Love

Love is a word that is linked and filled by people with many meanings. There’s the love of a mother for her child, physical love, the love of blood based relations. All these are very human, specific to our current few epochs of incarnate life.

True love is spiritual, it is a cosmic principle. That spiritual love is buddhi or christos, a principle beyond space and time, in the higher spirit world, and it originates even higher. Its essence, for us to relate to, to practice and learn, is giving and selflessness, and the desire to give so much and so deep that it becomes sacrifice, depending on the state of consciousness. Still a long long way to go for humanity, how far is not the reality of 'love the other like yourself' (re Golden rule) .. Earth is just the seeding stage.

These are all words of concepts, and may sound far off, but in the depth of meditation and one’s soul, in praying and compassion, and in our living relationships towards others, the human being can connect to all this in a very real and practical way.

As is described by Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, known as the 'Hymn to Love' (see below) humanity is still in the very early kintergarten stage of learning and aspiring this spiritual love. Mankind will will become spiritual ever more, and so will our faculty of love evolve over the next epochs and planetary stages of evolution

Aspects

What is love?

love as a free act of selfless giving
- love requires freedom, the freedom to choose giving over receiving
- pure love is selfless - selflessness is the key characteristic as opposed to egoism
- the highest form of love is Sacrifice, see the ladder of evolution of spiritual beings in the cosmos (see CoC=9 and higher on Twelve Conditions of Consciousness)

As a cosmic principle: Buddhi - Christos

"Christ is the same as buddhi" (1905-02-09-GA053)
- buddhi is a a kind of eternal principle of higher feeling and selflessness, which flows through the whole universe, it the life spirit in its highest potentiality.
- The ancient Greek term is Chrestós, Christ in the Christian mysticism, buddhi in the Eastern mysticism and theosophy, in anthroposophy the term life-spirit is used. (1905-02-09-GA053, 1905-12-14-GA054, 1906-02-15-GA054)
- symbol: (1906-02-15-GA054, 1906-06-09-GA094)
  - "imagine the usual productive strength in the usual sensuous life, combined with devoted love: this is buddhi. There is in nature no other symbol than the hen, which sits on the egg, conjuring up a new life with its own warmth, sacrificing its own existence in love for the new life."
  - "Think of a hen sitting on its eggs. It is wholly given up to this brooding activity and is filled with a kind of warm, almost voluptuous pleasure in which there arises a dreamy pre-vision of the hatching of the little winged chicken. This bliss in the work of creation exists at every stage of cosmic life, and warmth pours from it. In the sphere of Cosmic Intelligence (which may be conceived as the world of thoughts accessible to the higher self (Manas)), this warmth seems to pervade the whole universe, emanating from the creative life of soul (Budhi). We can divine the presence of a creative sphere in existence before our Earth and ‘brooding’ over it

Egoism and selflessness

difference of love with egotistic variants: "a large part of the so-called love of doing good is masked self-love" (1918-12-12-GA186)
the delusion of so-called selfless actions caused by egoism, physiologically: "such feelings become manifest with a feeling of warmth that goes through the warmth ether part of our life body and also works on the physical body through the blood" (1911-10-24-GA266)

Hatred

there is a hundred times more hatred than love among human beings (1924-03-30-GA239)
a Man with the disposition to be hurt by everything that happens, who goes through life with a perpetual grudge because everything hurts him .. this trait in the character invariably leads back to a previous incarnation when he gave way to intense hatred (1924-03-30-GA239)

Divinity

God is supreme love: love is the absolute good and the all-embracing attribute of the Godhead (and not omnipotence (absolute power), not omniscience (absolute wisdom), the other two attributes of the Trinity) (1912-12-17-GA143)

Humanity

humanity is on its way to become the Tenth Hierarchy of the Spirits of Freedom and Love
human love of blood-relationships, as a result of the first divine impulse by Jehovah and first seed stage preparing towards spiritual love
related:
- Manicheism as the countering of evil with good to overwin and redeem it

Other

on the three highest virtues of Faith, Love and Hope, see Virtues#Faith Love Hope
see also: Memory and love
Buddhism - the religion of compassion and love
gospels: Love is revealed to a greater extent in the Gospel of St. Luke than in any other Christian text (1909-09-GA114)
metamorphosis of love into joy through repeated Earth lives: Joy is the karmic result of out-going love: result of these two is then an open heart for the world. Suffering is the karmic result of hatred; both lead in the third life to dim understanding of the world. (1924-02-24-GA235)

Inspirational quotes

St. Paul (1 Cor. 13:13 [New English Bible])

In a word, there are three things that last for ever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.

