By the future sixth epoch, the spiritual world will be much more visible, which necessitates that humanity move past any belief systems based on materialism alone, whether on an individual or state level.
Our fifth epoch will be followed by another, the sixth. This sixth epoch will see the development of brotherhood among men, clairvoyance and creative power. [1]
The time when human progress was made possible through the constant refinement of the physical forces is already over. In the future, too, humankind will progress, but only through spiritual development, through development on a higher level than that of the processes of the physical plane. [2]
A futile agenda in the East
The push for regime change in Iran to bring about secularization, or by subverting the integrity of the Iranian state in an attempt to balkanize the region into smaller ethnic states, indicates motives contrary to the evolutionary current.
It is not a matter of being "pro theocracy"; Secularism as we know it will soon become obsolete, simply because the spiritual will become an active and visible principle in human existence. However, the complete personal freedom conceived of in Western society may also be challenged in this way.
This significant change will be heralded by a geopolitical shift of power from the West to the East, hence why it has never been possible to export Western liberalism there— it would impede the future development and tasks of people in this region.
The sixth cultural age, the Slavic, also happens to be a repetition on a higher level of the second cultural age, the Persian. It is no coincidence that as we transition to the sixth, the theme of Persia becomes increasingly significant and a stronger relationship develops between Iran and Russia.
The way the US, and particularly Israel, have pushed for ethnocentrism in the region (e.g. separate state for Kurds, Baloch, etc.) is also anathema to the spirit of the sixth epoch. It is a desperate measure to keep an obsolete form alive.
The time for founding empires based on relationships of blood and race is past and over in the evolution of mankind.
If an appeal is made today to national, racial, and similar relationships, to relationships arising out of the intellect and not out of the spirit, then disharmony among humankind will be intensified. [2]
During the descending arc of evolution, humanity took on heredity as its predominant attribute, which was necessary at that stage. However, this does not apply as strongly today (but it is not a non-factor), since the individual power of the human soul has become the main province of development.
An over-identification with heredity now is misplaced and leads to a spirit of division. It is the resistance to inevitable change that contributes to many world conflicts.
When what is especially good at one time or another strives to be preserved, to become rigid and thus curb the progress of further development, then, without doubt, it becomes evil. [3]
In the proper course of evolution, the spirit of the nation supersedes that of the tribe, which is eventually superseded by the spirit of humanity as a whole. Nations like Iran and Russia have already recognized religious and ethnic pluralism without allowing separatist forms to arise.
Materialism has expired and has no more future prospects that contribute positively to human evolution. There are, however, negative developments, such as artificial intelligence.
The culmination of the materialistic world view lies in the middle or in the last third of the nineteenth century. [4]
This truth is particularly evident in the Middle East, hence why religiosity has been preserved there more strongly.
In the Middle Countries and the East, where, in place of an order that had been imbued with materialism, a state of chaos is now developing…
The world in the near future will give men very, very little through the purely physical plane. The blessings of the physical plane will truly not be great in the Middle and the Eastern countries. [5]
Techno-marxism: the emerging danger
Though the shift of geopolitical power may shift to the East, this does not mean automatically materialism will be abandoned. Highly materialistic societies exist outside the West, in particular China after the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
Today, Chinese society is mostly atheistic, but is collectivistic as opposed to individualistic. From an esoteric point of view, collectivist ideologies, such as communism, are an attempt to accomplish spiritual aims through material means, and are a miscarriage of the evolutionary process.
What is today called socialism exists only as an abortive and impossible experiment, as a final, I may say desperate, struggle in a receding wave of humanity's [development]. It cannot bring about any really positive result. What it sets out to achieve, can only be achieved through living activity; the pillar of strength is not enough.
Socialism can no longer be controlled with inanimate forces. The ideas of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, fraternity were the last ideas to flow out of the inanimate. Everything that still runs on that track is fruitless and doomed to die. [6]
The technocratic movement, which is trans-national, has been able to integrate into different political systems, one result of which has been techno-marxism, which is also inspired by the "alluring" idea of technological utopianism.
The welding together of the human nature with the mechanical nature will be a problem of great significance for the remainder of earthly evolution. [7]
When humanity becomes clairvoyant
Lovers of ease…would fall prey to his magic [Ahriman], for by means of these stupendous magic arts he would be able to make great numbers of human beings into seers—but in such a way that the clairvoyance of each individual would be strictly differentiated.What one person would see, a second and a third would not see. Confusion would prevail and in spite of being made receptive to clairvoyant wisdom, men would inevitably fall into strife on account of the sheer diversity of their visions. [8]
In the Orient there will take place the development more of ahrimanic-luciferic spiritual states; in the West there will be the development more of ahrimanic-luciferic economic life—if man does not realise through the permeation of his being by Christ how he can avoid this. [9]
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1. GA 94, Paris, 14 June 1906: An Esoteric Cosmology XVIII. The Apocalypse