Rhythms within Rhythms
An Interview, a Clarification, an Announcement
Dear friends,
Last week I was interviewed by Brook DeLorme for her podcast Apophenia Gold, which I thought my subscribers might enjoy.
It was a delight to speak with Brook because of her evident love for, and intimate relationship with, the wisdom of spiritual science.
Listening to the interview later, however, I realized that I needed to clarify some things I said in this interview that on the face of it would sound like a glaring error to anyone with a depth of anthroposophical understanding.
Essentially, around minute 52:20 of this interview Brook asked me about my interest in the significance of the year 2033, and during this conversation I shared the idea that humanity as a whole was in the process of turning 21 years old in the year 2033.
What I want to make clear to my listeners and subscribers is that I am fully aware that from the standpoint of anthroposophy, we are living in the age of the consciousness soul which points to humanity being in the phase of life that we go through in our individual biographies between the ages of 35 and 42!
If you do the math I think it would be accurate to say that humanity as a whole is right now approximately 37 years old from the grand perspective of human evolution.
But it’s important to remember, lest we become too fixed in our thinking, that human evolution is complex, and that there are many sub-rhythms within larger rhythms, during which the same archetypes (and beings) are at work but at a different time.
We know for example, that the Ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions were all re-capitulated within the context of our present earth evolution. This fact can account for many things in Rudolf Steiner’s lectures that can seem confusing or contradictory.
It is from this standpoint that I was suggesting that there is a kind of sub-rhythm within the age of the consciousness soul—a rhythm that is intimately related, though not identical to, the period leading up to age 21.
Another way to think of it is that the grand evolutionary picture of human evolution described by Rudolf Steiner in An Outline of Occult Science and elsewhere, is, from a certain perspective, an archetype (or plan) that lives in the realm of the Father God.
Working into and through this plan, we find, again and again, special interventions and activities on the part of the Christ Being, but these activities work into the Father realm according to somewhat different laws and rhythms.
Rudolf Steiner tells us, for example, that the life of Christ created a completely new rhythm of development in human evolution, which is a rhythm of 33 and 1/3 years resulting from the actual length of the life of Christ Jesus on earth.
It is this 33 and 1/3 year rhythm that sets the stage for the coming of age experience of humanity in our present time, associated with the year 2033, to which I was referring.
If you are curious to learn more about this, dear reader, I would like to warmly invite to a whole talk on the topic of Preparing for the Year 2033, that I am giving (online) for the Faust Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. This talk will take place on April 9 this year and you can learn more about it and register here.
Thank you for listening!
Robert