
• three key characteristics of this age of the spiritual self (1915-06-15-GA159)
  • moral quality and social life in which brotherliness prevails
    • the most highly cultured will not only feel pain such as is caused today by the sight of poverty, suffering and misery in the world, but such individuals will experience the suffering of another human being as their own suffering .. the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon the well-being of the whole.
  • freedom of thought
    • complete freedom of thought and a longing for it will so lay hold of men that what a Man likes to believe, what religious convictions he holds, will rest wholly within the power of his own individuality. Collective beliefs that exist in so many forms today among the various communities will no longer influence those who constitute the civilized portion of humanity
  • pneumatology (forms of knowledge based upon the spiritual)
    • men will only be considered to have real knowledge when they recognize the spiritual, when they know that the spiritual pervades the world and that human souls must unite with the spiritual .. all materialistic beliefs including our current science will be regarded as antiquated superstition. Men as a matter of course will accept as science only such forms of knowledge as are based upon the spiritual, upon pneumatology.
  • science
    • scientific work and study will require "the ability to sense the spiritual world which brings everything into existence", one will qualify people on having the right sentiments and sufficient emotion for admission to some scientific study (1911-11-04-GA130)

spiritual guidance of mankind

• The Masters (see White Lodge) will become publicly known as leaders of humanity (1905-01-01-GA090B)
• the individuality known as Jeshu ben Pandira will rise from Bodhisattva to a Buddha and be the teacher of Christianity in a totally new way as the Earth "will be bathed in a moral-ether atmosphere"(1911-10-01-GA130 and 1911-12-03-GA130 below, for more see 1911-11-04-GA123 on the Bodhisattva page and also on Three classes of Buddhas
  • about some 3000 years after 1911 would mean around 4900
• this age will know the true Christianity (not the one of the current or past cultural ages), centered around the sacred Golden Triangle (or Man's higher triad, consisting of spirit-man, life-spirit, spirit-self or atma, buddhi and manas) and the knowledge of reincarnation and karma, united with Christianity (again). A symbol will no longer be the crucified Son of God, but the cross encircled by roses (re Symbol of rose cross).

various

• a developmental goal for the sixth cultural age with the help of the Christ Impulse is "to help the world to overcome the last vestiges of the principle of nationality." (1917-01-22-GA174)
• (as the intellect develops with people marrying outside the family,) conscious clairvoyance will develop and by the end of the sixth cultural age people will be organized in moral castes. With the next cultural age, all love between blood relations will vanish. (1906-04-29-GA097 Q&A, see First ancient Indian cultural age#1906-03-14-GA097)

• mechanical science will become spiritually creative.
• signposts
  • Vladimir Solovyov is the prophetic dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean civilisation (and goes further than Hegel and Kant) (1910-06-16-GA121), see also KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#KRI 49: Vladimir Solovyov)
  • Beinsa Douno is regarded as the herald of the great Sixth epoch and the next slavic or russian cultural age.
  • Tolstoj's writings contain a new elemental force that contains something of manas-budhi, which must now enter into our civilisation (1905-09-30-GA093A), see also KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#KRI 65: Tolstoj)

Evolutionary

• It is the most important cultural age of the current epoch, in which part of humanity will reach the maturity required for the 'epoch sample' that will be the seed material for the next great Sixth epoch (see schema FMC00.169A and FMC00.169, and for a broader context also FMC00.233 and FMC00.168).
• Transition
  • 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. (1915-02-13-GA174B)
  • see also below in the Discussion area: Note 1 - Transition between the fifth and sixth cultural ages
• In the Book of Revelation, this cultural age maps to the church of Philadelphia ref. 3,7-13
• 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)
• if Man continues with dead intellectual thoughts as is currently the case, and does not develop imagination, then in the sixth cultural age, the air atmosphere will be poisened through the intellect that does not develop imagination, and in the seventh cultural age the water will become contaminated. (1923-03-23-GA222 )

Man

• The developmental target for humanity in this evolutionary period will be to have developed the spirit-self, and a special relationship with the lower spirit world, see eg Schema FMC00.047.
• The soul will only be able to develop in the physical body upto the age of 21 (at the start) and 14 years (at the end) of this cultural age (Schema FMC00.232).
  • .. in the sixth cultural age .. mankind's general age will then correspond to the ages of the individual between 21 and 14: .. Man's soul will become free and independent of his bodily nature at those earlier ages. Imagine what it will then be like if Man's free and independent soul does not unite with knowledge derived from spiritual investigation. A person may then be 30, 40, 50 years old, but if he has not taken his own development in hand, his age will in fact be no more than 17, 16 or 15. The all-important aspect of mankind's further evolution consists in the fact that as the Earth progresses more of Man's development is left to the individual himself. ... if this is not recognized .. what will happen is that people will suffer schizophrenia .. you will realize how necessary it is .. to be conscious of the dangers that threaten mankind. (1917-05-29-GA176)
• the kundalini fire will acquire great influence and act as a force on what lives in the human heart (1904-10-28-GA092)
• the level of clairvoyance will consist of revelation in images
  • the revelations of Maid of Orleans, in the form of images, are given as an example for the sixth cultural age (1910-12-28-GA126)
• as the physical body was solidified since the Atlantean epoch, the etheric body will be strengthened in the sixth and seventh cultural ages of the current Postatlantean epoch and "have a great influence through its inflexibility on the physical body, making the physical body its faithfull likeness" and representing its moral qualities. In the sixth age, also the external appearance of the surroundings will change manifold, as certain animal forms (that have taken on the most rigid forms) will become extinct. Vegetarianism will become standard. (1915-11-07-GA254 tbc)

Location

• geographically the center of cultural development will lie in western asia and the slav(on)ic or russian culture. See FMC00.211 and the according lectures for background on how this center moves across Earth's geography along with the developmental stage of humanity.
• the Grail atmosphere and spirit is linked to the russian geography and folk soul (characteristics such as piety) - "To the Russian people has been assigned the mission to develop the essential reality of the Grail as a religious system up to the time of the sixth Postatlantean age, so that it may then become a cultural ferment for the whole world." (1918-11-03-GA185)
• in eastern Europe we find the seeds of what really belongs to the next age (1919-01-01-GA187)

Illustrations

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).

Note: see more on Christ Module 11 - A new physics

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 Current Postatlantean epoch which uses the same layout
• Schema FMC00.167 on Transition between 4th and 14th century

.

.

Schema FMC00.567 illustrates the parable of the five foolish virgins in the Bible, as related to the mission for humanity to develop the bodily principles in order to receive the Christ Impulse (see also Schema FMC00.438, and Schema FMC00.468 on Man's transformation and spiritualization). The artwork by poet William Blake (1757- 1827) dates from around 1799-1800, and the original has been mirrored here to show how the ones on the right proceed along a timeline to the right, and the others are left behind (see also Sixteen paths of perdition).

The same reasoning as explained goes for the the sixth cultural age in the Current Postatlantean epoch, but similary also for the next Sixth epoch (whereby the five can represent the previous five epochs). In the Book of Revelation the four horses represent the shedding of the worked lower bodily natures - see more on Schema FMC00.505.

