The New Age – the Second Coming

The True Nature of the Second Coming

 – According to Steiner

We are in the time of the Second Coming, the meeting of Christ in the Etheric, and not on the brink of the Abyss, what is happening now is two thousand years old karma and the powers of darkness is worn out, they are only a lesser disturbance for the Christ powers now forming in the outer world. Through the next 2500 years humankind will work to meet Christ in the etheric. This is the Golden Age Krishna said would start at this time. This text is from The Old Souls in the History of Earth ~KimGM

The following text are from The Second Coming of Christ in the Etheric World, Lecture II, by Rudolf Steiner:

Kali Yuga

The last three millennia prior to the founding of Christianity belong to an epoch in the history of human evolution called the Dark Age, the lesser Dark Age — Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga began in the year 3101 B.C.

With it is connected everything we recognise nowadays as the great achievements of humanity, as the fundamental characteristics of present-day culture.

Before this Dark Age, before Kali Yuga, all human thinking, all the powers of the human soul, were in a certain respect differently organised.

The year 3101 B.C. is an approximate date, for in the process of development qualities of one kind passed over gradually into others; but before that time the last vestiges of ancient clairvoyance were still present. In the course of evolution the sequence of the ages is: Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, Kali Yuga. It is the last that is of particular interest to us to-day. …

The Descending Abraham Epoch

… we call the first millennium of Kali Yuga the Abraham-epoch; it was the epoch when man did, it is true, lose the direct vision of the spiritual worlds, but when there unfolded in him something like a consciousness of the Divine which gradually made its way more and more deeply into his ego, with the result that he came to conceive of the Deity as related to human ego-consciousness.

In the first millennium of Kali Yuga — which at its conclusion we can call the Abraham-epoch — the Deity is revealed as the World-Ego.

The Descending Moses Epoch

This Abraham-epoch was followed by the Moses-epoch, when the God Jahve, the World-Ego, was no longer revealed in the form of a mysterious guidance of human destinies, as a God of a single people; in the Moses-epoch this Deity was revealed, as we know, in the burning bush, as the God of the Elements.

And it was a great advance when, through the teachings of Moses, the World-Ego as the Deity was experienced in such a way that men realised: the Elements of manifested existence, all that is seen with physical eyes — lightning, thunder, and so on — are emanations, deeds of the World-Ego, ultimately of the one World-Ego.
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You know that when we rise into the spiritual worlds we find there the Hierarchies of spiritual Beings. They, naturally, are under a unified guidance, but this was beyond the grasp of consciousness in those ancient times. Men beheld the individual members of the Hierarchies, a multiplicity of Divine Beings. To grasp them as a unity was possible only for the Initiates.

But now the World-Ego, grasped for the first time by man himself with the physical instrument of the brain — a faculty that had developed in a specially marked way in Abraham — confronted him, and he conceived the World-Ego as manifesting in the different kingdoms of Nature, in the Elements.

The Descending Solomon Epoch

A further advance was made in the last millennium before the founding of Christianity, in the Solomon-epoch.
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… we are led through this last epoch to that point in evolution where the same Divine Being whom the Abraham-epoch and the Moses-epoch, too, beheld in Jahve, where the same Divine Being takes on human form.
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A repetition of these three pre-Christian ages takes place in the Christian era, but now in reverse order.

The Ascending Solomon Epoch

The essential and fundamental trend of the Solomon-epoch is repeated in the first thousand years after Christ, in that the spirit of Solomon lives and is active as an impulse in the most outstanding minds of the first Christian millennium.

And fundamentally speaking it was the wisdom of Solomon through which men endeavoured to grasp the nature and essence of the Christ Event.

The Ascending Moses Epoch

Then, following the Solomon-epoch, came the era that can be called the revival of the Moses-epoch … and in the second millennium after Christ the best minds of this era are permeated by the spirit of Moses.

The spirit of Moses does indeed come to life again in a new form. In the pre-Christian age the spirit of Moses had been directed towards the outer world of physical Nature in order to find the Divine World-Ego as Jahve, the World-Ego manifesting in lightning and thunder, in the great revelation from the Elements of laws for men.

Whereas the World-Ego streams into Moses from outside, is revealed from outside, in the second millennium after Christ the same Divine Being announces Himself within the soul.

The experience which came to Moses as an outer happening when he withdrew from his people in order to receive the Decalogue this significant happening is repeated in the second Christian millennium in the form of a mighty revelation from within man. …

The Ascending Abraham Epoch

But the course of the evolution of humanity is such that from our time onwards a renaissance of the Abraham-epoch will take place as we pass slowly into the third millennium.