Rabindranath Tagore (attributed to but not a literal quote (until further notice), even though the quote reflects his philosophy well: Tagore saw love as both a personal and a universal phenomenon, connecting humans, nature, and the divine in a joyful cycle of creation. Tagore believed that love is the fundamental force of the universe, closely tied to his ideas about divine love and the unity of creation)

Love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us .. it is the joy that is at the root of all creation

Vladimir Solovyov in 'The Meaning of Love' (1891)

The meaning of human love, speaking generally, is the justification and salvation of individuality through the sacrifice of egoism.

and

Love is important not as one of our feelings, but as the transfer of all our interest in life from ourselves to another, as the shifting of the very center of our personal lives.

1905-10-12-GA054

We do not oppose, we do something else: we foster love, and we know that by fostering love, every opposition must disappear.
We do not set up struggle against struggle. We set up love against struggle, by developing and fostering love. ...
Not by strife we overcome strife, not by hatred we overcome hatred, but strife and hatred can in reality be overcome by love alone.

1906-11-08-GA055 (full lecture here)

As so many other things, so too pain is known only by its fruits.
.. a creation in compassion is born when we transform the sufferings of others in our own greater consciousness-world.
And so finally out of suffering arises love. For what else is love than spreading one's consciousness over other beings?

1910-GA013

Wisdom is the premise, the foundation of love; love is the fruit of wisdom reborn in the I

1912-01-01-GA134

Let us strive after a real understanding of world evolution, let us seek after wisdom - and we shall find without fail that the child of wisdom will be love

1912-12-17-GA143

Love is for the world what the sun is for external life. .. Love is the “moral” sun of the world. .. Love is the creative force in the world.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something – and it is only such love that can know freedom.

anonymous, appears misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci. There is no verifiable source that ties this exact phrasing to a particular author, including Da Vinci. Concepts like "light shining brightest in the darkest places" have roots in various traditions, including biblical texts, such as in the Gospel of John: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5). The idea that love is tested and revealed through hardship is a frequent theme in literature and philosophy.

Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.410 depicts the concept of divinity as per Daskalos (left, in HTS) and Bardon (Right, in IIH step 10). These characteristics of the absolute divinity are mapped to the Trinity (left) - see also the three Logoi, and to the four elements (right).

Schema FMC00.428A adds the explanation from Rudolf Steiner's narrative in the sources listed, against the background of Schema FMC00.428.

It shows how "the Christ Impulse triggered a reversal of the influences of the two crossing streams", and gave Man independence in love and allowed for a spiritualization of love, as love without true freedom is not love.

Note: all texts originate from the GA244 sources listed, but were aggregated into a single schema explanation.

Schema FMC00.481 is a poster that concatenates a number of excerpts from Rudolf Steiner's lectures to elucidate the meaning of various terms related to what is most important for humanity: selfless love. As a cosmic principle in the higher spirit world this was called Christòs in ancient Greece, in ancient India and theosophy it was called buddhi, and Rudolf Steiner coined the term life spirit in anthroposophy.

This cosmic principle lives in archangelic beings that went through the human stage on Old Sun, on Earth these are called solar pitris or fathers (in theosophical terminology). These were able to incarnate in the early earthly conditions in the Hyperborean epoch and constituted what is called the Sun men or Apollo men. In more recent times and the language of the ancient myths such descending solar pitris are called Sun Heroes. As leaders of mankind, especially the beings part of the White Lodge are called Bodhisattvas in ancient Indian and theosophical terminology. And besides these descending beings there is also the ascending path upwards: a human being who reaches the sixth degree in initiation was called Sun Hero in the ancient Mysteries.

What all these have in common is that they are the carrier of the life spirit, buddhi, or Christ principle, which is a universal cosmic soul principle that is no longer individual but a higher feeling of the universal soul of mankind, and in that sense representing humanity (and it's future) as a whole.

Christ is the Cosmic Sun Hero who came down to unify the whole of humanity as the spirit of the Earth. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, the buddhi principle was planted as a latent seed in each human soul. This higher principle will develop in millenia, epochs and even planetary stages to come. In this context, Christ will be with Man until the end of the Earth, and represents the future group soul of humanity also called 'Second Adam'.

Lecture coverage and references

Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians (Ch 13 - Hymn to Love)

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind;
love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1904-03-08-GA052

The soul is first and foremost a being filled with longing. It is filled with sympathy and antipathy, with the world of wishes, of desire. After some time however, the spirit reveals to the soul that it comprises more than only desire.
When the soul, led by the spirit, has overcome the longing, then she is not passive, then love flows from the evolved soul, in the same way that longing flows from the undeveloped soul.
Desire and love, these are the two opposing forces between which the soul develops. The soul still trapped in sensuality, in outward appearance, is the soul filled with longing; the soul that that has evolved its relationship, its harmony with the spirit, is the loving soul.

That is what leads the soul on its path from incarnation to incarnation, in that it evolves from being filled with longing and desire, into a loving soul whose activities become actions of love.