Lecture coverage and references

1904-10-28-GA092

(SWCC)

At the beginning of the sixth epoch an influence will have developed, not in higher spheres, but in the sphere of the present-day conscious mind; in the fifth epoch this influence is still in its infancy, but it is nevertheless already developing. It is something which emanates from the musical element. For the fifth epoch music will be not merely art, but the means of expression for quite other things than the purely artistic. Here is something that points to the influence of a specific principle on the physical plane.

The most significant impulse by those directly initiated in the fifth epoch will, to begin with, be given solely in the sphere of music. What has to flow in is not astral, but it is something of great significance in the sphere of the mental life of the fifth epoch. It is something that the human intelligence will come to recognise as important, something which has been called the Kundalini fire. It is a force which today still slumbers in man, but which will gradually gain more and more importance. Today it already has a great importance upon what we perceive through the sense of hearing.

During the further development in the sixth cultural age of the fifth epoch the Kundalini fire will acquire great influence on what lives in the human heart. The human heart will really have this fire. At first this seems to be mere symbolism but man will then really be permeated by a force which will live in his heart, so that during the sixth epoch he will no longer make a distinction between his own well-being and the well-being of the whole. So deeply will man be permeated by the Kundalini fire! He will follow the principle of love as his own innermost nature.

Note: the expression ‘Kundalini fire’ is used by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition of his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. In later editions he replaced the term by another term which is translated in the 1937 English edition as “the spiritual perceptive force in the organ of the heart”.

1904-11-04-GA093

(for more expanded quote and additional background, see topic of the Molten Sea)

To begin with, Christianity is bound up with the purely materialistic culture of the fourth and fifth ages, and the true Christianity of the future, which possesses the secret of the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle, only exists secretly. This Christianity has another symbol — no longer that of the crucified Son of God, but the Cross encircled by roses.

This will become the symbol of the new Christianity of the sixth Postatlantean cultural age. Out of the Mystery of the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross will arise the Christianity of the sixth cultural age, which will recognise the significance of the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle.

...

The Molten Sea is what is created when the appropriate amounts of water and molten metal are cast. The three apprentices do it wrongly, and the casting is destroyed, but when the mysteries of fire are revealed to Hiram by Tubal-Cain, he is thereby enabled to unite water and fire in the proper way. This brings the Molten Sea into being. This is what the secret of the Rosicrucians is. It is brought about when the water of calm wisdom is united with the fire of the astral world, with the fire of passion and desire.

A union must be brought about which is ‘of bronze’, that is to say, is lasting and durable. It must endure into the next epoch, when the secret of the sacred Golden Triangle is added to it; the secret of Atma, Buddhi and Manas. This Triangle, with all which it entails, will form the content of the renewed Christianity of the sixth cultural age. That is being prepared by the Rosicrucians and then

what is symbolised by the Molten Sea will be united with a knowledge of reincarnation and karma. That is the new occult teaching which will be united again with Christianity. The higher self of man, composed of Atma, Buddhi and Manas, will become an open secret when the man of the sixth epoch has become ripe enough to receive it.

1905-01-01-GA090B

The Masters will become publicly known as leaders of humanity at the start of the sixth cultural age.

1906-06-14-GA094

Our fifth cultural age will be followed by another sixth age that will see the development of brotherhood among men, clairvoyance and creative power.

What will Christianity be in the sixth cultural age? To the priest in the Mysteries before Christ, there was harmony between science and faith. Science and faith were one and the same. When he looked up to the heavens, the priest knew that the soul was a drop of water from the celestial ocean, led down to Earth by the great streams of life flowing through space. Now that the attention of men is wholly directed to the physical world, faith has need of a refuge, of religion. Hence the separation between science and faith. Faith in the Person of Christ, of the God-Man on Earth has temporarily replaced Occult Science and the Mysteries of antiquity. But in the sixth age, these two streams will again unite.

Mechanical science will become spiritually creative. This will be Gnosis-spiritual consciousness.

This sixth cultural age which will be radically different from our own, will be preceded by mighty cataclysms. It will be as spiritual as ours has been material. But the transformation can only be brought about by physical catastrophes.

1909-06-12-GA109

Reincarnation and karma first began to have meaning during the Lemurian epoch and in time will cease to have significance. Man will then enter permanently into a spiritual world in which he will continue to be active.

When, for example, Man has developed the impulse of brotherliness in himself, the growth of races will cease, will be overcome.

In the sixth cultural age, human beings will already understand better how to arrange their lives; concepts of race will no longer have validity. Men will no longer order their lives according to external, physical considerations but rather on a spiritual basis.

1910-GA013 (OES)

It is already possible now to begin to discover the thread that will bind the two sides of the human breast - material culture and life in the spiritual world - together again.

• On the one hand, this requires that we understand the results of spiritual perception;
• on the other, that we recognize the manifestations of the spirit in our observations of and experiences in the world of the senses.

The sixth cultural age will fully develop the harmony between these two things.

1910-06-16-GA121

continued from Human character - the I and threefold soul#1910-06-16-GA121

[sixth cultural age of spirit-self]

What happens first of all, when a folk-spirit so leads his people that the spirit-self can specially develop?

Let us recollect that the etheric body was evolved during the Indian civilization, the sentient body in the Persian, the sentient soul in the Egyptian-Chaldæan, the intellectual soul in the Græco-Latin, the consciousness soul in our own, which is not yet completed.

Then comes the laying hold of the spirit-self by the spiritual or consciousness soul , so that the spirit-self shines into the spiritual or consciousness soul, which, as that is the task of the sixth stage of civilization, must be prepared for gradually. That civilization, which must be pre-eminently a receptive one, for it must reverently await the penetrating of the spirit-self into the spiritual soul, is being prepared by the peoples of Western Asia and the Slav peoples of Eastern Europe. These latter were pushed forward with their folk-souls, for the very good reason that everything which is to happen in the future, must in a certain way be prepared beforehand, must already push itself in, in order to provide the elements for what is to follow.

It is extremely interesting to study these advance guards of a folk-soul who is preparing himself for later ages. This accounts for the peculiar nature of the Slav peoples at present living to the East of us. Their whole culture gives the Western European the impression of being in a preparatory stage, and they put forward in quite a curious way, through the medium of their advance guards, that which in spirit is quite different from any mythology.

It would be misunderstanding what is being pushed forward from the East as a civilization of the future, it would be misunderstanding this culture if we were to compare it with that which the Western European peoples possess, viz., an impulse that continues in a straight line, which is still rooted in and has its source in the old clairvoyance. The peculiarity attaching to the souls of these Eastern European peoples is expressed in the whole attitude they have always shown when their relations to the higher worlds have come into question. This relation, if we compare it with what appears in our mythology in Western Europe and the strange divine figures worked out even down to the individual character, is quite different. That which it offers appears to us in such a way that we may compare what it gives us as a direct out-pouring of the Folk-spirit, with our various planes or worlds, through which we prepare ourselves to understand a spiritual, a higher culture. For instance, we find there in the East the following conception: The West has received a series of successive worlds, lying side by side. In the East we find in the first place a distinct consciousness of a world of the Cosmic Father. Everything that is creatively active in air and fire, in all the elements in and above the Earth, meets us as one great, all-embracing idea, which is at the same time an all-embracing feeling, the concept of the Heavenly Father. In somewhat the same way as we think of the spirit world as fertilizing our Earth, so do we find this heavenly world, the world of the Father, coming towards us from the East, and it fertilizes that which is felt to be the Mother, the Spirit of the Earth. We have no other expression and can think of no other way of picturing the whole Spirit of the Earth than in the picture of the fertilization of Mother Earth.