… We are moving towards the Abraham-epoch, and this will inevitably bring momentous consequences in its train.

… But on the other hand, in the new Abraham-epoch exactly the opposite path is taken — the path Which leads humanity away from vision confined to the physical and material, away from intellectual inferences based upon material data.

We are moving along the path leading into the regions where men once dwelt in times before the Abraham-epoch. It is the path that will make states of natural clairvoyance possible for man, states in which natural clairvoyant forces will be in active operation. …

The New Age – Dvapara Yuga

We are passing into the Abraham-epoch and are being led out into the spiritual world. This means that it will be possible for a certain number of human beings, and more and more in the next two thousand five hundred years, to experience a repetition of the event of Damascus.

The Return of Christ – Meeting in the Etheric

The great and momentous feature of the coming era will be that many human beings will experience this event. The Christ, now to be found in the spiritual sphere of the earth, will be perceptible to those faculties which, as we have said, will make their appearance.

When men become able to see the etheric body, they will learn to see the etheric body of Christ Jesus, as did Paul. This is what is beginning as the characteristic trait of a new age, and between the years 1930-40-45 it will already become evident in the first forerunners of human beings possessed of these faculties.

If men are alert they will experience this event of Damascus through direct spiritual vision and therewith clarity and truth concerning the Christ Event. A remarkable parallelism of happenings will come about.

… the Event of Golgotha was an event that affected not only the physical world; its influences reached into all the spiritual worlds.

Christ’s descent into the underworld was an actual fact and the effects of the Christ Event that is to take place in our century will also work — though not in the same form as on earth — into the world in which man lives between death and rebirth.

We are on Earth Purposefully

But there is one essential. The faculties by means of which men will be able, between death and rebirth, to behold the Christ Event, cannot be acquired in that world; they must be acquired on the physical plane and carried from there into the life between death and a new birth.

There are faculties which must be acquired on the earth, for we have not been placed on the physical earth for nothing.

It is an error to believe that there is no purpose in living on the earth. Faculties have to be acquired there that can be acquired in no other world — they are the faculties for understanding the Christ Event and the events that will follow it.

Those human beings who now develop these faculties on the earth through the teachings of Spiritual Science will carry them through the gate of death.

It is not through Initiation only, but through a clear-minded acceptance of spiritual-scientific knowledge, that the faculties are acquired which make it possible also to be aware of the Christ Event in the spiritual world between death and a new birth.

The reappearance of Moses, Abraham, et.al.

From The Event of Christ’s Appearance in the Etheric World, Lecture I

It will be of the utmost importance to recognise and understand this event of Christ’s Appearance, for it will be followed by other events.

Just as other happenings preceded the Christ Event in Palestine, so will those who prophetically foretold His coming follow Him after the time referred to, after He Himself has become visible to mankind again in the etheric body.

The preparers of His coming will be recognisable in a new form to men who have experienced the new Christ Event. Those who lived on earth as Moses, Abraham and the Prophets will be recognisable once again.

And it will be known that just as Abraham preceded Christ as a preparer, he also takes over the mission, after Christ’s coming, of being a helper in His work. Thus a man who does not sleep through the event of supreme importance in the immediate future gladly finds his way into fellowship with all those who, as the Patriarchs, preceded the Christ Event; he allies himself with them.

The whole choir of those to whose level we shall thus be able to rise is again revealed. The one who led mankind downwards to the physical plane appears again after Christ and leads men upwards again, unites them again with the spiritual worlds.

The Platonic Stream and the Michael Age

The new Michael Age started in 1879 with Michael raising to Archai, a spirit of time and personality, where he from being the face of God became the face of Christ. It simply means that his I AM became the soul of Christ.

In 1899 Kali Yuga ended and in the start of the twentieth century the return of Christ began and he descended slowly into the earth sphere through the century to enter the hearts of humanity and end materialism.

Rudolf Steiner tried to speed this up by bringing a number of people through the initiation in an attempt to hinder the darkness that came the following years, but he failed in this, and predicted that it would then take hundred years before it was possible again, which is now.

Rudolf Steiner, from Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume VI:

Since the last third of the nineteenth century we have been living in the initial stage of the new reign of Michael; throughout this time, and above all in our own day, preparation has to be made for what must come to pass in the twentieth century.