1905-10-12-GA054

This opens out to us the true perspective. Then we must not only speak of peace, not only envisage it abstractly as an ideal, make treaties or long for the verdicts of a court of arbitration, but we must cultivate spiritual life, the spiritual. We then awaken within us the strength which will be poured out over, the whole human race as the source of mutual help and support.
We do not oppose, we do something else: we foster love, and we know that by fostering love, every opposition must disappear.
We do not set up struggle against struggle. We set up love against struggle, by developing and fostering love.
This is something positive. By pouring out love we work upon ourselves, and we establish a society based upon love. This is our ideal.
If this livingly penetrates into our souls, we shall realize an old saying in a new way, and this will be in accordance with Christianity. And a new Christianity, or rather the Christianity of the past, will arise again for a new humanity. Buddha gave his people a motto which envisages this. But Christianity contains even more beautiful words on the unfolding: of love, words which should be grasped in the right way:

Not by strife we overcome strife, not by hatred we overcome hatred, but strife and hatred can in reality be overcome by love alone.

1908-03-24-GA102

Love had to be inaugurated in the lowest form as sexual love, in order to rise through the various stages and finally, when the perfected Earth has reached its last epochs, to be imprinted into man as pure, spiritual love. All lower love is schooling for the higher love.

1909-09-16-GA114

Love is revealed to a greater extent in the Gospel of St. Luke than in any other Christian text.
This spiritual stream is Buddhism — the religion of compassion and love.

1909-09-17-GA114

Compassion and love in the highest sense of the words are the ideal of Buddhism.
Love transformed into deed is the ideal presented in the Gospel of St. Luke.

1909-09-20-GA114

Love inherent in blood-relationship was to be expanded into love that passes from soul to soul, transcending ties of blood.
The proclamation of universal human love.

1909-09-25-GA114

The Deed of Christ on the Earth was so to stimulate the development of the I in Man that the power of Love should stream from it.
What Buddha brought to mankind was the wisdom, the teaching of Love; Christ brought Love itself as a living power which was eventually to flow from the I's of men themselves into the world. The ‘power of Faith’ is possessed by one who receives Christ into himself in such a way that Love overflows from his I.
The successor of the Bodhisattva who attained Buddhahood five or six centuries before our era will become the Maitreya Buddha in about three thousand years reckoned from the present time. He will be able to fulfil his mission in evolution if a sufficient number of human beings have developed within themselves not only the wisdom of the Eightfold Path but from whose hearts the living Substance of Love overflows into the world.
The mission of the Bodhisattvas and of the Buddha: to bring the ‘Wisdom of Love’ to the Earth.
The mission of Christ: the redemption of souls through the ‘Power of Love’ he brought to the Earth.

1909-09-26-GA114

The outpouring of Infinite Love described in the Gospel of St. Luke.
The truths of Love, Faith, Hope.
Love and Peace: the most beautiful mirror-image of Divine Mysteries revealed on Earth and streaming back from human hearts to the heights of the spiritual World.

1910-GA013

Earth evolution bears within it the outcome of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon evolutions. In all the processes of nature going on around him, man upon Earth finds Wisdom. Wisdom is in them as the fruit of what was done in the preceding epochs.
Earth is the cosmic descendant of Old Moon, which — as related in a former chapter — evolved with all its creatures into a 'Cosmos of Wisdom'.
With Earth .. an evolution is beginning whereby a new virtue, a new force, is being added to - instilled into - this Wisdom. As a result of Earthly evolution man comes to feel himself an independent member of a spiritual world. He owes it to the fact that upon Earth the I is engendered in him by the Spirits of Form, even as was his physical body by the Thrones on Old Saturn, his life-body by the Spirits of Wisdom on Old Sun, his astral body by the Spirits of Movement on Old Moon. All that now manifests as Wisdom has come into being by the working-together of the Thrones and Spirits of Wisdom and Movement. That the beings and processes of Earth can harmonize in Wisdom with the other beings of their surrounding world, is due to the work of these three Hierarchies of Spirits. Now, from the Spirits of Form, man receives his independent I. And in the future the I of man will harmonize with the beings of Earth, Future Jupiter, Future Venus and Vulcan by virtue of the new force which earthly evolution is implanting in the pristine Wisdom. It is the power of Love. In Man on Earth it has to have its beginning.
The Cosmos of Wisdom is thus evolving into a Cosmos of Love. All the I of Man brings to development within him will grow into Love.
It is the sublime Sun being, of whom we had to tell when describing the evolution of the Christ event, who at his revelation stands forth as the all-embracing prototype of Love. Into the innermost depth of man's being the seed of Love is thereby planted. Thence it shall grow and spread until it fills the whole of cosmic evolution.
Even as the pristine Wisdom now reveals its presence in all the forces of Nature, in all the sense-perceptible outer world upon Earth, so in the future will Love be revealed — Love as a new force of Nature, living in all the phenomena which man will have around him. This is the secret of all future evolution. The knowledge man acquires, and also every deed man does with true understanding, is like the sowing of the seed that will eventually ripen into Love. Only inasmuch as Love arises in mankind, is true creative work being done for the cosmic future. For it is Love itself which will grow into the potent forces leading mankind on towards the final goal — the goal of spiritualization.
To the extent that spiritual knowledge flows into the evolution of mankind and of the Earth, there will be viable and fertile seeds for the cosmic future. For it is of the very nature of true spiritual knowledge to be transmuted into love. The whole course of history we have been tracing from the Greco-Latin through the present time and on into the future, shows how this transmutation is to come about and reveals the future evolutionary trend of which this is the beginning.
The Wisdom that was prepared all through the Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon evolutions lives in the physical etheric, and astral bodies of Man. It manifests as wisdom of the world.
Then, in the I of Man, it is turned inward.
From Earth evolution onward, the wisdom of the outer world becomes inner wisdom: wisdom in Man himself. And when thus resurrected in the inner life, in the I of Man, it grows into the seed of Love.

