America's Destiny Hangs in the Balance
Work with the Spirit of the Age
The difference in the quality and flavor of different parts of the world is, in reality, more than striking. Although I have lived in other countries for years at a time, my trip to Rheinland-Pfalz this week left me astonished and shaken. And we should be moved by the experience of a folk spirit.
The minute I got there, the whole world changed. People everywhere didn’t just have impeccable manners, they were downright friendly, and what’s more obviously took pride in their work. The German folk spirit is among other things about inspiring a bond with work and profession. It takes seven years of training to be able to call yourself a farmer, carpenter or book seller. Someone who works in a grocery store considers themselves a professional. The incredible personal boundaries Germans have are also part of this. They are famous for their rules, which is a stereotype. The archetype behind it is consent. There is an order which one has to be quite strong to fit into. The quality of knowing what one wants, more or less at all times, is striking. It is as if true consent to the rules and the order builds a consciousness of vigorous presence of mind and awareness.
This is not to elevate one country over another, these qualities live very strongly in most people I know here - the point is that this picture seems to be essential to the folk soul of central Europe. And the Consciousness Soul does not exclusively unfold at it’s home base, it lives everywhere, of course.
In recent articles, we have tried to study the meaning of living within a particular folk spirit, and of the the many layers of archetypes in the world, such as political movements or professions or institutions. The choice to incarnate within a certain country at a specific time has motives which lie in deep waters. It is as if we work in the world through the lens of being French, or German, or American.
The cultural epoch during which one lives is also of great importance, as each one is a great container of evolution. The archetype of the human being is seven fold in this sense, as each evolving aspect of ourselves finds its developmental container in one of the succeeding epochs of time:
Ancient India - Physical Body
Ancient Persia - Formative Life Body
Ancient Egypt - Soul and Consciousness
Ancient Greece - “I” being, Spirit
Central Europe - Spirit Self
Slavic Culture - Life Spirit
American Culture - Spirit Man
So… we are now living in the time of the unfolding of an aspect of ourselves which has the capacity to, in short, not take things personally. The Spirit Self is what we see when the soul is freed from compulsion. When we find the strength to ignore ideas and emotions which want to tell us how to feel and act, the Spirit Self is born. It is capable of connecting with reality in an un-deluded way; which means as the soul is stripped of its illusions, it is increasingly uncoerced in its perceptions.
This is what you can see when you visit Central Europe, and especially Germany. It’s trying to find its way up through the minds of people; a German will always consider an alternative explanation. It’s build into their psyche. Imagine that…
The mission of America lies in the distant future, near the end of our greater epoch of time. I wish someone would come up with a better name than “Post-Atlantis” for what we think of as the history of civilization, India through America, but here we are. The Central European culture, which runs from around 1400 AD - 3600 AD found its initial flowering in the Renaissance and then the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods of the 1500-1800’s. It is hard to quite imagine how from a time of feudal warlords sprang the likes of Bach, Mozart, Goethe; St. Peters Basilica, and so much else.
Are we really supposed to see this as random? What, people just got sick of the dark ages and created a civilization which brought with it some of the most profound artistic and cultural movements humanity has ever seen? No, and that is not the case. When the universe comes together for a new age of civilization to begin, quite soon there is this vibrant blossoming, where the finest, the meaning of the cultural impulse makes itself strongly felt.
Something interesting happens if we look at the seven parts of our current epoch (the Central European). From 1413 up till 1721, we have a recapitulation of Ancient India, where in Renaissance and Baroque music we can feel a purity, a direct connection to the divine. There is nothing personal in this early music, it is entirely devotional, like the early Indian times where the spiritual world was taken for granted as surrounding us all the time. Please listen to Sheep May Safely Graze - J. S. Bach:
From 1721 to 2030, Classical, Romantic and Modern music are like a repetition of the gesture of the Ancient Persian culture, where humankind began to struggle with inner and outer, good and evil. The Romantic era is very much about the personal, in the sense of: who am I, and what do I mean? In Persia, for the first time the conflict between dark and light, Ahriman and Ahura Mazdā emerges, and Gilgamesh recognizes the warring parts within himself. Please listen to In a Distant Land - R. Schumann:
I hope you can hear the striking contrast in these two pieces!