For before the end of this present century a considerable number of human beings who have unfolded real understanding of Anthroposophy will have passed through a briefer period between death and rebirth than is usual and will again be united on the Earth under the leadership of those who were the Masters of Chartres [the Platonic stream] and with those who have remained in direct connection with the sovereignty of Michael [the Aristotelian Stream].

This will take place in order that under the spiritual guidance of these two groups of beings the final, hallowed impulse may be given for the development of the spiritual life on Earth [a synthesis of the Platonic and Aristotelian stream].

Procrastination as Self Defence

Procrastination is nearly seen as the worst sin ever, but I think this is an error.

I think procrastination is a self defense against a materialistic world that want you to use your time with many for you meaningless things.

Work today is for most people paid slavery where they use a large part of the day working with things that don’t interest them, with no influence or creativity, simply mindless assembly line work.

It is said we should put our fate in God’s hand, this is actually what procrastination is about.

I have been a master procrastinator all of my life. In childhood I didn’t do much family work, and was allowed not to, my familys world was theirs, and my world mine, and I was extremely good at finding interesting things to do myself.

The same in school, I was extremely bad at preparing schoolwork, everything that didn’t interest me I shunned. What interested me I learned, but in my tempo, I didn’t follow the curriculum. The school wasn’t as lenient as my parents though.

I didn’t know what I wanted to make a living by, so I stayed in school as long as possible. In high school I learned to program an Olivetti table computer, and now I knew what I should, computer science! If I had gone in panic I may have ended up with something I would have hated.

The jobs I got came my way, I didn’t apply for them. I have applied for one job, but it wasn’t what I wanted, so I said no when talking with them. I didn’t get in panic if I was out of job, I just waited, there always came a job that nearly was spot on what I dreamed about. My dreams I see as my higher I’s preparing me to say yes when the possibility came.

Every place I have worked have been preordained as I had shared karma with the people working there, it was not some random happening.

I think most stress and depression comes when we don’t follow our common sense, where I think procrastination belongs, when we do things we shouldn’t do, where we do what others think we should, follow other’s plans, without we ourself have any real influence.

I think that the older the souls the more they try not to make trivial and meaningless jobs and studies.

There will of course be things we have to do, the solution is to make it interesting, become interested. If I am inspired I can make anything, if not, nothing.

This is a fine description of procrastination, but without my musings above.

See also Life is easy, why do we make it so hard?

Reincarnation Research from an Esoteric View

One problem within esoteric research is the belief that clairvoyant faculties are needed, but that is not necessary within most areas if there are enough leads through accessible sources, it’s a question about eyes that have learned to see.

The following methods are useful both with and without clairvoyant faculties, as deeper detective work may be needed to find where to look.

A prerequisite is that we need to get the necessary understanding within the area we want to research, an intuitive recognition of the person.

All physical activity tells about the spiritual reality behind it. It gives us knowledge we need to create the necessary hypothesis for the project. Many things we may think of as small details may contain vital information. Steiner leaves many small curious details in his texts that are difficult to interpret, but they are puzzle pieces that connects to other puzzle pieces.

Let’s take reincarnations research. It’s complicated as a great understanding of the souls involved is necessary if it should not be a guessing game. Many try without having the patience to make the necessary research, so they design a guessing system instead.

It’s actually a little like a criminal investigation where we create a profile to work on, like:

💫We create puzzle pieces with every bit of archetypal information we have on the incarnating soul.

💫Then we look for candidates matching this profile and we look for logical dependencies between the incarnations.

This is like putting puzzle pieces together, a picture is needed to make the theory possible. We are looking for the underlying patterns, morphological forms.

This is of course only possible if we have to do with persons who have a large footprint in history, like Arjuna, Gilgamesh, Zarathustra, Hiram Abiff, Socrates, Alexander the Great, Hypatia, Joan of Arc or Christian Rosenkreutz.

If we are looking at our own incarnations I think we need to have special knowledge about our own previous incarnation to get an intuitive understanding of our archetype and mission. With this information we may find even earlier incarnations.

Through Contemplative Inquiry we may find a starting point, if the spiritual world agree in your quest. It’s also possible, in the state of half-sleep, to ask if we have lived in a given year. The response can be given as Yes, No or a YesNo, for death or birth year. YesNo sounds like Yes and No is said at the same time, not as following each other.

Rudolf Steiner have written about the understanding of the individual, that the details is significant for understanding the personality:

We shall not easily find our way into the innermost nature of karmic connections if we do not pay attention — with the eye of the soul, of course — to the particular mannerisms of an individual.