Wisdom is the premise, the forerunner of Love; Love is the outcome of Wisdom re-born in the I of man.

1911-10-24-GA266

In esoteric life one should pay particular attention to egoism. We often tell ourselves that we're doing something selflessly, or we're unaware that we hate or envy someone, and as an esoteric we think that we should tell him the truth or should not have to take this or that from him. When such feelings arise we should realize that we're living in great delusions that are always caused by egoism. Such feelings always become manifest with a feeling of warmth that goes through the warmth ether part of our life body and also works on the physical body through the blood.

1912-01-01-GA134

.. out of a rightly understood wisdom will a rightly understood goodness and virtue be born in the human heart. Let us strive after a real understanding of world evolution, let us seek after wisdom — and we shall find without fail that the child of wisdom will be love.

1912-12-17-GA143

lecture title: 'Love and its meaning in the world'

from the summary commentary (not by RS):

As well as love there are two other powers: might and wisdom. To these two, the concepts of magnitude and enhancement are applicable, but not to love. The all-embracing attribute of the Godhead is therefore not omnipotence, not omniscience, but love.
God is supreme love, not supreme might, not supreme wisdom. The Godhead has shared these two with Ahriman and Lucifer. Wisdom and might unfold in the world, but love is a unique, Divine Impulse. The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled as a counterweight to the impulses of might and of wisdom. Therefore anyone who knows the mystery of love can be a Christian. Spiritual Science must include this love — otherwise it leads to egoism.
The Mystery of Golgotha is a Deed of the Gods and a concern of the Gods. This Deed cannot be understood out of wisdom but only out of love. Together with selfishness, evil came into the world. It had to be so, because without the evil, man could not lay hold of the good. But through man's conquest of himself the unfolding of love has been made possible. The darkness has enabled the light to come into our ken.

quote

From acts of love we make no profit for our selfishness. It's the world that benefits from them.
Love is to the world what the sun is to outside life. Souls could no longer develop if there was no love in the world.
Love is the moral sun of the world. Spiritual science and true facts and acts of love must be one.
When we exercise love, we cultivate love, generating forces, creative forces pour out into the world.

quote

Our egoism gains nothing from deeds of love — but the world all the more.
Occultism says: Love is for the world what the sun is for external life. No soul could thrive if love departed from the world.
Love is the “moral” sun of the world. Would it not be absurd if a man who delights in the flowers growing in a meadow were to wish that the sun would vanish from the world? Translated into terms of the moral life, this means: Our deep concern must be that an impulse for sound, healthy development shall find its way into the affairs of humanity. To disseminate love over the earth in the greatest measure possible, to promote love on the earth — that and that alone is wisdom.
...

Love is the creative force in the world.

