We have to consider all human related issues of consciousness and purpose to the relevant stage of human development at this time. W e live in the 5^th Post Atlantean Epoch (5thPAE).  This is the time of the development of the Consciousness Soul. This period follows the epoch of the development of the intellectual or mind soul.  An epoch endures for about 3500 years.  The commencement of the consciousness soul era was 1413 AD. We are therefore 600 years into the period of the consciousness soul.  We have 2900 years to go.

The road to the consciousness soul is paved by the capacities of soul that were developed previously in the time of the intellectual soul.  These are the capacity of reason, analysis and synthesis.  Every human soul today has some of this capacity. This intellectual capacity now needs to be taken forward and connected with morality – Truth, Beauty and Goodness. The question must therefore be, “How do we connect our current intellectual soul capacity to developing further into the consciousness soul era?”

Humanity cannot simply show a new photo of where we are today next to where we have come from some thousands of years previously.  This would be the same as having a picture of a past artist next to that of a modern artwork.  This is not reality. We need to see a series of artworks in time placed next to each other if we wish to see the development of consciousness.  We need to see the merging of the past stream of development as it progresses to the next one. One of the merging – emerging – realities is that we have not had the inner capacity to observe the changes taking place within ourselves.  This is becoming more and more accessible to us.  For example, modern economic activity has emerged out of our intellectual soul capacities together with a capacity to serve others.  This is of course not recognised today, but if one looks at it carefully it is obvious to see.  Modern economy has now run out of any newness because the influence of the consciousness soul has not been grasped by humanity and so the economic impulse has been in some ways deserted of its very essence.

The logic used above is intellectual soul capacity being allowed to work.  It is engaging logic but directed towards some more foundational truths.  This enables us to experience, in thinking, that there are other possible ideas for us to work with. This is the beginning of the self-awareness that will come about as we get to grips with our own freedom of thinking and association of concepts.  We will become aware of many more areas to which thinking can be directed – more areas outside of thinking about material things or only logic.  We will gain insights into the reality of ideas and how we can become aware of what the one-world of ideas wishes us to work with.  In this, new becomes possible.

For any organisation of the future, the critical bridge to cross is the one from intellect to Truth, Beauty and Goodness. The bridge will not disappear once we cross it.  We can always go back and refer to the other side of the bridge.  On that side there is waste, abuse, material wealth versus poverty, privilege versus class and so on. On this new side of the bridge there is far less of that.  There is a broader access to concepts which leads to a more inclusive knowledge of life.  From this, all kinds of changes that align to Truth, Beauty and Goodness will appear.  The material world where it is influenced by human beings will not involve waste, damage, poison, harm, class as being derogatory, and so on.

The bridge will be approached from phenomenology that includes the phenomenology of thought observation.  It will not produce; rather it will receive associations of concepts not previously possible because of humanity’s bondage to the passionate interest we had in the material things of the world – the world as a glorious and capturing material existence. As we build this bridge out of phenomenology – that started with our inner connecting of material and nature perceptions – our capacities so developed will enable us to receive these new idea-associations or conceptual associations that have their origins in Truth, Beauty and Goodness.  This will lead to the changes that we want to see in the world. (Gandhi)

From a more practical perspective, organisations today have the possibility to add more concepts that enables their staff to allow their implicit nature of thinking to engage with.  These concepts should include the basic concepts of spiritual science like the fourfold human being, the threefold human being, the various aspects of the soul including its inherent nature of sympathy and antipathy, its various areas of activity such as sentient, mind and consciousness soul, and its capacities of thinking, feeling and willing.  Then there are the concepts of the evolution of consciousness, karma and destiny, and the Threefold Societal Order.  When we arm ourselves with these foundation-laying concepts for the consciousness soul, we enable ourselves to move forward towards Truth, Beauty and Goodness.

Phenomenology is not a secretive connection to some angelic voice that one is supposed to be able to hear because the nice man next to you wants to hear it. Phenomenology is a process of learning to let oneself connect ‘scientifically’ to clear percepts and or concepts and, recognising that thinking is an implicitly ‘given to us’ inherently correct and lawful capacity, to allow this thinking to connect the percepts or concepts to their rightful relationships. (Here I refer to Goethe’s Theory of Knowledge by Rudolf Steiner 1886).