Two worlds, then, confront one another there, instead of single individual Divine Figures. And what is felt to be the Blessed Child of these two worlds, stands in front of them as a third world. That is not an individual being, not a feeling in the soul, but something which is the product of the Heavenly Father and the Earth-Mother. In this way the relation of Devachan to the Earth is felt from the spiritual world. There, that which blossoms in the material body is felt as something altogether spiritual; and that which grows and blossoms in the soul, is perceived as the world which is at the same time felt to be the Blessed Child of the Heavenly Father and the Earth-Mother. Universal as these conceptions are we find them among the Slav peoples which have been pushed forward towards the West. In no Western European mythology do we find this conception so universal. We find in them clearly defined Divine Figures, but not that which we present in our anthroposophy as the different worlds; these we find more in the Heavenly Father, the Earth-Mother, and the Blessed Child of the East.

In the Blessed Child there is again a world which permeates another one. It is a world which is, however, conceived of as being individual, because it is connected with the physical sun and its light. The Slav element also has this Being,—although in a differently developed form of conception and feeling,—which we have so often found in the Persian mythology; it has the Sun-being who so pours his blessings into the other three worlds that the destiny of man is woven into the creation, into the Earth, through the fertilization of the Earth-Mother by the Heavenly Father, and through that which the Sun-spirit weaves into both these worlds.

A fifth world is that which comprises everything spiritual. The Eastern European element feels the spiritual world as underlying all the forces of Nature and their creations. But this we must think of in quite a different shade of feeling, connected more with the facts, creations and beings of Nature. We must conceive of this Eastern soul as being in a position to see an entity in an occurrence of Nature, of seeing not only the physically-sensible, but the astrally-spiritual. Hence the ideas of an immense number of beings in this unique spiritual world, which we may at the most compare with the world of the Elves of Light. It is that spiritual world, which is looked upon in anthroposophy as the fifth world, which dawns more or less in the feelings of the peoples of the East. Whether they call it by this name or that, does not signify; what does signify is that the feelings are colored and shaded, that the concepts which characterize this fifth plane or spiritual world are to be found in the world of the East. By means of these feelings this world of the East is preparing for that spirit which is to bring the Spirit-Self into Man, in readiness for that epoch when the Spiritual-Soul shall ascend to Spirit-Self, in the sixth age of post-Atlantean civilization, which is to succeed our own. We meet with this in a very unique manner not only in the creations of the Folk-Souls, which are as I have just described, but also in a wonderful preparatory fashion, in the various externalities of Eastern Europe and its culture.

1911-10-01-GA130

Then will come the time when the earth passes into conditions which, as in so much else, are only described in the great definitions of Oriental occultism, Oriental mysticism. The moral atmosphere will by then have gathered considerable strength. For many thousands of years Oriental mysticism has spoken of this moment in time, and since the coming of Gautama Buddha it has spoken especially strongly about that future condition when the Earth will be bathed in a 'moral-ether-atmosphere'. Ever since the time of the ancient Rishis it was the great hope of Oriental mysticism that this moral impulse would come to the Earth from Vishva-Karman or, as Zarathustra proclaimed, from Ahura Mazdao. Oriental mysticism thus foresaw that this moral impulse, this moral atmosphere, would come to the Earth from the being we call the Christ. It was upon Him, upon Christ, that the hopes of Oriental mysticism were set.

Oriental mystics were able to picture the consequences of that event but not the actual form it would take. They could picture that within a period of 5,000 years after the great Buddha achieved Enlightenment, pure Akashic forms, bathed in fire, lit by the sun, would appear in the wake of one Who could not be recognized through Oriental mysticism. A wonderful picture in very truth: that something would come to make it possible for the Sons of Fire and of Light to move about the moral atmosphere of the earth, not in physically embodied form but as pure Akashic forms within the earth's moral atmosphere. Five thousand years after Gautama Buddha's Enlightenment, so it was said, the teacher will also be there to make known to human beings what these wonderful forms are, these pure forms of Fire and Light. This teacher — the Maitreya Buddha — will appear 3000 years after our time and will be able to teach people about the Christ impulse.

Oriental mysticism thus unites with the Christian knowledge of the West to form a beautiful unity. It will also be disclosed that he who will appear 3000 years after our time as the Maitreya Buddha will have incarnated again and again on the Earth as a Bodhisattva, as the successor of Gautama Buddha. One of his incarnations was that of Jeshu ben Pandira, who lived a hundred years before the beginning of our era. The being who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira is the same one who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha and who from century to century returns ever and again in a body of flesh, not yet as Buddha himself but as Bodhisattva. Even in our age there proceeds from him who later will be the Maitreya Buddha the most significant teachings concerning the Christ being and the Sons of Fire — the Agnishvattas — of Indian mysticism.

1911-11-04-GA130

The next (sixth post-Atlantean) cultural age, following our own, will already be more spiritual. There the sentiments will play a role even in connection with science. If any one shall then wish to stand an examination for admission to some scientific study, it will be necessary for him to be able to sense the light that exists behind everything, the spiritual world which brings everything into existence. The value of scientific work in any test will then consist in the fact that one shall observe whether a person can develop in the test sufficient emotion; otherwise he will fail in the examination. Even though the candidate may have any amount of knowledge, he will not be able to pass the examination if he does not have the right sentiments.

1911-12-03-GA130

Our age will be followed by one in which the need for love will cast its light. Love in the sixth cultural age will show itself in a very different form - different even from that which can be called Christian love. Slowly we draw nearer to that age; and by making those in the Anthroposophical Movement familiar with the mysteries of the cosmos, with the nature of the various individualities both on the physical plane and on the higher planes, we try to kindle love for everything in existence. This is not done so much by talking of love, as by feeling that what is able to kindle love in the soul is prepared for the sixth age by Anthroposophy. Through Anthroposophy the forces of love are specially aroused in the whole human soul, and that is prepared which a man needs for gradually acquiring a true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For it is indeed true that the Mystery of Golgotha came to pass; and the Gospels have evoked something which yesterday was likened to how children learn to speak. But the deepest lesson - the mission of earthly love in its connection with the Mystery of Golgotha - has not yet been grasped. Full understanding of this will be possible only in the sixth Postatlantean cultural age, when people grow to realise more and more that the foundations for it are actually within them, and out of their innermost being - in other words, out of love - do what should be done. Then the guidance of the Commandments will have been outlived and the stage reached that is described in Goethe's words: “Duty — when one loves the commands one gives to oneself.”