1914-07-12-GA155

We need only pronounce one word, and we shall recognize the attitude that man must take up with regard to his immortality. The word is Love. All that we have said concerning the word immortality we can now connect with what is denoted by Love.
Love is not anything that we appropriate to ourselves through the Will; or anything that we appropriate to ourselves through Wisdom. Love dwells in the realm of the feelings.
We must admit to ourselves that the human soul would fall short of its true nature if it were unable to be filled with love. Yes, when we penetrate into the nature of the soul, we realize that our human soul would no longer be a human soul if it could not love. But let us now suppose that on passing through the gate of death we lost our human individuality and were united with some universal divinity. We should then be within this divinity; we should belong to it. Love would have no meaning if we were within the Godhead. If we could not carry our individuality through death, we should in death have to lose love, for in the moment that individuality ceased, love would cease. One being can love another only if the other is separate from himself. If we are to carry our love of God through death, we must carry with us that which kindles love within us — our individuality.
If the meaning of the Earth was to be brought to man, information concerning his immortality had to be given him in such a way that his nature would be thought of as inseparable from love. Neither Will nor Wisdom can give man what he needs; only Love can give it to him. What was it, then, that became darkened in the course of man's evolutionary path on Earth? Take the Jews or take the heathen: their consciousness of anything beyond death had been darkened. Between birth and death — consciousness; beyond death and beyond birth — darkness; of their bodily consciousness nothing more remained. “Know thyself!” — at the entrance of the Greek Mysteries, stood this most holy demand of the sanctuary upon mankind. Man could only answer: “If I remain bound to my body with my soul, as is the way with a man of Earth, I cannot recognize in myself an individuality which could love beyond death. I cannot do it.” The knowledge that man can love as an individuality beyond death — this is what had been lost for man.
Death is not merely the cessation of the physical body. Only a materialist can say that. Suppose that throughout every hour of life in the body man's consciousness were such that he knew what lies beyond death as certainly as he knows today that the sun will rise on the morrow and take its journey across the heavens. Then death would have no sting for him; death would not be what we call death; he would know in the body that death is only a phenomenon leading from one form to another. Paul did not understand by “death” the cessation of the physical body; by “death” he understood the fact that consciousness extends only as far as death, and that man, in so far as he was united with the body in the existence of that period, could, within his body, extend his consciousness only as far as death. Whenever Paul speaks of death, we might add: “Lack of consciousness beyond death.”
What did the Mystery of Golgotha give to Man? Was it a series of natural phenomena, a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire, that stood before humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha? No! A man, Christ Jesus, stood before men. With the Mystery of Golgotha did any event drawn from the mysterious realms of nature take place — did a sea divide so that the people of God could go through? No! A man stood before men; a man who made the lame to walk and the blind to see. By a man were these things done.
The Jew had to look into nature when he wanted to see him whom he called his divine Lord. Now it was a man who could be seen. Of a man it could be said that God dwelt in him. The pagan had to be initiated; his soul had to be withdrawn from his body in order that he might stand before the Being who is the Christ. On the Earth he had been unable to divine the Christ; he could know only that the Christ was outside the Earth. But He who had been outside the Earth came down to Earth, took on a human body.
In Christ Jesus there stood as man before men that Being who had formerly stood in the Mysteries before the soul that was liberated from the body. And what came to pass through this? It was the beginning of the course of events whereby the powers that man had lost ever since the start of the Earth evolution — the powers which assured him of his immortality — were restored to him through the Mystery of Golgotha. The overcoming of death on Golgotha gave birth to the forces which could rekindle in the soul the powers it had lost. And the path of man through Earth evolution will henceforth be this: Inasmuch as he takes the Christ more and more into himself, he will discover within himself the power which can love beyond death, so that he will be able to stand before his God as an immortal individuality. Therefore, only since the Mystery of Golgotha has it become true to say: “Love God above all, and thy neighbor as thyself.”
Will was given from out of the burning thorn-bush; Will was given through the Ten Commandments.
Wisdom was given through the Mysteries.
But Love was given when God became man in Christ Jesus. And the assurance that we can love beyond death, that by means of the powers won back for our souls a community of Love can be founded between God and man and all men among one another — the guarantee for that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Mystery of Golgotha the human soul has found what it had lost from the primal beginning of the Earth, in that its forces had become ever weaker and weaker.
Three forces in three members of the soul: Will, Wisdom, Love! In this Love the soul experiences its relation to Christ.

1918-12-12-GA186

The mere egoistic, soul-stirring talk of loving our fellow-men and acting upon this love at the first opportunity, that does not constitute social life. This sort of love is, for the most part, terribly egoistic. Many a Man is supported by what he has first gained through robbing his fellow-men in a truly patriarchal fashion, in order to create for himself an object for his self-love, so that he can then feel nice and warm with the thought, “You are doing this, you are doing that.” One does not easily discover that a large part of the so-called love of doing good is a masked self-love.

1924-02-24-GA235

p 1268 in CH10

also BBD illustration still to be added

synopsis

Metamorphosis of love into joy.
Joy is the karmic result of out-going love: result of these two is then an open heart for the world.
Suffering is the karmic result of hatred; both lead in the third life to dim understanding of the world.
Possibility of creating a balance by education. Significance of contemporary existence for repeated earthly lives.

