A lecture given by Rudolf Steiner on March 6, 1911 [102 years ago today]:
The objection is frequently made that
theosophy does not really work its way into the realm of morality. In fact it is
said that through certain of its teachings it in some respects not only does not
counter egotism but furthers it. Those who are of this opinion share the
following thoughts. They say that theosophy demonstrates how the human being
develops his existence from life to life and that the main point is that even if
he suffers defeats he has the possibility of striving ever higher, employing in
a subsequent life the results of what he has learned in a given life as in a
kind of “school.” He who immerses himself completely in this belief in human
perfectibility will strive to render his “I” ever more pure, to make it as rich
as possible, so that he may ascend ever higher and higher. This, so these people
say, is after all really an egotistic striving. For we theosophists, they say,
seek to attract teachings and forces from the spiritual world in order to
elevate our “I” to ever greater heights. This is therefore an egotistic basis
for human action. These people maintain further that we theosophists are
convinced that we prepare a bad karma for ourselves through imperfect actions.
Thus in order not to do so the theosophist will avoid doing this or that which
he would otherwise have done. He therefore refrains from the action for fear of
karma. For the same reason he would probably also do this or that which he
otherwise would not have done, and this too would be but one more quite
egotistic motivation for an action. There are a number of people who say that
the teachings of karma and reincarnation as well as the rest of the striving for
perfection which originates in theosophy leads people to work spiritually for a
refined form of higher egotism. It would actually be a severe reproach if one
were able to maintain that theosophy prompts people to develop moral action not
out of sympathy and compassion but out of fear of punishment. Let us now ask
ourselves whether such a reproach is really justified. We must reach very deeply
into occult research if we wish to refute such a reproach to theosophy in a
really fundamental way.
Let us assume that someone were to
say that if a person does not already possess this striving for perfection,
theosophy will certainly never prompt him to moral actions. A deeper
understanding of what theosophy has to say can teach us that the individual is
related to the whole of humanity in such a way that by acting immorally he not
only does something that may earn him a punishment. It is rather the case that
through an immoral thought, an immoral action, or an immoral attitude he brings about
something really absurd, something that cannot be reconciled with truly healthy
thinking.
The statement has many implications.
An immoral action not only implies a subsequent karmic punishment; it is rather
in the most fundamental respect an action that one definitely ought not to do.
Let us assume that a person commits a theft. In so doing the person incurs a
karmic punishment. If one wishes to avoid this punishment one simply does not
steal. But the matter is still more complicated. Let us ask ourselves what
really motivates the person who lies or steals. The liar or thief seeks personal
advantage — the liar perhaps wishing to wiggle out of an unpleasant situation.
Such an action is only meaningful if one actually does gain an advantage through
lying or stealing. If the person were now to realize that he simply cannot have
that advantage, that he is wrong, that on the contrary he will bring about a
disadvantage, he would then say to himself that it is nonsense even to think
about such an action. As theosophy penetrates ever deeper into human
civilization, people will know that it is absurd, indeed that it is ridiculous,
to believe that through lying or stealing one can acquire what one seeks to
acquire. For one thing will become increasingly clear for all people as
theosophy enters their consciousness: that in the sense of higher causes we have
to do not at all with totally separate human individualities, but that along
with the separate individualities the whole of humanity forms a unity. One will
realize more and more that in the sense of a true view of the world the finger
is more intelligent than the whole man, for it does not presume to be something
on its own, independent of the entire human organism to which it belongs. In its
dull consciousness it knows that it cannot exist without the whole organism.
But people continually embrace
illusions. They fancy themselves separate by virtue of what is enclosed within
their skins. This they are, however, just as little as is the finger without the
whole organism. The source of the illusion is the fact that the human being can
wander about, and the finger cannot. We are in the same situation on Earth as is
the finger on our organism. The science that believes our Earth is a glowing
hot, fluid sphere surrounded by a hard shell upon which we humans walk about,
and that this explains the Earth, stands at the same level as a science that
would believe that in all essential respects the human being consists of nothing
more, nothing else, than his skeleton, for what one perceives of the Earth is the
same as the skeleton in man. The rest of what belongs to the Earth is of a
supersensible nature. The Earth is a real organism, a real living being. When
one pictures to oneself the human being as a living creature, one can think of
his blood with its red and white corpuscles. These can only develop in the
entire human organism and thereby be what they are. What these red and white
blood corpuscles are for the human being, we human beings are for the organism of
the Earth. We definitely belong to this Earth organism. We form a part of the
whole living being that is the Earth, and only then do we view ourselves
correctly when we say: “As single individuals we are nothing. We are only
complete when we think our way into the ‘body’ of the Earth, the body of which
we perceive only the skeleton, the mineral shell, as long as we do not
acknowledge the spiritual members of this Earth organism.”
