Moral ideals: Difference between revisions

From Anthroposophy
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==Illustrations==
==Illustrations==
==Lecture coverage and references==
==Lecture coverage and references==
=== Overview coverage ===
1912-05-29-GA155 and 1912-05-30-GA155 provide an introduction in context spiritual foundation of morality
1915-01-31-GA159 covers the relationship between the virtues and the members of Man's bodily structure
1917-03-06 connects wisdom to head, courage to breast
1923-04-04 cycle year and Michaelmas
=== Reference extracts ===


====== [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ReapChrist/19111001p02.html 1911-10-01-GA130] ======
====== [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ReapChrist/19111001p02.html 1911-10-01-GA130] ======
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====== [https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA202/English/SN4312/SN4312_index.html 1920-12-11-GA202] ======
====== [https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA202/English/SN4312/SN4312_index.html 1920-12-11-GA202] ======
is titled: 'The Bridge between Morality and Nature - Birth and Death as Revelations of Love and Freedom'
is titled: 'The Bridge between Morality and Nature - Birth and Death as Revelations of Love and Freedom'
====== 1920-12-18-GA202 ======
====== 1920-12-18-GA202 ======
with subtitle: The moral as the source of world-creative power
with subtitle: The moral as the source of world-creative power

Revision as of 13:03, 27 December 2022

Aspects

  • the universe is moral: between death and a new birth, Man experiences orientation amongst the beings of the higher hierarchies as moral orientation. Cosmic thoughts light up as bearers of morality. The ether is permeated with moral impulses (1922-11-26-GA219)
  • moral ideals (1920-12-18-GA202, 1921-07-24-GA206, 1921-08-07-GA206, 1921-09-24-GA207, 1921-10-02-GA207)
  • morality maps to the Good in Truth, Beauty, Good (TBG)
  • The 'moralizing' mission of Man in the cosmos: the astral body constantly judges the moral value of our deeds. After death this totality of moral judgements is inserted into the soul which introduces it into the cosmos. (1922-09-14-GA215)

Inspirational quotes

1922-12-15-GA219

In the spiritual realm the whole reality is moral, whereas on Earth there is only a reflection of that reality. But Man, we must remember, belongs to both worlds.

Illustrations

Lecture coverage and references

Overview coverage

1912-05-29-GA155 and 1912-05-30-GA155 provide an introduction in context spiritual foundation of morality

1915-01-31-GA159 covers the relationship between the virtues and the members of Man's bodily structure

1917-03-06 connects wisdom to head, courage to breast

1923-04-04 cycle year and Michaelmas

Reference extracts

1911-10-01-GA130

The Etherization of the Blood

[Man asleep]

It is different now, however, in the sleeping human being. When a human being sleeps, the occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside into the brain and also in the reverse direction, from the brain to the heart.

These streams, however, which in sleeping man come from outside, from cosmic space, from the macrocosm, and flow into the inner constitution of the physical and etheric bodies lying in the bed, reveal something remarkable when they are investigated. These rays vary greatly in different individuals. Sleeping human beings differ greatly from one another, and if those who are a little vain only knew how badly they betray themselves to esoteric observation when they go to sleep during public gatherings, they would try their best not to let this happen!

Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular coloring of the streams that flow into human beings during sleep; in a person of lower moral principles the streams are quite different from what is observable in a person of higher principles. Endeavors to disguise one's nature by day are useless. In the face of the higher cosmic powers, no disguise is possible. In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination toward moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in color — various shades tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet. At the moment of waking or of going to sleep, a kind of struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams upward from below. When a man is awake, the intellectual element streams upward from below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams downward from above. At the moment of waking or of going to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of the pineal gland. In the man of high morality and an outstreaming intellectuality, a peaceful expansion of glimmering light appears in the region of the pineal gland. This gland is almost surrounded by a small sea of light in the moment between waking and sleeping. Moral nobility is revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments. In this way a man's moral character is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the region of the heart. Two streams can therefore be perceived in man — one from the macrocosm, the other from the microcosm.