quote A

In this way the impulse to karma in a new earthly life is formed between death and a new birth—though I shall have to describe it more in detail in the near future; for we must take the Ego also into account.
Now we can trace how an impulse from one life works on into other lives. Take, for example, the impulse of love. We can do our deeds, in relation to other men, out of the impulse which we call love. It makes a great difference whether we do them out of a mere sense of duty, convention, respectability and so on, or whether we do them out of a greater or lesser degree of love.
Assume that in one earthly life a man is able to perform actions sustained by love, warmed through and through by love. It remains as a real force in his soul. What he takes with him as an outcome of his deeds, what is now mirrored in the other souls, comes back to him as a reflected image. And as he forms from this his astral body, with which he descends on to the earth, the love of the former earthly life, the love which he poured out and which was now returned to him from other souls, is changed to joy and gladness.
Such is the metamorphosis—if so we may describe it. A man does something for his fellow-men, something sustained by love. Love pouring out from him accompanies the actions which help his fellow-men. In the passage through life between death and a new birth, this outpouring love of the one life on earth is transmuted, metamorphosed, into joy that streams in towards him.
If you experience joy through a human being in one earthly life, you may be sure it is the outcome of the love you unfolded towards him in a former life. This joy flows back again into your soul during your life on Earth. You know the inner warmth which comes with joy, you know what joy can mean to one in life—especially that joy which comes from other human beings. It warms life and sustains it—as it were, gives it wings. It is the karmic result of love that has been expended.
But in our joy we again experience a relation to the human being who gives us joy. Thus, in our former life on earth, we had something within us that made the love flow out from us. In our succeeding life, already we have the outcome of it, the warmth of joy, which we experience inwardly once more. And this again flows out from us. A man who can experience joy in life, is again something for his fellow-men—something that warms them. He who has cause to go through life without joy is different to his fellow-men from one to whom it is granted to go through life with joyfulness.
Then, in the life between death and a new birth once more, what we thus experienced in joy between birth and death is reflected again in the many souls with whom we were on earth and with whom we are again in yonder life. And the manifold reflected image which thus comes back to us from the souls of those we knew on earth, works back again once more. We carry it into our astral body when we come down again into the next life on earth—that is the third in succession. Once more it is instilled, imprinted into our astral body. What is it in its outcome now? Now it becomes the underlying basis, the impulse for a quick and ready understanding of man and the world. It becomes the basis for that attunement of the soul which bears us along inasmuch as we have understanding of the world. If we find interest and take delight in the conduct of other men, if we understand their conduct and find it interesting in a given earthly life, it is a sure indication of the joy in our last incarnation and of the love in our incarnation before that. Men who go through the world with a free mind and an open sense, letting the world flow into them, so that they understand it well—they have attained through love and joy this relation to the world.
What we do in our deeds out of love is altogether different from what we do out of a dry and rigid sense of duty. You will remember that I have always emphasised in my books: it is the deeds that spring from love which we must recognise as truly ethical; they are the truly moral deeds. How often have I indicated the great contrast in this regard, as between Kant and Schiller. Kant, both in life and in knowledge, “kantified” everything (“Kante,” in German, means a hard edge or angle.—Note by translator.) In science, through Kant, all became hard and angular; and so it is in human action. “Duty, thou great and sublime name, thou who containest nothing of comfort or ease ... ”—this passage I quoted in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to the pretended anger (not the sincere, but the pretended, hypocritical anger) of many opponents, while over against it I set what I must establish as my view: “Love, thou who speakest with warmth to the soul ...”
Over against the dry and rigid Kantian concept of duty Schiller himself found the words: “Gern dien' ich dem Freunde, doch tue ich es leider mit Neigung, drum wurmt es mich oft, dass ich nicht tugenhaft bin.” (Gladly I serve my friends, yet alas, I do it with pleasure, wherefore it oftentimes gnaws me, I am not virtuous.) For in the Kantian ethic, that is not virtuous which we do out of real inclination, but only that which we do out of the rigid concept of duty.
Well, there are human beings who, to begin with, do not attain to love. Because they cannot tell their fellow-man the truth out of love (for if you love a man, you will tell him the truth, and not lies), because they cannot love, they tell the truth out of a sense of duty. Because they cannot love, out of a sense of duty they refrain from thrashing their fellow-man or from boxing his ears or otherwise offending him, the moment he does a thing they do not like. There is indeed a difference between acting out of a rigid sense of duty—necessary as it is in social life, necessary for many things—there is all the difference between this and the deeds of love.
Now the deeds that are done out of a rigid concept of duty, or by convention or propriety, do not call forth joy in the next life on earth. They too undergo that mirroring in other souls of which I spoke before; and, having done so, in the next life on earth they call forth what we may thus describe: “You feel that people are more or less indifferent to you.” How many a person carries this through life. He is a matter of indifference to others, and he suffers from it. Rightly he suffers from it, for men are there for one another; man is dependent on not being a matter of indifference to his fellows. What he thus suffers is simply the outcome of a lack of love in a former life on earth, when he behaved as a decent man because of rigid duty hanging over him like a sword of Damocles. I will not say a sword of steel; that would be disquieting, no doubt, for most dutiful people; so let us say, a wooden sword of Damocles.
Now then, we are in the second earthly life.
That which proceeds as joy from love, in the third life becomes as we have seen, a free and open heart, bringing the world near to us, giving us open-minded insight into all things beautiful and good and true. While as to that which comes to us as the indifference of other men—what we experience in this way in one earthly life, will make us in the next life (that is, in the third) a person who does not know what to do with himself. Such a person, already in school, has no particular use for the things the teachers are doing with him. Then, when he grows a little older, he does not know what to become—mechanic or Privy Councilor, or whatever it may be. He does not know what to do with his life; he drifts through life without direction. In observation of the outer world, he is not exactly dull. Music, for instance—he understands it well enough, but it gives him no pleasure. After all, it is a matter of indifference whether the music is more or less good, or bad. He feels the beauty of a painting or other work of art; but there is always something in his soul that vexes: “What is the good of it anyhow? What's it all for?” Such are the things that emerge in the third earthly life in karmic sequence.
Now let us assume, on the other hand, that a man does positive harm to another, out of hatred or antipathy. We can imagine every conceivable degree. A man may harm his fellows out of a positively criminal sense of hatred. Or—to omit the intermediate stages—he may merely be a critic. To be a critic, you must always hate a little—unless you are one who praises; and such critics are few nowadays. It is uninteresting to show recognition of other people's work; it only becomes interesting when you can be witty at their expense.
Now there are all manner of intermediate stages.