When a process of infection arises in
the human organism, the entire organism is seized by fever, by illness. If we
translate this into terms applicable to the Earth organism we can say that what
occultism maintains is true: When something immoral is done anywhere on Earth it
amounts to the same thing for the whole Earth organism as a little festering
boil on the human body, which makes the whole organism sick. So that if a theft
is committed on the Earth the result is that the entire Earth develops a kind of
fever. This is not meant merely in a metaphorical sense. It is well-founded. The
whole organism of the Earth suffers from everything immoral, and as individuals
we can do nothing immoral without affecting the whole Earth.
It is really a simple thought, yet
people have a difficult time grasping it. But let those people who do not want
to believe it just wait. Let one try to impress such thoughts upon our culture;
let one try with these thoughts to appeal to the human heart, the human
conscience. Whenever people anywhere act immorally their actions are a kind of
infected boil for the whole Earth and make the Earth organism ill, and
experience would show that tremendous moral impulses inhere in such knowledge.
One can preach morality as much as
one likes; it will not help people one bit. But knowledge such as we have
developed here would not seize hold of people merely as knowledge. If it found
its way into the developing culture, if it streamed into the soul already in
childhood, it would provide a tremendous moral impulse, for in the end no moral
preachments have any real power to overwhelm, to convince, the human soul. Schopenhauer is
quite right when he says that to preach morality is easy but to establish it is
difficult. People have a certain antipathy toward moral preachments. They say,
“What is being preached to me is the will of someone else and I am supposed
simply to acquiesce to it.” This belief will become more and more dominant to
the degree that materialistic consciousness becomes dominant.
One says today that there is a
morality of class, of social standing, and what such a class morality considers
to be right is then applied to the other class. Such an attitude has found its
way into human souls and in the future it will become worse and worse. People
will come increasingly to feel that they themselves want to find
everything that is to be acknowledged as correct in this sphere. They will feel
that it should originate in their own inclination toward objective knowledge.
The human individuality wants to be taken ever more seriously. But at the moment
in which the heart, for instance, were to realize that it too would be sick if
the whole organism became sick, man would do what is necessary in order not to
fall ill. At the moment in which man realizes that he is embedded within the
total organism of the Earth and has no business being a festering boil on the
Earth's body — at that moment there exists an objective basis for morality. And
man will say: “If I steal I am seeking my own personal advantage. I refrain from
stealing because if I do steal I shall make sick the entire organism without
which I cannot live. I do the opposite and thereby bring about something
advantageous not only for the organism but also for myself.”
In the future the moral awareness of
human beings will form itself in this general way. He who, through theosophy,
finds an impetus to moral action will say to himself that it is an illusion to
seek personal advantage through an immoral action. If you do that, you are like
an octopus that ejects a dark fluid: you eject a dark aura of immoral impulses.
Lying and stealing are the seeds of an aura into which you place yourself and
through which you make the whole world unhappy.
People say “All that surrounds us is
maya.” But such truths must become truths for life itself. Let us suppose that
one can demonstrate that through theosophy humanity's moral development in the
future will enable man to see how he wraps himself in an aura of illusions when
he seeks his own advantage. If one can demonstrate this, it will become a
practical truth to say that the world is a maya or illusion. The finger
believes this in its dull, half sleeping, half dreaming consciousness. It is
bright enough to know that without the hand and the rest of the body it is no
longer a finger. The human being today is not yet bright enough to know that
without the body of the Earth he is actually nothing. But he must become
bright enough to know this. The finger therefore enjoys a certain advantage over
man. It does not cut itself off. It does not say “I want to keep my blood for
myself or cut off a portion of myself.” It is in harmony with the whole
organism. Man must, to be sure, develop a higher consciousness in order to come
into harmony with the whole organism of the Earth. In his present moral
consciousness man does not yet know this. He could say to himself “I inhale the
air. It was just outside, and now it is inside the human body. Something
external becomes something internal. And when I exhale, something internal again
becomes something external. And so it is with the whole man.” The human being is
not even aware of the simple fact that separated from the surrounding air he is
nothing. He must undertake to develop an awareness of how he is locked into the
entire organism of the Earth.