1915-03-14-GA159

is titled: 'Moral Impulses and Their Results'

1917-02-27-GA175

is titled: 'Morality, a germinating force'

1920-12-11-GA202

is titled: 'The Bridge between Morality and Nature - Birth and Death as Revelations of Love and Freedom'

1920-12-18-GA202

with subtitle: The moral as the source of world-creative power

synopsis includes;

  • Connection of the moral world-order with the physical world-order.
  • The moral world-order has no place in the natural scientific thinking of today.
  • The positive effect of moral ideals and ideas and the negative effect of theoretical ideas on the four organisms in man.
  • Matter and energy die away to nullity; but man's moral thinking imbues life into substance and will.
  • The natural world dies away in man; in the realm of the moral a new natural world comes into being; thus are the moral order and the natural order connected.

Within this picture a moral world-order has no place. It is there on its own. Man receives the moral impulses into himself as impulses of soul. But if the assertions of natural science are true, everything that is astir with life, and finally man himself came out of the primeval nebula and the moral ideals well up in him. And when, as is alleged, the world becomes a slag-heap, this will also be the graveyard of all moral ideals. They will have vanished. — No bridge can possibly be built, and what is worse, modern science cannot, without being inconsistent, admit the existence of morality in the world-order. Only if modern science is inconsistent can it accept the moral world-order as valid. It cannot do so if it is consistent. The root of all this is that the only kind of anatomy in existence is concerned exclusively with the solid organism, and no account is taken of the fact that man also has within him a fluid organism, an aeriform organism, and a warmth-organism. If you picture to yourselves that as well as the solid organism with its configuration into bones, muscles, nerve-fibres and so forth, you also have a fluid organism and an aeriform organism — though these are of course fluctuating and inwardly mobile — and a warmth-organism, if you picture this you will more easily understand what I shall now have to say on the basis of spiritual-scientific observation.

Think of a person whose soul is fired with enthusiasm for a high moral ideal, for the ideal of generosity, of freedom, of goodness, of love, or whatever it may be. He may also feel enthusiasm for examples of the practical expression of these ideals. But nobody can conceive that the enthusiasm which fires the soul penetrates into the bones and muscles as described by modern physiology or anatomy. If you really take counsel with yourself, however, you will find it quite possible to conceive that when one has enthusiasm for a high moral ideal, this enthusiasm has an effect upon the warmth organism. — There, you see, we have come from the realm of soul into the physical!

Taking this as an example, we may say: Moral ideals come to expression in an enhancement of warmth in the warmth-organism. Not only is man warmed in soul through what he experiences in the way of moral ideals, but he becomes organically warmer as well — though this is not so easy to prove with physical instruments. Moral ideals, then, have a stimulating, invigorating effect upon the warmth-organism.

You must think of this as a real and concrete happening: enthusiasm for a moral ideal — stimulation of the warmth-organism. There is more vigorous activity in the warmth-organism when the soul is fired by a moral ideal. Neither does this remain without effect upon the rest of one's constitution. As well as the warmth-organism he also has the air-organism. He inhales and exhales the air; but during the inbreathing and outbreathing process the air is within him. It is of course inwardly in movement, in fluctuation, but equally with the warmth-organism it is an actual air-organism in man. Warmth, quickened by a moral ideal, works in turn upon the air-organism, because warmth pervades the whole human organism, pervades every part of it. The effect upon the air-organism is not that of warming only, for when the warmth, stimulated by the warmth-organism, works upon the air-organism, it imparts to it something that I can only call a source of light. Sources of light, as it were, are imparted to the air-organism, so that moral ideals which have a stimulating effect upon the warmth-organism produce sources of light in the air-organism. To external perception and for ordinary consciousness these sources of light are not in themselves luminous, but they manifest in man's astral body. To begin with, they are curbed — if I may use this expression — through the air that is within man. They are, so to speak, still dark light, in the sense that the seed of a plant is not yet the developed plant. Nevertheless man has a source of light within him through the fact that he can be fired with enthusiasm for moral ideals, for moral impulses.