When forces wake in our souls which impel us to do what we should through love alone, we then discover in us something that must gradually become widespread in the sixth cultural age.

Then in a man's nature quite special forces of the etheric body will make themselves known.

To understand what it is that must come about increasingly in this way, we have to consider it from two sides.

• One side has certainly not come yet and is only dreamt of by the most advanced in spirit; it is a well-defined relation between custom, morals, ethics and the understanding, intellectuality. Today a man may be to a certain extent a rascal, yet at the same time intelligent and clever. He may even use his very cleverness to further his knavery. At present it is not required of people to combine their intelligence with an equal degree of morality. To all that we have been anticipating for the future this must be added - that as we advance, it will no longer be possible for these two qualities of the human soul to be kept apart, or to exist in unequal measure. A man who, according to the reckoning-up of his previous incarnation, has become particularly intelligent without being moral, will in his new incarnation possess only a stunted intelligence. Thus, to have equal amounts of intelligence and morality in future incarnations he will be obliged, as a consequence of universal cosmic law, to enter his new incarnation with an intelligence that is crippled, so that immorality and stupidity coincide. For immorality has a crippling effect upon intelligence. In other words, we are approaching the age when morality and what has now been described for the sixth Postatlantean age as the shining into the I-soul of the love-forces of the etheric body, point essentially to forces having to do with harmonising those of intelligence and morality. That is the one side to be considered.
• The other side is that it is solely through harmony of this kind, between morality, custom, and intelligence, that the whole depth of the Mystery of Golgotha is to be grasped.
  • This will come about only through the individuality who before Christ-Jesus came to earth prepared men for that Mystery, developing in his successive incarnations ever greater powers as teacher of the greatest of all earthly events. This individuality, whom in his rank as Bodhisatva we call the successor of Gautama Buddha, was incarnated in the personality living about a hundred years before Christ under the name of Jeshu ben Pandira. Among his many students was one who had at that time already, in a certain sense, written down a prophetic version of the Matthew Gospel, and this, after the Mystery of Golgotha had been enacted, needed only to be given a new form.
  • There have been, and will continue to be, frequent incorporations of the individuality who appeared as Jeshu ben Pandira, until he rises from the rank of Bodhisatva to that of Buddha. According to our reckoning of time this will be in about 3,000 years, when a sufficient number of people will possess the above-mentioned faculties, and when, in the course of a remarkable incarnation of the individual who was once Jeshu ben Pandira, this great teacher of mankind will have become able to act as interpreter of the Mystery of Golgotha in a very different way from what is possible today. It is true that even today a seer into the supersensible worlds can gain some idea of what is to happen then; but the ordinary earthly organisation of man cannot yet provide a physical body capable of doing what that teacher will be able to do approximately 3,000 years hence. There is, as yet, no human language through which verbal teaching could exert the magical effects that will spring from the words of that great teacher of humanity. His words will flow directly to men's hearts, into their souls, like a healing medicine; nothing in those words will be merely theoretical. At the same time the teaching will contain - to an extent far greater than it is possible to conceive today - a magical moral force carrying to hearts and souls a full conviction of the eternal, deeply significant brotherhood of intellect and morality.
  • This great teacher, who will be able to give to men ripe for it the profoundest instruction concerning the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha, will fulfil what Oriental prophets have always said — that the true successor of Buddha would be, for all mankind, the greatest teacher of the good. For that reason he has been called in oriental tradition the Maitreya Buddha. His task will be to enlighten human beings concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, and for this he will draw ideas and words of the deepest significance from the very language he will use. No human language today can evoke any conception of it. His words will imprint into men's souls directly, magically, the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha. Hence in this connection also we are approaching what we may call the future moral age of man; in a certain sense we could designate it as a coming Golden Age.

Even today, however, speaking from the ground of Anthroposophy, we point in full consciousness to what is destined to come about — how the Christ will gradually reveal Himself to ever-higher powers in human beings, and how the teachers, who up to now have taught only individual peoples and individual men, will become the interpreters of the great Christ-event for all who are willing to listen. And we can point out how, through the dawning of the age of love, conditions for the age of morality are prepared.

See also below Note [2] in the Discussion area: interesting about this quote is that there are other references that (may) correlate to it, eg Meher Baba mentioned a similar or the same future teacher impact.

1915-02-13-GA174B

is an important lecture to read in full, because it puts in a broad context the quote below (often dragged out of context, by only a few phrases translated - see extracts below), and the impulse between the fifth and sixth cultural age (with reference to the significance of the 30 years war between 1914-44).

The task of the future sixth cultural age will be to grasp the spirit again in the environment of the physical, more in the elemental world. 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 again

These things cannot happen in the world without the most violent struggle.

White mankind is still on the path of absorbing spirit more deeply into its essence. Yellow mankind is on the path of preserving the period when the spirit was kept away from the body, when the spirit could only be sought outside of the physical human being.

But the result will have to be that [mankind’s next step upwards] cannot happen differently than as a violent fight between white mankind and colored mankind in the most varied areas. And world history will consist of the events that will lead to these battles between white and colored mankind until the great fight between white and colored mankind has been brought about. Future events are frequently reflected in previous events. You see, we stand before something so colossal that, if we regard it through the diverse perceptions of spiritual science, we will in the future recognize it as a necessary occurrence.

or in German:

In der sechsten Kulturepoche der nachatlantischen Zeit wird die Aufgabe die sein, den Geist vor allen Dingen als etwas sozusagen mehr in der Umgebung Schwebendes zu erkennen als unmittelbar in sich, den Geist mehr in der elementaren Welt anzuerkennen, weil diese sechste Kulturepoche die Aufgabe hat, die Erkenntnis des Geistes in der physischen Umgebung vorzubereiten. Das kann nicht so ohne weiteres erreicht werden, wenn nicht alte atavistische Kräfte aufgespart werden, die den Geist in seinem rein elementarischen Leben anerkennen.

Aber ohne die heftigsten Kämpfe gehen diese Dinge in der Welt nicht ab.

• Die weiße Menschheit ist noch auf dem Weg, immer tiefer und tiefer den Geist in das eigene Wesen aufzunehmen.
• Die gelbe Menschheit ist auf dem Wege, zu konservieren jene Zeitalter, in denen der Geist ferne gehalten wird vom Leibe, in denen der Geist gesucht wird außerhalb der menschlich-physischen Organisation, bloß dort.

Das aber muß dazu führen, daß der Übergang von der fünften Kulturepoche in die sechste Kulturepoche sich nicht anders abspielen kann denn als ein heftiger Kampf der weißen Menschheit mit der farbigen Menschheit auf den mannigfaltigsten Gebieten. Und was diesen Kämpfen vorangeht, die sich abspielen werden zwischen der weißen und der farbigen Menschheit, das wird die Weltgeschichte beschäftigen bis zu der Austragung der großen Kämpfe zwischen der weißen und der farbigen Menschheit. Die zukünftigen Ereignisse spiegeln sich vielfach in vorhergehenden Ereignissen. Wir stehen nämlich, wenn wir dasjenige, was wir durch die verschiedensten Betrachtungen uns angeeignet haben, im geisteswissenschaftlichen Sinn ansehen, vor etwas Kolossalem, das wir in der Zukunft als notwendig sich abspielend erschauen können.