One hears in this incredible music the flowering of our cultural times; and it is not surprising that Europe was attacked for it. The brutal events of the 20th century tore European culture apart, and were followed by an influx of materialism which we are still fighting today.
We are taught that in those wars the forces of good prevailed, but what was behind the scenes was an orchestrated plan to subvert the deeper impulse of the age and replace it with external prosperity. This will not work. The crumbling of our culture has served to wake more and more people up to what has value and meaning: beauty, substance and a connection to something higher.
And what of America? Great America, whose true mission lies in the mists of the future, somewhere around 5700 AD - 7900 AD? Why does all the strife and chaos seem centered here, when the current battleground is in Europe, we would think? Do they believe they have already won that one?
The key to understanding future America is in the human will. It is meant to be the epicenter of true brotherhood, of deeds which spring only from love. What are we seeing now? States physically at odds with one another. There is no agreement on the meaning or value of human life or death. Attempts at a vast scale to damage, sterilize and sicken the population, while replacing it with a literal torrent of unknown elements.
The adversary believes all cultural and spiritual impulses can be subverted. That if what is preparing far in advance on the North American continent can be sufficiently destroyed or corrupted, the Philadelphia of the future will never come about.
Such plans may bring about tragedy in the short term, but the aims of the evolutionary plan of the rows upon rows of angels, the majesty of the true archetype of the human being, have power beyond reckoning.
Even here in these United States, where I have to drive 3 hours to see a descent opera, the land is filled with good people who yearn for the truth. They are being pushed to the breaking point by political manipulation but they are far less afraid than you might think. We are already learning the meaning of brotherhood. The seeds of our humanity, planted long ago at the turning point of time, are bearing fruit early.
Hi John,
America is in a state of turmoil, which you are more than suggesting, and yet people we meet seem relatively sane and normal. This doesn't mean they aren't seething beneath the surface of a socially prescribed and behavioral model, and it is having an effect on their psyche. You see, it is America itself that begets the offspring of the Consciousness Soul Age. Central Europe is the focal point for the advent of modern Ego Consciousness, which is expressed in the German language by one word, "I-CH". The Sentient Soul now is expressed in the Italian Folk Soul, the Intellectual Soul by the British and French Folk Souls, and this leaves America to be the advocate of the Consciousness Soul, which is still largely rooted in the ancient oriental system of Yoga, but this is now outdated by today's standards. So, America today is living at the crossroads, or even the cross-hairs of a new spiritual movement that exists, which, indeed, corresponds to the Central Europe core of the "I AM", but has yet to be made known for the good of the Consciousness Soul in America. As you know, it is Anthroposophical Spiritual Science that is needed as a cultural imperative in America, and without it, the future destiny of the Russian Folk Soul is in jeopardy for the future age of Philadelphia, c. 3573 AD, which is designed to give a certain presentiment of the Spirit Self.
Yet, America will get nowhere until it takes up a spiritual cause. It is like Steiner informing his Russian audience in a lecture from June 5, 1913, that Woodrow Wilson has just become the American President, and a conflict will occur between Russia and America that will come to a head by the 1980's. But, the concept of freedom is different between Russia and America. Russia has a vision, based on being a young folk soul, of freedom that is entirely of the spirit, while America is one where freedom is characterized as "a useful cow giving milk and butter". Thus, Steiner tells the Russians in 1913 that America is a "house of cards", which will rise to a certain height of brilliance, and then collapse.
This is quite predictive today, don't you think? Even Wilhelm Reich detected it when he defected to America in 1933. He would come to call it, in the clinical sense, the emotional plague of mankind. And he was looking at American Souls with the deepest compassion. He longed for real consciousness.