If you are a Steiner student, you may have run into the concept that the 5th Cultural Epoch, among other tasks, is preparation for the 6th. The 6th Cultural Epoch is described as involving the appearing of a capacity to experience the sufferings of others.
You could also get the idea that it was a task of ours, as students of Spiritual Science, to consciously awaken this “preparation” in some fashion other. It might be completely true that Steiner gave specific instructions for how to do this.
Does this mean this development in preparation requires hearing about it from Steiner? Are those who follow Steiner here ahead of the game, as it were?
Take yourself, in your imagination, to the time of the “sentient soul”, as described by Steiner. Did a person in the Epoch have to know the name to receive the relevant experience? Do human beings in our time need to know the name “consciousness soul”? Do they need something intellectual at all?
The Mystery is the originator and master of what we call multitasking. If we read the social phenomena rightly, we might observe that large numbers of folks, all over the world, are having a direct experience of something they share in common with others. The same worry, the same confusion, the same sudden change of circumstances, with no sign of what the new normal will look like, or if we even get to have any reliable social order at all.
Sympathy for others is the soul-soil from which to birth true empathy. Our minds are not being so much educated, as it is our hearts. Mom really does know best, even if we don’t even remember we have forgotten that “She has the whole world in His Hands”.
Meanwhile, … consider … in my experience, illnesses, at the level of colds and the flu, are actually the first stage of the wisdom of the body healing itself. First the imbalance of humors, as an ancient might say – and still is true today – the dis-ease (aka Stress) as the body forces us to rest, to increase fluids, and support all processes of elimination.
We really need to face the questions that arise when we consider that many will be exposed to the so-called “cause” – the “virus” – large numbers of which will never manifest symptoms, or even have produced “antibodies”. Why does the “virus” not find a suitable environment in such folk. If a bug was truly the cause, everyone would be getting sick. More is at work than “viruses”.
Recall, for a moment, what bothered us before a quite predictable pandemic appears:
Climate change; environmental degradation; nations braying at each other like donkeys; a rich class taking more and more wealth from the workers and consumers; a constant barrage of advertising telling you to buy stuff you don’t need, which has the further virtue of being easily replaceable and is also non-biodegradable; the presidency of the US of A in the hands of a maniac; the czar of the Russians a former KGB thug; billionaires who believe that they earned their good fortune (what a delusion), which then demonstrates their competence to change the world according to personal whim; and, last but not least, why can’t my life be like in the movies.
World events, and general life conditions for human beings, have been getting worse and worse, not better. A whole world of people needing a break from the dis-ease of their complex lives of suffering.
The germ is not the cause, it is only a symptom. We need to get our act together to help each other live lives far less stressful. Some might think that fighting the dark lords of empire is a hopeless cause, … except, that in the US of A, we are about to have millions out of work, millions.
I wrote* about this “army of the unemployed”, which I anticipate will be a self organizing. There are “more of us than there are of them”. Sez so in the movies, from a Bug’s Life to the latest Star Wars IX.
*”Social and Economic Rebellion in an age of social political chaos”
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/joel-wendt/economic-and-social-rebellion/paperback/product-1nqpn9d5.html
Fake Ancient Alien Theorist Foolishly Visits the Collective Imagination 