I offer up my ruminations today on Rudolf Steiner’s lecture on Evil and the Power of Thought At the Center of Man’s Being, the lecture quoted in the last post and found here.
The ego is forged out of forces of destruction. There is a very fury of destruction and chaos within each of us, and we owe the development of our “I” to that power. Only through this power of destruction are thoughts able to enter in and “kill” our etheric body, thus giving us the capacity for consciousness, which in turn offers us a realm for freedom.
We must learn to know this center of destruction within us. We must not allow it to extrude itself into outer civilization, causing evil and chaos.
We must learn to understand, even to love, this force of destruction within us. For without it, we would not be developing our “I,” and thus would never attain consciousness in spiritual worlds. There is a paradox Steiner presents. The ego must be forged out of these forces of destruction, yet this ego cannot enter spiritual realms. It must be completely sacrificed. Only the ego permeated with love is able to live in spiritual realities. Yet only that which has been carefully built up is worthy of sacrifice. Thus, we must with great effort build up a strong vessel out of the forces of destruction, then completely empty out this vessel, and offer up the vessel in love to the spiritual world. This is true spiritual alchemy.
Steiner also refers to a great mystery: “Spirit must exist, and for the sake of the maintenance of the spirit matter may be extinguished.” I believe this can also be taken on a very literal level. Matter exists as a realm for beings to evolve and develop; it exists as an arena for humans to develop their “I.” There is a very palpable sense of resistance in the very nature of the material world. Yet materialism must be overcome if we are to ascend to spiritual worlds. Matter may be extinguished for the preservation of spirit, quite literally. I believe that the human being contains within his developing ego the power of nuclear fission, the power to obliterate matter (and along with this, the power of creation). This power will become readily available within individual human beings only in the very far distant future, yet the forces of destruction already have the upper hand in earthly evolution, and will continue to increase. In order to ensure that these forces can lead humanity to ascent, we must fully develop the forces of love. We must consciously dedicate as much energy to building up moral forces as we do to building up consciousness itself; each act of cognition must become an act of love.
A time will come in the far distant future when the earth as we know it will require dissolution. We will participate in the destruction of our universe as we know it. Yet this destruction is necessary for a new form of existence which will allow future evolution and progress. Powers of destruction are just as important as powers of growth and life. Without the obliteration of the past in every moment, the future could not come into being in the present.
We must learn to love evil, for it creates the ground upon which we launch consciously into other realms. Only through transforming evil do we attain the power of creating good.
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