How can the human being know: “You
are a member of the whole organism of the Earth”? Theosophy enables him to know
this. It shows man that first there existed a Saturn condition, then a Sun
condition, then a Moon condition. Man was present through all these conditions,
although in a quite different way from today. Then the Earth proceeded from the
old Moon condition. Gradually the human being arose as earthly man. He has a
long development behind him and in the future he is to advance to other stages
of development. Man in his present form has arisen with the Earth in its present
form. When through the study of theosophy one traces how man and the Earth have
arisen it becomes clear in what way man is a part of the whole organism of the
Earth. Then it becomes clear how Earth and man gradually have emerged from a
spiritual life, how the beings of the hierarchies have fashioned Earth and man,
how man belongs to the hierarchies, even though he stands at the lowest stage.
Then theosophy points to the central Being of the entire earthly evolution, to
the Christ as the great archetype of the human being. And from all these
teachings of theosophy the awareness shall spring forth for man: “Thus ought you
to act.”
The science of the spirit shows us
how we can feel ourselves to be a part of the whole life of the Earth. The
science of the spirit shows us that Christ is the Spirit of the Earth. Our
fingers, our toes, our nose, all our members dream that the heart provides them
with blood. They dream that without a central organ they would be nothing, for
without a heart they are not possible. Theosophy shows man that in the future of
earthly evolution it would be folly not to take up the idea of Christ, for what
the heart is for the organism Christ is for the body of the Earth. Just as
through the heart the blood provides the whole organism with life and strength,
so must the Being of Christ have moved through all single souls on Earth, and
the words of St. Paul must become truth for them: “Not I, but the Christ in me.”
The Christ must have flowed into all human hearts. Whoever wanted to say “One
can continue to exist without Christ” would be as foolish as eyes and ears if
they wanted to say that they could continue to exist without the heart. In the
case of the single human body the heart must of course be present from the
beginning, whereas the heart entered the organism of the Earth only with the
Christ. For the following ages, however, this heart's blood of Christ must have
entered all human hearts. He who does not unite himself with it in his soul
will wither away. The Earth will not wait with its development; it will come to
the point to which it must come. Human beings alone can remain behind, that is,
they would balk at receiving Christ in their souls. A number of human beings
would stand there in their last incarnation on Earth and not have reached the
goal: they have not recognized Christ, have not received Christ-feeling,
Christ-knowing into their souls. They are not mature. They do not take their
places in the development to higher stages. They separate themselves off.
Such people do not immediately have
the opportunity to collapse completely as would the nose and ears if they
detached themselves from the whole human organism. But occult research shows
that the following would happen to those who do not want to permeate themselves
with the Christ element, the life of Christ, as this can be attained only
through theosophy. Instead of living on upwards with the Earth to new levels of
existence, they would have assimilated substances of decay, of disintegration,
and would first have to enter upon other paths. If in the sequence of
incarnations human souls take up the Christ into their knowledge, their
feelings, their whole soul, the Earth will fall away from these human souls just
as a corpse falls away at a person's death. The corpse of the Earth will fall
away and that which, permeated with Christ, is present in a state of spirit and
soul will proceed to form itself into new existence and will reincarnate itself
on Jupiter.
What will happen now with those
people who have not taken the Christ into themselves? Through theosophy they
will have abundant opportunities to be able to recognize the Christ, to be able
to take the Christ into themselves. Today people still resist doing so. They
will resist less and less. But let us assume that at the end of the development
there were those who even then continued to resist. There would then exist a
number of people who could not join the rest in advancing to the next planet.
They would not have reached the actual goal of the Earth. These people would
constitute a veritable cross on that planet upon which human beings will then
develop further. For while this group will be incapable of sharing in the
experience of the actual and proper Jupiter condition and what develops there,
they will nevertheless be present on Jupiter. Everything that is subsequently
material is first present in a spiritual state. Thus everything that people now,
during the period of the Earth, develop spiritually in the way of immorality, of
a refusal to take the Christ into themselves, is first present in a
soul-spiritual state. But this will become material. It will surround and
penetrate Jupiter as a neighboring element. This will be made up of the
successors of those persons who did not take the Christ into themselves during
the Earth condition. What the soul develops in the nature of immorality, of
resistance to the Christ, will then be present materially, in an actually
physical state. While the physical part of those people who have taken the
Christ into themselves will exist in a finer form on Jupiter, the physical part
of these other people will be fundamentally coarser. Occult research paints
before the eye of the soul an image of what will be the future of the people who
will not have reached earthly maturity.