Believe me, for the study of karma it is just as important to be interested in a gesture of the hand as in some great spiritual talent. It is just as important to be able to observe — from the spiritual side (astral body and ego) — how a man sits down on a chair as to observe, let us say, how he discharges his moral obligations. If a man is given to frowning, to knitting his brow, this may be just as important as whether he is virtuous or the reverse.

Much that in ordinary life seems to be quite insignificant is of very great importance when we begin to consider destiny and observe how it weaves its web from life to life; while many a thing in this or the other human being that appears to us particularly important becomes of negligible significance,

Generally speaking, it is not, as you know, very easy to pay real attention to bodily peculiarities. They are there and we must learn to observe them naturally without wounding our fellow-men — as we certainly shall do if we observe merely for observation’s sake. That must never be. Everything must arise entirely of itself.

When, however, we have trained our powers of attention and perception, individual peculiarities do show themselves in every human being, peculiarities which may be accounted trifling but are of paramount importance in connection with the study of karma.

A really penetrating observation of human beings in respect of their karmic connections is possible only when we can discern these significant peculiarities. From Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume I.

See also On Spiritual Research – Practical Guidelines

Multitasking versus Tunnelvision

Men and women think differently, and it’s the force of humanity. But the younger souls have problems spanning the gab, where the older souls have both kinds of thinking, although their own genders capabilities is supreme.

Woman think in space where men think in time, woman have wide-angle lens where men have a zoom objective, or as seen from women: multitasking versus tunnel vision😃

It means that women are much more detail oriented than men, or at least put more emphasis on details, where men have a tendency to overlook details. Men are much more interested in consequences, in planning, and it may have been men who created the Spanish word Manyana.

In old societies it was usually the woman who took care of the village, where the men were hunters or fighters. The men could hunt a large animal for days or weeks until it was tired enough to be killed. When they returned to the village with the prey, they didn’t do anything before the next hunt was necessary or a skirmish with their neighbor village. The woman took care of the daily details of the village, and each day were as the next.

Today the woman in Africa start small shops and business, as its a natural continuation of their previous care taking of the village. The men have more difficulties finding their place in a materialistic society.

Old Souls and Periods in Life by Peter Deunov

I give a description of what an old soul is in the first part, followed by extracts from texts by Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno) on old souls and periods in life and concluding with a quote by Rudolf Steiner to show their connection.

On Old Souls

The old souls live most of their lives without knowing other old souls, actually feeling quite alone and different, even as a paria, often as a servant and underpaid teacher.

They long for company, but are usually disappointed as few understand their thoughts, so they actually feel good alone creating art or making their work to art.

They have of course a karmic relation to the people around them, they have followed them a long time, although some have left and others have come to their group. They have love for them, but they long for a love that are as strong as their own.

If the old souls met each other when they were young, they wouldn’t feel alone, they wouldn’t feel different as they had each other to mirror in. The biggest danger would be if they simply forgot the younger souls and only played with each other, it’s much more fun, they could enjoy each other’s creative ideas.

The old souls learns meekness through feeling different, learns to be a servant, as they know what to do, what the young souls don’t. It’s easier to do it themselves than instruct others.

They are born with love in their soul, they care. But they have to learn to give help to self help, that they can’t handle others problems, others karma, they can’t save the world, bear the burden of the world alone.

Their low self esteem makes them ready to give their life for others, makes them sacrifice their own happiness for others. Happiness are often a dream for them, not necessarily something they have experienced.

But when they sacrifice their life for others they actually make the young soul to an ungrateful junkie of their service.

The largest problem for the old soul is to understand that they are lovable, because they are! Their soul is beauty, truth and loving care, it’s the stuff the soul consists of.

It’s actually a tragedy as most old souls are loved by their surroundings, but they don’t see it, they have been alienated through so many years. They can’t believe it, even when seeing it, and they often obstruct others when they try to show affection or love, not to be disappointed.

They have many problems getting anima and animus loving each other, thought, feelings and inspiration to understand each other, loving their own physical manifestation in the world, filling their heart with joy, love and courage.

Kim Graae Munch

The old souls By Peter Deunov

“There are hints about the New Humanity in the New Testament and specially in Revelation. The Evangelist John, two thousand years ago, saw the woman pregnant with this great idea, the New Humanity, and fixed the number of the chosen ones, the bearers of this idea at 144 000 persons. If you add these numbers 1+4+4 = 9, the number 9 signifies an evolution of men who have all the positive, noble qualities.