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In perceiving the sequence of earthly lives one also learns to understand what streams from the present into the future.
Men who are capable of intense hatred carry over into the next earthly life as the result of this hatred the disposition to be hurt by everything that happens. If one studies a Man who goes through life with a perpetual grudge because everything hurts him, makes him suffer, that is what one finds. Naturally one must have compassion for such a Man but this trait in the character invariably leads back to a previous incarnation when he gave way to hatred.
Please do not misunderstand me here. When hatred is mentioned it is natural for everyone to say: “I do not hate, I love everybody.”
But let them try to discover how much hidden hatred lurks in the soul! This becomes only too evident when one hears human beings talking about each other. Just think about it and you will realise that the derogatory things that are said about an individual far outweigh what is ever said in his praise.
And if one were to go into the true statistics it would be found that there is a hundred times — really a hundred times — more hatred than love among human beings. This is a fact although it is not generally acknowledged; people always believe that their hatred is justified and excusable. But hatred is transformed in the next earthly life into hypersensitiveness to suffering and in the third life into lack of understanding, obtuseness traits which make a man hard and indifferent, incapable of taking a real interest in anything

Beinsa Douno

no source reference

translated by Annael

If you want to love, you do not have to be afraid. If you want to be loved, you must not have doubts. If you love someone, do not tell him/her about your love. The one you love does not have to know how you feel about him. ...
When one wants to possess something through one's feelings, one creates karma for oneself. When one gives people freedom, he frees himself from his own karma.
You cannot think of someone if they do not think of you. If you love a person too much, you will harm him. By thinking only of him, you make him restless, because you [unconsciously] control him with your thoughts.
To love a person, it means to wish him well and to leave him free.
Physical love brings big changes. Whoever wants to experience it must know that he will move from one state to another, from joy to sorrow, and from sorrow to joy. Divine love works wonders. Wherever she goes, she creates and recreates. This love must be studied. But if you have not applied the human love, which asks for the least sacrifices, how will you apply the divine love, which requires great sacrifices?

1930-11-23

lecture in Sofia - Izgrev

Christ says: "Where two or three are in agreement, whatever they ask in my name, it will be given to them." In other words: Everything done on earth with selfless love, wisdom, and light brings harmony. Where there is harmony, everything is achieved.

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1947 - Erich Fromm

in 'Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics'

is a way of saying love is giving, love is a verb

One is not loved accidentally; one’s own power to love produces love - just as being interested makes one interesting. People are concerned with the question of whether they are attractive while they forget that the essence of attractiveness is their own capacity to love. To love a person productively implies to care and to feel responsible for his life, not only for his physical existence but for the growth and development of all his human powers. To love productively is incompatible with being passive, with being an onlooker at the loved person’s life; it implies labor and care and the responsibility for his growth.