We now breathe air. On Jupiter there
will in essence be no air. Instead, Jupiter will be surrounded by a substance
that, in comparison to our air, will be something refined, something etheric. In
this substance those human beings will live who have reached the goal of the
Earth. Those others who have remained behind, however, will have to breathe
something like a repulsively warm, boiling, fiery air infused with a dank
stuffiness full of fetid odors. Thus the people who did not attain the maturity
appropriate to the Earth will be a cross for the other Jupiter people, for they
will have a pestilent effect in the environment, in the swamps and other land
masses of Jupiter. The fluid-physical components of the bodies of these people
will be comparable to a liquid which constantly seeks to solidify, freezes up,
coagulates. Consequently these beings will not only have this horrendous air to
breathe but also a bodily state in which the blood would seem continually to
congeal, to cease to remain fluid. The actual physical body of these beings will
consist of a kind of slimy substance more revolting than the bodily substance of
our present snails and fully equipped to secrete something like a kind of crust
surrounding them. This crust will be softer than the skin of our present snakes,
like a kind of soft scaly armor. Thus will these beings live in a rather less
than appealing manner in the elements of Jupiter.
Such a picture as that contemplated
in advance by the occult researcher is ghastly to behold. But woe to those who,
like the ostrich, do not want to look at the danger and wish to shut their eyes
before the truth. For it is just this that lulls us into error and illusion,
while a bold look at the truth imparts the greatest moral impulses. If human
beings listen to what truth says to them they will feel “You are lying.” Then
there will arise in them an image of the effect of this lie upon human nature in
the Jupiter condition, the image that shows that the lie creates a slimy,
pestilent breath for the future. This image, arising again and again, will be a
reason to direct the impulses of the soul to what is healthy, for no one who
really knows the consequences of immorality can in truth be immoral, for one is
called upon to teach the true consequences that result from the causes. One
should in fact direct people's attention to them while they are still children.
Immorality exists only because people have no knowledge. Only the darkness of
untruth makes immoral actions possible.
To be sure, what can thus be said
concerning the connection between immorality and ignorance should not be
intellectual knowledge but wisdom. Knowledge by itself participates in
immorality and if it turns into sophisticated cleverness it can even be roguery,
while wisdom will affect the human soul in such a way that the soul rays forth
truth, innermost morality.
My dear friends, it is true that to
establish morality is difficult; to preach morality is easy. To establish
morality means to establish it out of wisdom, and one must first have this
wisdom. Here we see that it was after all a rather intelligent utterance on the
part of Schopenhauer when he said that to establish morality is difficult.
Thus we see how unfounded it is when
people who do not really know theosophy come and say that it contains no moral
incentives. Theosophy shows us what we accomplish in the world when we do not
act morally. It provides wisdom, and from this very wisdom morality streams
forth. There is no greater arrogance than to say that one need only be a good
person and all will be in order. The trouble is that one must first know how one
goes about really being a good person. Our contemporary consciousness is very
arrogant when it wishes to reject all wisdom. True knowledge of the good
requires that we penetrate deeply into the mysteries of wisdom, and this is
inconvenient, for it requires that we learn a great deal.
So when people come and tell us that
reincarnation and karma lay the foundation for an egotistical morality we can
thus reply: “No! True theosophy shows man that when he does something immoral it
is roughly the same as if he were to say ‘I'm taking a sheet of paper to write
a letter,’ and then takes a match and sets fire to the sheet of paper. That
would be grotesque nonsense. A person finds himself in the same situation with
respect to a wrong action or an immoral attitude.”
To steal means the same thing for the
real, deeper human essence as when one lies. If one steals, one plants into the
essential human being the seed that will cause one to develop a slimy, repulsive
substance and to surround oneself with pestilential odors in the future. Only if
one lives in the illusion that the truth is in the present moment can one do
such a deed. In stealing, man places into himself something that amounts to the
same thing as a flaying of the human being. If man knows this he will no longer
be able to do an immoral deed; he will not be able to steal. Just as the plant
seed sends forth blossoms in the future, so too will theosophy, if it is planted
in the human soul, send forth human blossoms, human morality. Theosophy is the
seed, the soul is the nourishing ground, and morality is the blossom and fruit on
the plant of the developing human being.
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