Some would say that these l44 000 persons are in heaven. No, they are now here, on earth; they are incarnated among the intelligent people. Some of them are writers; others, poets or men of science; and all of them push humanity forward on the path toward the new idea, toward the Divine.
These are the enemies of darkness, of the fetters that enchain humanity. And the world-wide unrest, this great change that is coming, is due to them. They will turn this world upside down.”

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In the spiritual world, old age is determined by the number of times when a person was reborn on Earth. Suppose that one was reborn 500 times for 100 years – 50,000 years. He is an adult.[😄 They are few that incarnate 500 times, even 50 times is many, but the meaning is clear.]

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• Everyone, who does not move, is old, and everyone, who moves is young.
• Everyone, who does not think is old, and everyone, who thinks, is young.
• Everyone, who does good, is young, and everyone, who does not do good, is old.
• Youth and old age – these are internal psychological states in humans.

Dissatisfaction in people is old age, and satisfaction in people is youth. Joy is youth, and sorrow – old age. Health is youth, and disease is old age. Wealth is old age, and poverty is youth. One, who is sluggard, is old, and diligent people are young. Diligence is youth, idleness is old age.

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At the age of 33, consciously or unconsciously, people enter a more spiritual life. They find an internal balance.

Youth can be compared to the process of involution, to going down into the matter. This process continues until the age of 33. From the 33rd year onwards, the evolutionary process, the ascending begins. And this process continues for about 33 years.

You have to come to that consciousness, in which you will not get old anymore. When you get to the age of 33, you shall not get older. When you come to the age of 33, you will keep yourself in the way you are at that moment and you will remain young as long as you wish.
Once you learn to love, you will not get older. You will be young, 33 years old. When you grow old, you will take off your old skins and you will rejuvenate in this way.

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There is a period of 7 years. Conditions change every 7 years.

• From the 1st to 7th year – it is a child.
• From the 7th to 14th year – it is already the second phase; feelings start to develop.
• From the 14th to 21st year – the mind develops within these 7 years.

In other words, the body grows during the first 7 years. Children, in general, love to eat, they serve their stomachs.
During the second seven years they serve their hearts.

In the third seven years they begin to think a little. That is why students from 14th to 21st year become poets.

At high school, almost all of them write poems.

• From the 21st to 28th year they become rational.

Things repeat. From the 28th year on, you are in the fourth period. You enter the utmost limit. You are in the causal world. All possibilities are there.
Young children get sick when they start teething. Then inflammation occurs and temperature increases. Girls, at the age of 14, pass through certain painful conditions again. So, in all transitional periods, humans pass through painful conditions, and namely: from the 2nd to the 7th year, from 7-14, from 15-21, from 21-28, from 28-35, etc.

• From the 1st to 7th year, one passes through the state of growing – a child does not go away from home.
• From 7th to 14th year, one passes through the phase of an animal – he begins to move freely and goes away from home.
• From 14th to 21st year, one begins to think, enters the phase of true human.
• From age of 21 to 42, one again passes successively through all these seven years, through these three phases:
• from the age of 21 to 28, one is again in the phase of growing.
• From the age of 28 to 35, one is again in the phase of an animal and from the age of 35 to 42 – in the phase of human.

The first seven years you are in the physical world, the second seven years you are in the astral world, the third seven years – in the mental world, and the fourth seven years – in the causal world. You will pass through these worlds up.

As after 49 years you will be given conditions for something to be repeated for you. If something is not done, the same conditions will be given for you to do what you have missed. If you do not do it again, after 49 years you will have the same conditions. Twice in life you are given conditions for something. So, one is smart if he uses the first conditions.

​Rudolf Steiner on Age 

In future, human beings, the older they get, will need to take in spiritual impulses if they want to be able to grow younger and younger and really develop their inner life. If they do so, they may have grey hair and wrinkles and all kinds of infirmities, but they will get younger and younger, for their souls are taking in impulses which they will take with them through the gate of death.

People who relate only to the body cannot grow younger, for their souls will share in everything the body experiences. Of course, it will not be possible to change the habit of going grey, but it is possible for a grey head to gain a young soul from the wellsprings of spiritual life. This is how human evolution will proceed in the fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean ages in terms of Darwin’s grey-haired theory, if you will forgive the expression.

But in order to go through the catastrophe which is comparable to the earth’s death — the catastrophe lying ahead — people must gain the power of youth which lies in Goetheanism, in the theory of metamorphosis and of spiritual evolution. This has to be taken through the future catastrophe, just as in the case of the individual the rejuvenated soul is taken through the gate of death.

Rudolf Steiner: Spirits of Light and the Spirits of Darkness.