Da haben wir

• auf der einen Seite einen Teil der Menschheit mit der Mission, den Geist in das physische Leben so hereinzuführen, daß der Geist alles einzelne im physischen Leben durchdringe.
• Und auf der anderen Seite haben wir einen Teil der Menschheit mit der Notwendigkeit, gewissermaßen die absteigende Entwickelung nun zu übernehmen.

Das kann nicht anders geschehen, als wenn dasjenige, was wirklich sich bekennt zur Durchdringung des Leiblichen mit dem Geistigen, Kulturimpulse hervorbringt, lebendige Impulse hervorbringt, die für die Erde bleibend sind, die von der Erde nicht wieder verschwinden können.

...

Was wird man unter der sechsten Kulturepoche zu verstehen haben?

Man wird darunter eine Kulturepoche zu verstehen haben, innerhalb welcher ein großer Teil der östlichen Menschen ihr Menschentum demjenigen zum Opfer gebracht haben wird, was in der Volkskultur errungen worden ist, indem gleichsam wie ein Weibliches das östliche sich wird haben befruchten lassen von dem männlichen Westlichen. Dasjenige, was leben wird in den Seelen der sechsten Kulturepoche, wird dasselbe sein, was von den Seelen der fünften Kulturepoche errungen worden ist. Das bedingt, daß von Osten her das Unreife und noch nicht Gereifte sich walzt, sich wehrt gegen dasjenige, was ja doch geschehen muß. Genau ebenso, wie das Griechisch-Römische sich einmal zu wehren hatte gegen das Germanische, so muß sich das Slawische gegen das Germanische wehren; aber genau ebenso wie beim Übergang vom Griechisch-Römischen zum Germanischen in der aufsteigenden Entwickelung, so bei dem Übergang vom Germanischen ins Slawische in der absteigenden.

[continued]

the last paragraph reads as (internet translation)

This is to be understood as a cultural age in which a large part of Eastern people will have sacrificed their humanity to what has been achieved in popular culture, in that the Eastern will have allowed itself to be fertilized by the male Western, as it were, like a female . What will live in the souls of the sixth cultural age will be the same as what was achieved by the souls of the fifth cultural age. This means that from the east, the immature and not yet ripe rolls about and defends itself against what must happen after all. Just as Greco-Roman once had to defend itself against Germanic, so Slavic must defend itself against Germanic; but just as in the transition from the Greco-Roman to the Germanic in the ascending development, so in the transition from the Germanic to the Slavic in the descending.

This references the conflicts of the Roman culture with the Germanic tribes, the invasion by the Huns in the 4th century, etc see eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_warfare_between_the_Romans_and_Germanic_tribes

1915-06-15-GA159

in the below, age = cultural age (and not epoch)

Within the womb, as it were, of the ancient Indian age, that of ancient Persia was prepared; within the ancient Persian culture, that of the Egypto-Chaldean age was prepared, and so on. Our fifth post-Atlantean age must prepare the coming sixth age of culture.

Our task in spiritual science is not only to acquire spiritual treasure for ourselves, for the eternal life of the soul, but to prepare what will constitute the content, the specific external work of the sixth age of culture. Thus it has been in each of the post-Atlantean ages. The centers of the mysteries were the places in which the form of external life belonging to the next age of culture was prepared. The mysteries were associations of human beings among whom other things were cultivated than those cultivated in the outer world. The ancient Indian age was concerned with the cultivation of the human etheric body, the ancient Persian age with the cultivation of the astral body, the Egypto-Chaldean with that of the sentient soul, the Greco-Latin with that of the intellectual or mind soul. Our own age, throughout its duration, will develop and unfold the consciousness or spiritual soul. But what will give to external culture in the sixth age its content and character, must be prepared in advance. Many characteristics of the sixth age of culture will be entirely different from those of our age. Three characteristic traits can be mentioned, of which we must realize that they should be carried in our hearts for the sixth age of culture and that it is our task to prepare them for this sixth age.

[Three key characteristics]

• There is lacking in human society nowadays a quality that, in the sixth age, will be a characteristic of those men who reach the goal of that age, and have not fallen short of it. It is a quality that will not, of course, be found among those who in the sixth age have still remained at the stage of savages or barbarians. One of the most significant characteristics of men living on the Earth at the peak of culture in the sixth age, will be a certain moral quality. Little of this quality is perceptible in modern humanity. A man today must be delicately organized for his soul to feel pain when he sees other human beings in the world in less happy circumstances than his own. It is true that more delicately organized natures feel pain at the suffering that is so widespread in the world, but this can only be said of the people who are particularly sensitive. In the sixth age, the most highly cultured will not only feel pain such as is caused today by the sight of poverty, suffering and misery in the world, but such individuals will experience the suffering of another human being as their own suffering. If they see a hungry man they will feel the hunger right down into the physical, so acutely indeed that the hunger of the other man will be unendurable to them. The moral characteristic indicated here is that, unlike conditions in the fifth age, in the sixth age the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon the well-being of the whole. Just as nowadays the well-being of a single human limb depends upon the health of the whole body, and when the whole body is not healthy the single limb is not up to doing its work, so in the sixth age a common consciousness will lay hold of the then civilized humanity and in a far higher degree than a limb feels the health of the whole body, the individual will feel the suffering, the need, the poverty or the wealth of the whole. This is the first preeminently moral trait that will characterize the cultured humanity of the sixth age.

• A second fundamental characteristic will be that everything we call the fruits of belief today will depend to a far, far higher degree than is the case today, upon the single individuality. Spiritual science expresses this by saying that in every sphere of religion in the sixth age, complete freedom of thought and a longing for it will so lay hold of men that what a Man likes to believe, what religious convictions he holds, will rest wholly within the power of his own individuality. Collective beliefs that exist in so many forms today among the various communities will no longer influence those who constitute the civilized portion of humanity in the sixth cultural age. Everyone will feel that complete freedom of thought in the domain of religion is a fundamental right of the human being.

• The third characteristic will be that men in the sixth age will only be considered to have real knowledge when they recognize the spiritual, when they know that the spiritual pervades the world and that human souls must unite with the spiritual. What is known as science today with its materialistic trend will certainly not be honored by the name of science in the sixth post-Atlantean age. It will be regarded as antiquated superstition, able to pass muster only among those who have remained behind at the stage of the superseded fifth post-Atlantean age. Today we regard it as superstition when, let us say, a savage holds the view that no limb ought to be separated from his body at death because this would make it impossible for him to enter the spiritual world as a whole man. Such a man still connects the idea of immortality with pure materialism, with the belief that an impress of his whole form must pass into the spiritual world. He thinks materialistically but believes in immortality. We, today, knowing from spiritual science that the spiritual has to be separated from the body and that only the spiritual passes into the super-sensible world, regard such materialistic beliefs in immortality as superstition. Similarly, in the sixth age all materialistic beliefs including science, too, will be regarded as antiquated superstition. Men as a matter of course will accept as science only such forms of knowledge as are based upon the spiritual, upon pneumatology.