We also have within us the fluid organism. Warmth, stimulated in the warmth organism by moral ideals, produces in the air-organism what may be called a source of light which remains, to begin with, curbed and hidden. Within the fluid organism — because everything in the human constitution interpenetrates — a process takes place which I said yesterday actually underlies the outer tone conveyed in the air. I said that the air is only the body of the tone, and anyone who regards the essential reality of tone as a matter of vibrations of the air, speaks of tones just as he would speak of a man as having nothing except the outwardly visible physical body. The air with its vibrating waves is nothing but the outer body of the tone. In the human being this tone, this spiritual tone, is not produced in the air-organism through the moral ideal, but in the fluid organism. The sources of tone, therefore, arise in the fluid organism.

We regard the solid organism as the densest of all, as the one that supports and bears all the others. Within it, too, something is produced as in the case of the other organisms. In the solid organism there is produced what we call a seed of life — but it is an etheric, not a physical seed of life such as issues from the female organism at a birth. This etheric seed which lies in the deepest levels of subconsciousness is actually the primal source of tone and, in a certain sense, even the source of light. This is entirely hidden from ordinary consciousness, but it is there within the human being.

Think of all the experiences in your life that came from aspiration for moral ideas — be it that they attracted you merely as ideas, or that you saw them coming to expression in others, or that you felt inwardly satisfied by having put such impulses into practice, by letting your deeds be fired by moral ideals ... all this goes down into the air-organism as a source of light, into the fluid organism as a source of tone, into the solid organism as a source of life.

These processes are withdrawn from the field of man's consciousness but they operate within him nevertheless. They become free when he lays aside his physical body at death. What is thus produced in us through moral ideals, or through the loftiest and purest ideas, does not bear immediate fruit. For during the life between birth and death, moral ideas as such become fruitful only in so far as we remain in the life of ideas, and in so far as we feel a certain satisfaction in moral deeds performed. But this is merely a matter of remembrance, and has nothing to do with what actually penetrates down into the different organisms as the result of enthusiasm for moral ideals.

So we see that our whole constitution, beginning with the warmth-organism, is, in very fact, permeated by moral ideals. And when at death the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego emerge from the physical body, these higher members of our human nature are filled with all the impressions we have had. Our Ego was living in the warmth-organism when it was quickened by moral ideas. We were living in our air-organism, into which were implanted sources of light which now, after death, go forth into the cosmos together with us. In our fluid organism, tone was kindled which now becomes part of the Music of the Spheres, resounding from us into the cosmos. And we bring life with us when we pass out into the cosmos through the portal of death.

You will now begin to have an inkling of what the life that pervades the universe really is. Where are the sources of life? They lie in that which quickens those moral ideals which fire man with enthusiasm. We come to the point of saying to ourselves that if today we allow ourselves to be inspired by moral ideals, these will carry forth life, tone and light into the universe and will become world-creative. We carry out into the universe world-creative power, and the source of this power is the moral element.

So when we study the whole man we find a bridge between moral ideals and what works as life-giving force in the physical world, even in the chemical sense. For tone works in the chemical sense by assembling substances and dispersing them again. Light in the world has its source in the moral stimuli, in the warmth-organisms of men. Thus we look into the future — new worlds take shape. And as in the case of the plant we must go back to the seed, so in the case of these future worlds that will come into being, we must go back to the seeds which lie in us as moral ideals.

And now think of theoretical ideas in contrast to moral ideals. In the case of theoretical ideas everything is different, no matter how significant these ideas may be, for theoretical ideas produce the very opposite effect to that of stimulus. They cool down the warmth-organism — that is the difference.

Moral ideas, or ideas of a moral-religious character, which fire us with enthusiasm and become impulses for deeds, work as world-creative powers. Theoretical ideas and speculation's have a cooling, subduing effect upon the warmth-organism. Because this is so, they also have a paralyzing effect upon the air-organism and upon the source of light within it; they have a deadening effect upon tone, and an extinguishing effect upon life. In our theoretical ideas the creations of the pre-existing world come to their end. When we formulate theoretical ideas a universe dies in them. Thus do we bear within us the death of a universe and the dawn of a universe.