The whole purpose of spiritual science is to prepare in this sense for the sixth age of culture. We try to cultivate spiritual science in order to overcome materialism, to prepare the kind of science that must exist in that age. We found communities of human beings within which there must be no dogmatic beliefs or any tendency to accept teaching simply because it emanates from one person or another. We found communities of human beings in which everything, without exception, must be built upon the soul's free assent to the teachings. Herein we prepare what spiritual science calls freedom of thought. By coming together in friendly associations for the purpose of cultivating spiritual science, we prepare the culture, the civilization of the sixth post-Atlantean age.

...

In the sixth cultural age the spirit self must be developed within the souls of men, just as now the consciousness soul is being developed. The nature of spirit self is that it must pre-suppose the existence in human souls of the three characteristics of which I have spoken:

• social life in which brotherliness prevails,
• freedom of thought, and
• pneumatology.

These three characteristics are essential in a community of human beings within which the spirit self is to develop as the consciousness soul develops in the souls of the fifth age.

[Link with groups and associations working on spiritual science is made in this whole lecture, read in full]

We may therefore picture to ourselves that by uniting in brotherliness in working groups, something hovers invisibly over our work, something that is like the child of the forces of the spirit self - the spirit self that is nurtured by the beings of the higher hierarchies in order that it may stream down into our souls when they are again on earth in the sixth cultural age. In our groups we perform work that streams upward to those forces that are being prepared for the spirit self.

1916-03-18-GA174b

talks about the tasks for the sixth cultural age, and the russian human being

1917-01-22-GA174

So you see that even the mere spread of certain concepts, certain ideas, can contain strong occult impulses. And since those brotherhoods of whom I have spoken have set themselves the task of making the fifth post-Atlantean period — in the egoistic interest of their group — into the long-term aim of earthly evolution, eliminating what ought to come into this earthly evolution in the sixth and seventh post-Atlantean ages, you will understand why these brotherhoods send out into the world the things that I have described. To achieve their aims they have to create impulses which are meaningful not only for incarnated human beings but also for those who are not incarnated. The time has come when it is necessary that at least a few solitary individuals understand these things so that they can gain an idea of what is actually going on and being accomplished.

For this to be possible, concepts about the life of mankind on earth must come into being which are ever more and more right. It is unthinkable that those concepts can continue which are causing so much harm in our time. For the more human beings there are who have the right concepts, the less will certain occult trends be able to stir up trouble. However, as long as the things which are being said continue to be said in Europe today, things deliberately distorting the truth about the relationships of nations with one another, this is a sign that many occult impulses are at work with the aim of distracting earthly evolution away from the sixth post-Atlantean cultural age.

After all, important things are going to be brought about by the sixth post-Atlantean period. I have stressed very strongly that Christ died for the individual human being. We must see this as an essential aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha. He has an important task during the fifth post-Atlantean period which we shall leave aside for the moment. But He also has an important task in the sixth period. This is to help the world to overcome the last vestiges of the principle of nationality. That this should not happen, that steps should be taken in good time to prevent any influence by Christ in the sixth post-Atlantean period — this is the purpose served by the impulses of those brotherhoods who want to preserve the fifth post-Atlantean period in the manner I have shown.

1918-11-03-GA185

On account of its ethnographical and ethnic situation, Central Europe is not disposed to accept the Christ impulse as something self-evident; it had to be imposed artificially. And so we have an intervention of the current of the Grail radiating in the direction of Europe — a Grail current that is not limited therefore to the folk element.

...

And paradoxical as it may seem today the Grail atmosphere is found today in Russia. And the future role that the Russian soul will play in the sixth Postatlantean age depends upon this unconquerable spirit of the Grail in the Russian people.

So much for the one side. Let us now consider the other side. Here we have those who regard the Christ impulse neither as an inspiration, as in the East, nor as a living force transmitted by tradition and the Scriptures, but as something rational. It is in this form that it spread within the Lodges and their ramifications. (In the diagram I indicate this by the colour green.) Later it became politicized in the West and is the last offshoot of the Arthurian current. And just as the Christ impulse in the Russian people is continued in the Grail quest and irradiates all men of good will in the West, so the other current penetrates into all members of the People of the Church and takes on the particular colouring of Jesuitism. That the Jesuits are the sworn enemy of that which emanates from the Lodges is not important: anyone and anything can be the declared enemy of the outlook of the Lodges. It is a historical fact that the Jesuits have not only infiltrated the Lodges, that high-ranking Jesuits are in contact with the high dignitaries of the Lodges, but that both, though active in different peoples, have a common root, though the one gave birth to the Papacy, the other to freedom, rationalism, to the Aufklärung. I have now given you a kind of picture of what may be called the working of the evolution of the Consciousness Soul. I described to you earlier the three stages of evolution proceeding from the East to the West which are based on the ethnic element. That they assumed the form of Aufklärung in the West, as a consequence of interaction, is due to the fact that every individual is involved in the evolution of the Consciousness Soul.

...

Consider from this point of view the evolution of mankind in the course of the fifth Postatlantean age. First, the people of the Christ in the East with its fundamental impulse: Christ is spirit. It is in the nature of this people to give to the world through Russianism, as if with elemental force and from historical necessity, that for which the West of Europe could only have prepared the ground.

To the Russian people as such has been assigned the mission to develop the essential reality of the Grail as a religious system up to the time of the sixth Postatlantean age, so that it may then become a cultural ferment for the whole world. Small wonder then that when this impulse encounters the other impulses the latter assume strange forms.

What are these other impulses? Christ is king and Christ is teacher. One can scarcely call ‘Christ is Teacher’ an impulse, for, as I have already said, the Russian soul does not really understand what it means, does not understand that one can teach Christianity and not experience it in one's soul. But as for the conception ‘Christ is King’ — it is inseparable from the Russian people. And we now see the clash between two things which never had the slightest affinity, the clash between the impulse ‘Christ is Spirit’ and Czarism, an oriental caricature of the principle which seeks to establish temporal sovereignty in the domain of religion. ‘Christ is King and the Czar is his representative’ — here we have the association of the Western element manifested in Czarism with something that is completely alien to Czarism, something that, through the agency of the Russian folk soul, permeates the sentient life of the Russian people.

A characteristic feature of external physical reality is that those things which inwardly are often least related to each other must rub off on each other externally. Czarism and Russianism have always been strangers to each other, they never had anything in common. Those who understand the Russian nature, especially its piety, must have found the attitude to the elimination of Czarism as something self-evident when the time was ripe. But remember that this conception ‘Christ is Spirit’ touches the deepest springs of our being, that it is related to the highest expression of the Consciousness Soul and that, whilst socialism is smouldering beneath the surface, it collides with that which dwells in the Sentient Soul. Small wonder then that the expansion of socialism in Eastern Europe assumes forms that are totally incomprehensible: a chaotic interplay of the culture of the Consciousness Soul and the culture of the Sentient Soul.

1919-01-01-GA187

It is worthy of notice that in eastern Europe we find the seeds of what really belongs to the next age.

1923-03-23-GA222

The Earth acts as a mirror for man; he is not intended to reach a sub-earthly level.

But his lifeless thoughts penetrate into the Earth and apprehend death, which pertains to the Earth-element only. However, the nature of man himself is such that when he imbues his thoughts with life he sends them out into the Cosmos as mirror-pictures. And so all the living thoughts that arise in man are seen by the Gods glittering back from evolving humanity. When man is urged to make his thoughts come alive he is being called upon to be a co-creator in the Universe. For these thoughts are reflected by the Earth and stream out again into the Universe, must make their way again out into the Universe.

Hence when we grasp the meaning of the evolution of mankind and the world, we feel that in a way we are led back again to the epochs that have already been lived through. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, Man's status an Earth was arrived at by means of calculation; but for all that he was always brought by this means into connection with the surrounding world of stars. Today we proceed historically, starting from man; man becomes the starting-point for a study which you will find presented in the book Outline of Esoteric Science, where we have actually sent out living human thoughts and noted what they have become when we follow them in the cosmic environment as they speed away from us, when we learn to live with these living thoughts in the cosmic expanse.

[Danger of dead intellectual thoughts - gradual destruction of the Earth]

These processes indicate the deep significance of the fact that Man has come to the stage of having dead thoughts, that he is, so to speak, in danger of uniting completely with the Earth.

Let us follow the picture further. Genuine Imaginations make this possible. It is only deliberately thought-out Imaginations that lead us no further. Think for a moment of a mirror. We say that it throws the light back. The expression is not quite accurate, but in any case the light must not get behind the mirror. There is only one way in which this could happen and that would be if the mirror were broken.

And indeed, if man does not vitalize his thoughts, if he persists in harbouring merely intellectualistic thoughts, dead thoughts, he must destroy the Earth.

• Admittedly, the destruction begins with the most highly rarefied element: warmth. And in the current fifth post-Atlantean age man has no opportunity of ruining anything other than the warmth-atmosphere of the Earth through the ever-increasing development of purely intellectualistic thoughts. [editor: maybe this is the only statement by Rudolf Steiner linked to what is called, one century later, 'global warming'. See also Schema FMC00.003 and Schema FMC00.003A upper right, that depict the warmth girdle around the Earth]
• But then comes the sixth post-Atlantean age. If by that time man has not been converted from intellectualism to Imagination, destruction would begin, not only of the warmth-atmosphere but also of the air-atmosphere, and if their thoughts were to remain purely intellectualistic, men would poison the air, ruining, in the first place, all vegetation.
• In the seventh post-Atlantean age it will be possible for Man to contaminate the water, and if his exudations were to be the outcome of purely intellectualistic thoughts, they would pass over into the universal fluidity of the Earth. Through this universal fluidity of the Earth, the mineral element of the Earth would, in the first place, lose cohesion. And if man did not vitalize his thoughts, thereby giving back to the cosmos what he has received from it, he would have every opportunity of shattering the Earth.

Thus the life of soul in man is intimately connected with natural existence. Intellectualistic knowledge today is a purely Ahrimanic product, aiming at blinding humanity to these things If a Man is persuaded that his thoughts are merely thoughts and have nothing to do with happenings in the universe, he is being deluded into believing that he can have no influence upon the evolution of the Earth, and that either with or without his collaboration the Earth will at some time come to an end in some such way as foretold by physical science.

But the Earth will not come to a purely physical end; its end will come in the way brought about by mankind itself.

Discussion

Note 1 - Transition between the fifth and sixth cultural ages

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?

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 in 1914-03-07-GA286 is stated:

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

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 - Impact of future masters - quotes by Meher Baba

Introduction

Upfront a short disclaimer, as this site focuses on the teachings of spiritual science in a certain lineage (and conscientiousness with regards to sound thinking, rigour and consistency), and this note in a way deviates from that, and does not imply to thereby position Meher Baba in any particular way. The goal here is purely factual reporting in an objective way with no further judgment.

Meher Baba (1894-1969) was an Indian spiritual teacher with some interesting or strange characteristics. He declared to be an avatar, and from an age of 31 in 1925, he no longer spoke but kept silent and only communicated through chalk and an alphabet board.

Also - and this maybe culturally - Meher Baba's teachings are not always as clear as compared to what one is used by certain Western spiritual teachers, and the style of communications (phrasing as a divine person) is not always humble, quite in contrast with other/true spiritual teachers such as eg Beinsa Douno or Daskalos. So for students of spiritual science used to these adepts and/or Rudolf Steiner, certain statements and phrasings may have a counter-intuitive feeling to them. This impression can probably be stated quite factually.

Nevertheless Meher Baba did deliver certain interesting writings (see eg 'God Speaks') and messages, and this study note is added just to document certain quotes that may in some way link to what Rudolf Steiner described in 1911-12-03-GA130 (see also above) about how the future Maitreya Buddha will 'teach' or 'impact', specifically:

According to our reckoning of time this will be in about 3.000 years, when a sufficient number of people will possess the above-mentioned faculties, and when, in the course of a remarkable incarnation of the individual who was once Jeshu ben Pandira, this great teacher of mankind will have become able to act as interpreter of the Mystery of Golgotha in a very different way from what is possible today. It is true that even today a seer into the supersensible worlds can gain some idea of what is to happen then; but the ordinary earthly organisation of man cannot yet provide a physical body capable of doing what that teacher will be able to do approximately 3.000 years hence. There is, as yet, no human language through which verbal teaching could exert the magical effects that will spring from the words of that great teacher of humanity. His words will flow directly to men's hearts, into their souls, like a healing medicine; nothing in those words will be merely theoretical. At the same time the teaching will contain - to an extent far greater than it is possible to conceive today - a magical moral force carrying to hearts and souls a full conviction of the eternal, deeply significant brotherhood of intellect and morality. …  the true successor of Buddha would be, for all mankind, the greatest teacher of the good. For that reason he has been called in oriental tradition the Maitreya Buddha. His task will be to enlighten human beings concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, and for this he will draw ideas and words of the deepest significance from the very language he will use. No human language today can evoke any conception of it. His words will imprint into men's souls directly, magically, the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha.

The link is made because throughout his teachings, Meher Baba was coming back all the time to the 'speaking of the Word' that will directly penetrate and touch the hearts of men, and have an impact of unification.

Note

1/ Note that Rudolf Steiner described the faculty of the sixth epoch whereby "Man gives word to astral world with immediate effect on others, so they feel every word" and get touched by it in their soul, relating this to the development of the 16-petalled chakra (1904-11-05-GA089).

What is described in 1911-12-03-GA130 for the Maitreya Buddh in the sixth cultural age seemingly relates to this faculty, but appears to potentially go even deeper in how it affects the soul (interpretation).

2/ Also in this context, in other lectures Rudolf Steiner explains that in the future, the good will have quite different faculties at its disposal to try and win over evil, touching souls directly. Without going into this, one can try to imagine future times in the sixth epoch that will be quite different .. when reincarnation has stopped and Man is no longer locked into a physical body .. and so Manicheism will be able to face the utmost evil in different ways than we can currently imagine.