Here we come to the point where he who is initiated into the secrets of the universe cannot speak, as so many speak today, of the conservation of energy or the conservation of matter. [e.Ed: The law propounded by Julius Robert Mayer (1814-1878)]. It is simply not true that matter is conserved forever. Matter dies to the point of nullity, to a zero-point. In our own organism, energy dies to the point of nullity through the fact that we formulate theoretical thoughts. But if we did not do so, if the universe did not continually die in us, we should not be man in the true sense. Because the universe dies in us, we are endowed with self-consciousness and are able to think about the universe. But these thoughts are the corpse of the universe. We become conscious of the universe as a corpse only, and it is this that makes us Man.

A past world dies within us, down to its very matter and energy. It is only because a new universe at once begins to dawn that we do not notice this dying of matter and its immediate rebirth. Through man's theoretical thinking, matter — substantiality — is brought to its end; through his moral thinking, matter and cosmic energy are imbued with new life. Thus what goes on inside the boundary of the human skin is connected with the dying and birth of worlds. This is how the moral order and the natural order are connected. The natural world dies away in man; in the realm of the moral a new natural world comes to birth.

Moral Ideals

·        stimulate the warmth-organism.

·        producing in the air organism — sources of Light.

·        producing in the fluid organism — sources of Tone.

·        producing in the solid organism — seeds of Life. (etheric)

Theoretical thoughts

·        cool down the warmth organism.

·        paralyze the sources of Light.

·        deaden the sources of Tone.

·        extinguish Life.

Because of unwillingness to consider these things, the ideas of the imperishability of matter and energy were invented. If energy were imperishable and matter were imperishable there would be no moral world-order. But today it is desired to keep this truth concealed and modern thought has every reason to do so, because otherwise it would have to eliminate the moral world-order — which in actual fact it does by speaking of the law of the conservation of matter and energy. If matter is conserved, or energy is conserved, the moral world order is nothing but an illusion, a mirage. We can understand the course of the world's development only if we grasp how out of this ‘illusory’ moral world-order — for so it is when it is grasped in thoughts — new worlds come into being.

1921-07-24-GA206

Above all we must remember that the moral world cannot exist without postulating freedom; the natural world cannot exist without necessity. Indeed, there could be no science if there were not this necessity. If one phenomenon were not of necessity caused by another in natural continuity, everything would be arbitrary, and there could be no science. An effect could arise from a cause that one could not predict! We get science when we try to see how one thing proceeds from another, that one thing proceeds from another. But if this natural causality is universal, then moral freedom is impossible; there can be no such thing. Nevertheless the consciousness of this moral freedom within the realm of soul and spirit, as a fact of direct experience, is present in every man. The contradiction between what the human being experiences in the moral constitution of his soul and the causality of nature is not a logical one, but a contradiction in life. This contradiction is always with us as we go through the world; it is part of our life. The fact is that, if we honestly admit what we are faced with, we shall have to say that there must be natural causality, there must be natural necessity, and we as men are ourselves in the midst of it. But our inner soul-spiritual life contradicts it. We are conscious that we can make resolutions, that we can pursue moral ideals which are not given to us by natural necessity. This is a contradiction which is a contradiction of life, and anyone who cannot admit that there are such contradictions simply fails to grasp life in its universality. But in saying this we are saying something very abstract. It is really only our way of expressing what we encounter in life. We go through life feeling ourselves all the time actually at variance with external nature. It seems as if we are powerless, as if we must feel ourselves at variance with ourselves. To-day we can feel the presence of these contradictions in many men in a truly tragic way.

1921-08-07-GA206

[Morality]

Here you stand before what the human being experiences in religious and moral ideas. This is completely torn away from what lives in the observation of nature. This is why people strive so hard to justify the moral-religious content through mere faith. The moral-religious content has been elevated to a system whose content must stand for itself which to some extent should not be allowed to be ruined by anything else, like how outer nature is described, what a person may feel, how the one influences the other. Our present day nature observation, as it exists in its newest phase, where optics and electrodynamics merge, draws by necessity the imagination of the death of warmth to itself. Then the earth with all its people and animals will die and then no human soul will develop despite all its moral ideals. This earth's demise is ensured by the Law of Conservation of Matter, of the Conservation of Energy: through this Law of the Conservation Of Energy the result is the death of the earth, the death of all human souls just like materialists consider the death of the soul as connected to the death of the human body.

Only when we are absolutely clear in our mind that what lives in us as morality, what permeates us as religious ideas, form a seed within us, a seed containing a reality, just as the seed of a plant unfolds into a plant the following year, only then can we know that the start of this seed is for a future natural existence and that the earth with everything it contains, visible, audible, perceptible to our senses, does not depend on the law of conservation of energy but that it dies, falls away from all human souls who then carry the moral ideals through as new natural events, into the Jupiter-, Venus-, and Vulcan existence; only when we are clear that Heaven and Earth will perish but My word, the Logos, which develops in the human soul, will not perish — when we are clear, literally clear about these words, only then can we speak of moral and religious content of our human souls. Otherwise it is dishonest. Otherwise we put to a certain extent morality in the world and adhere to another certainty than the natural certainty. If we are clear in our minds that the words of Christ are true, that a cosmos originates from morality, wrested free from the death shroud when this cosmos disintegrates, then we have a world view which indicates morality and naturalness in its metamorphosis.

This is essentially what must penetrate present day humanity because with the schooling of natural thinking developed over the last decades, it is impossible to also accomplish the most essential social concepts which we need. Something must live in the social concepts which recognise morality at the same time in its cosmic implications. The human being must once again learn that he or she is a cosmic being. Earlier the social affairs which needed to be organized on the earth round was not understood; before it had been acknowledged that human beings are connected with cosmic intentions, with cosmic entities.

1921-09-24-GA207

see: Future Jupiter#1921-09-24-GA207

1921-10-02-GA207

Synopsis includes: the meeting of past and future in the mood of soul; the will as a battlefield of moral ideals with human instincts and drives

1922-09-14-GA215

title: 'The event of death, and its relationship with the Christ'

or: 'The continuation of I-consciousness after death in relation to the Christ'

from the synopsis:

the astral body constantly judges the moral value of our deeds. After death this totality of moral judgements is inserted into the soul which introduces it into the cosmos: the cosmis is like the nature surrounding us and is in itself amoral, not immoral. The 'moralizing' mission of Man in the cosmos, his responsibility of which he becomes aware in the soul world.

1922-11-26-GA219

[The universe is moral, except the ether around Earth]

... But while this is happening, something else of tremendous significance takes place. Passing from the heavenly into the earthly realm, the human being experiences one side only of the etheric world. The etheric world extends through all the spheres of the planets and the stars. But the moment the heavenly faculties are transformed into the earthly, the human being loses the experience of the Cosmic Morality.

  • Orientation among the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies is ex­perienced not merely as a manifestation of natural laws but as moral orientation.
  • Likewise the Logos speaks in the hu­man being not in an a-moral way as do the phenomena of Nature - for although they do not speak in an anti-moral way, they speak 'a-morally.' The Logos speaks morality;
  • so too the Cosmic Thoughts light up as bearers of morality.

Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, this must be said despite the horror it will cause to physicists: Saturn, Jupiter and Mars contain, as well as their other forces, forces of moral orienta­tion.

It is only when Man transforms the heavenly faculties that have been characterized into walking, speaking, and thinking that he loses the moral elements. This is of im­mense importance. When here on Earth we speak of the ether (in which we live when we are approaching the Earth in order to be born) we ascribe to the ether all kinds of qualities. But that is only one side, one aspect, of the ether.

The other aspect is that it is a substance working with a moral effect. It is permeated through and through with moral im­pulses. Just as it is permeated with light, so it is permeated with moral impulses. In the earthly ether these impulses are not present.

1922-12-15-GA219

has as subtitle 'Love, Memory, the Moral Life'

Notes:

  • Morality, the outcome of experiencing love, as a result of communion with higher hierarchies
  • Morality, but also immorality – can only be explained in relation to a spiritual world – the need for Spiritual Science

Discussion

Related pages

References and further reading

  • Hans Erhard Lauer: 'Die Neugeburt der menslichen Ideale : kann der Verfall der Werte in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Moral überwunden werden?' (1975)
  • Johannes Denger: 'Ideal und Wirklichkeit : Versuch über den Umgang mit Idealen am Beispiel der helfenden Berufe' (1992)