See eg Evil#1908-06-30-GA104 (propose to read full extract/lecture)

For the present, we have still to go through many incarnations of the present souls before the great War of All against All, and again up to the decisive point after the great War. And afterwards in the [sixth] epoch (of the seals) we also have to go through many changes, and men will often have the opportunity to open their hearts ...

There will be many opportunities, and you must not imagine that future opportunities will only be such as they are today.

The way in which we are able to make the spiritual view of the world known to others is still very feeble. Even if a Man were now to speak in such a way that his voice were to sound forth directly like the fire of the spirit, that would be feeble as compared with the possibilities which will exist in later and more developed bodies in order to direct our fellow-men to this spiritual movement. When humanity as a whole will have developed higher and higher in future ages, there will be very different means through which the spiritual conception of the world will be able to penetrate into men's hearts, and the most fiery word today is small and weak compared with what will work in the future to give all souls the possibility of the spiritual conception of the world — all the souls now living in bodies in which no heart beats for this spiritual conception of the world.

Commentary

The suggestion when reading the below is to not get hung up on a) the phrasing, eg the fact it is phrased in a personal way (the authoritive or not so humble 'I will', as the divinity speaking), and/or b) certain specifics (eg 'sevenhundred years') and statements that do not correspond with the teachings of anthroposophy; but just take the interesting parallel of what he is describing as the impact of a future teacher to the hearts of men, and the fact this comes from an Indian teacher (even though he became quite known in the West and America). It does appear that the sentences in bold below are about the same thing, even though (hypothetical interpretative statement follows) it sounds more like some prophecy, channeling about future events, then that we necessarily have to take it 'at cash value, literally' and as related directly to this personality or individuality.

A potential way to interpret this is that the energy of the Christos flows through the Bodhisattvas of the White Lodge as the central energy of the thirteenth in the center of the twelve, who are channeling this from the highest energies down and relating it to the guidance of mankind, like a sort of gateway on the higher nirvana and budhi planes, 'conveying it down' through further human incarnate teachers.

With such image, a certain essence may be affected and not always come out in full purity, even though certain elements do stand out. For example, Rudolf Steiner related about Blavatsky's 'Isis Unveiled' that, even though inspired by Christian Rosenkreutz through the channel of Blavatsky .. Steiner says "the book may give the impression of a chaotic hotchpotch", still in there can also be found "some of the greatest wisdom given to mankind" (quotes from 1912-05-08-GA143). And against such background, one could allmost read-interpret Meher Baba's words 'as if' the Logos itself would be speaking, as he phrases things in this manner. Again: it is left to each person to process it with one's own discernment and intuition, but the correlation is there to be observed.

Quotes by Meher Baba

The word of words

see link 1

When I say that my manifestation is connected with the breaking of my silence, people should not expect an outpouring of verbosity. I will utter the Word of words that will irresistibly impart to those who are ready the "I-Am-God" state (the Anal Haq or Ahm Brahmasmi state).

When you try to speak with your mouth completely closed, a particular sound resembling "Om" is without exception uttered in a certain unfailing uniformity. This is the seventh shadow of the Word of Truth. My mission is to utter this Word of Truth, which will pierce the mind of the world and go to its very heart. It will convey the simple Truth in its utter and indefinable simplicity. It will mark the moment of fulfillment of the Divine Life. It will throw open new gates to Eternity. It will give new hope to a despairing humanity.

But for the fulfillment of the Divinely Ordained Plan, it is necessary that humanity should throw away all its accumulated impediments and surrender unconditionally to the abiding love for God — the unfailing and supremely Universal Beloved. God has to be accepted in all simplicity and not by laboriously proved intellectual conclusions.

Wine is prepared by the crushing and further crushing of grapes, whereby it acquires the capacity for intoxication, which usually takes away one's command of understanding. Close and repeated feeling of love for God also brings intoxication, but this takes you toward true understanding. This understanding is not gained through reason or intellect. As long as you remain separated from God and try to understand Him, He cannot be understood.

There is no separation between you and God. Lover and Beloved are One. You yourself are the Way. You are God.

The Word that I will speak will go to the world as from God, not as from a philosopher. It will go straight to its heart. With the dawn of the realization of the Unity of all life, hatred and dissension will come to an end. There will be unfaltering love and unfailing understanding, and men shall be united in an inviolable brotherhood, based on the realized Oneness of God.

1954-09-30 - Final declaration

Before I break my silence, or immediately after it, three-fourths of the world will be destroyed. I shall speak soon to fulfill all that is shortly to come to pass.

[editor: 'before - or after' is a strange formulation indeed]

[editor: see Note [1] above about the transition between current fifth and sixth cultural ages, and potentially also Three days of darkness]

To affirm religious faiths, to establish societies, or to hold conferences will never bring about the feeling of unity and oneness in the life of mankind, now completely absorbed in the manyness of illusion. Unity in the midst of diversity can be made to be felt only by touching the very core of the heart. This is the work for which I have come.

I have come to sow the seed of love in your hearts so that, in spite of all superficial diversity which your life in illusion must experience and endure, the feeling of oneness through love is brought about amongst all the nations, creeds, sects and castes of the world.

In order to bring this about, I am preparing to break my silence. When I break my silence, it will not be to fill your ears with spiritual lectures. I shall speak only one Word, and this Word will penetrate the hearts of all men, and make even the sinner feel that he is meant to be a saint, while the saint will know that God is in the sinner as much as He is in himself.

When I speak the Word, I shall lay the foundation for that which is to take place during the next seven hundred years. When I come again after seven hundred years, the evolution of consciousness will have reached such an apex that materialistic tendencies will be automatically transmuted into spiritual longing, and the feeling of equality in spiritual brotherhood will prevail. This means that opulence and poverty, literacy and illiteracy, jealousy and hatred, which are in evidence today in their full measure, will then be dissolved through the feelings of the oneness of all men. Prosperity and happiness will then be at their zenith.

...

During this short period, my Word of words will touch the hearts of all mankind, and spontaneously this divine touch will instill in man the feeling of the oneness of all fellow beings. Gradually, in the course of the next seven hundred years, this feeling will supersede the tendency of separateness and rule over the hearts of all, driving away hatred, jealousy and greed that breed suffering, and happiness will reign.

[editor: the (two times) seven hundred years does not correlate to Rudolf Steiner's teachings, re Schema FMC00.052]

other quotes

see link 2

1954-09-30

My Word of words will touch the hearts of all mankind and spontaneously this divine touch will instil in man the feeling of oneness of all fellow beings. This feeling will supersede the tendency of separateness and rule over the hearts of all, driving away hatred, jealousy and greed that breed suffering, and happiness will reign.

1965-05-03

When the Word of My Love breaks out of its silence and speaks in your hearts, telling you who I really am, you will know that that is the Real Word you have been always longing to hear.

Related pages

• Evolution
• Current Postatlantean epoch
• Seventh cultural age
• Sixth epoch
• Beinsa Douno