Buddhi

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As well as now the thought can be raised to a higher sphere, the world of feelings can also be raised to a higher sphere. That world of joys and desires is apparently a lower world than the world of thoughts, but if it is raised to the higher regions, it is even higher than the world of thoughts. The eternal in the feeling is higher than the thought. If you raise the feeling to the higher spheres like the thought in mathematics, then you experience the second being of the spirit. The academic psychology only knows the lower feeling. It acts as if everything amounts to nothing more than the lower feeling. But in our world of feelings this eternal lives as a rudiment, and theosophy calls it buddhi. I have given it the name “life-spirit”, as the second spiritual being of the human being. Raise your thoughts up to the recognition of an eternal, and then you live in manas. Raise your feeling and sensation up to the eternal, and then you live in buddhi.
This life in buddhi exists only as a rudiment with the present human beings. The human beings can already think manasically sometimes if the thinking is regulated, is subjected to the logical world principles. However, there is also a thinking which wanders around aimlessly, that has got a thought and immediately another thought, always alternating. This is the everyday thinking. There is a higher thinking that is logical and coherent that feeds itself from the eternal according to Plato and is blessed with the eternal. If now a feeling has risen to this world, to such a world principle, it lives in buddhi. This means nothing else than a kind of eternal principles of feeling. Who lives in the everyday life can also err, can also stray with his feeling. However, someone who experiences the eternal norms of feeling in himself as the thinker experiences the eternal norms of the manasic thinking has the same certainty and clearness of feeling in himself as the thinker has clearness of thinking.
Theosophy describes this as a spiritual human being who experiences the spirit in himself. This was also the deeper substance of Christ. The human being experiences Christ, lives with Christ, and participates in Him. Christ is the same as buddhi.
If the mere external will which is the mostly unconscious in the human being rises to the highest world principle it is hard to talk of this highest development of the human spirit, one can only indicate it then one speaks of the true spirit, of the spirit-man or, with a Sanskrit term, of atma. For the human will can be purified from the personal. These are the three members of the spiritual: manas, buddhi, and atma. As a substance is dissolved in water, these three members are dissolved in the soul. Where everything intermingles, the human being cannot normally make a distinction of that which wanders there aimlessly. Hence, the modern psychologist describes a real chaos as soul.
If that which lives out as the highest spiritual in the soul intermingles with the lower qualities of the soul, if it appears as a lower feeling, if it enjoys life in desire instead of love, we call it kama. Kama is the same as buddhi, only buddhi is the selflessness of kama, and kama is the selfishness, the egoism of buddhi. Then we have in ourselves our everyday reason which wants the satisfaction of our personal needs. We call this reason, in so far as it expresses manas, ahamkara, the I-consciousness, the I-feeling in the soul. So that speaking of the human soul we can also speak of buddhi which enjoys life in kama, and if we speak of manas or the real spiritual of thinking, we speak of the reason which enjoys life in the I-consciousness, in the ahamkara.
I tried to show the gradual education of the human being, the purification of the human being from the psychic to the spiritual, in a book that I wrote some years ago, in my Philosophy of Freedom. You find there in the concepts of the Western philosophy what I have shown now. There you find the development of the soul from kama to manas. I have called ahamkara the I, manas the “higher thinking”, the pure thinking, and buddhi not yet pointing to the origin the “moral imagination.” These are only other expressions of the one and the same matter. With it we have recognised the psycho-spiritual nature of the human being. This psycho-spiritual nature is embodied in that which the external natural sciences describe to us. This psycho-spiritual nature is, actually, the human being. It has something like a cover around him: the external physical corporeality.
The theosophical view is that the psycho-spiritual nature of the human being existed sooner than the present figure, than the physical corporeality of the human being. The human being did not originate in the physical but in the psycho-spiritual. This psycho-spiritual, atma, buddhi and manas, forms the basis of all physical creation. Plato also speaks of it if he says that the spirit of the human being must be eternal, because it is an idea of God. What develops as forms on earth approaches the eternal spiritual part of the human being.

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One imagined that in such a way that now no longer only a single human soul lived in him, but that in him something of the universal soul had emerged which flows through the whole universe. In Greece, one called this universal soul, which flows through the whole universe, Chrestós, and the most elevated sages of the East know it as buddhi.

1906-02-15-GA054

(SWCC)

[Budhi]
The second member of this spiritual essence of the human being is the buddhi or life spirit. This second element in the human soul is something that is expressed with the most developed human beings, with the leaders of humanity in a certain way. We can describe this life spirit in a certain way. This buddhi of the highest glory and sublimity inhabited the old religious founders, Hermes, Buddha, Zarathustra and — in the extreme — Christ Jesus.
If I make clear what this buddhi signifies in the spiritual realm, I can do it only by a symbol. One must behold the spiritual either, or one has to sum up the everlasting in a symbol, like Goethe does who says: “All that is transitory, is only a symbol.”
I would like to give such a symbol of buddhi. If you imagine the usual productive strength in the usual sensuous life, combined with love, but not with receptive love, but with devoted love: this is buddhi.
There is in nature no other symbol than the hen, which sits on the egg, conjuring up a new life with its own warmth, sacrificing its own existence in love for the new life.
Now imagine this transferred to the spiritual: imagine an individuality who produces the big, propelling forces, the spiritual impulse in the human nature for the further development in such a way as I have just described, then you have it.
The element of Christian feeling and sensation had been a basic strength since two millennia. It flowed as blessing through the Western hearts and fulfilled them with bliss.
Did Christ not generate it and did it not exist in Christ?
Was it not brought into this world with the highest glory, showing that spiritually, which lives in the sensuous, the devoted love which creates — which does not create a human being, but spiritual love which brings forth the universal wisdom, for centuries?
Imagine this element in the human nature, and then we have what we call Christ in the Christian mysticism, Chrestós in the Greek mysticism, buddhi in the Eastern mysticism, the life spirit in its highest potentiality.
Everybody who feels something of that which it means to produce spiritually what is incorporated as a force in the human development, everybody who feels something of it has a feeling of spiritual, bright clearness like that which expresses itself here below by a symbol, the true blissful sensation with which the chicken sits on the egg. This is buddhi. It exists in every single human being to a certain extent, at least as disposition.

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Think of a hen sitting on its eggs. It is wholly given up to this brooding activity and is filled with a kind of warm, almost voluptuous pleasure in which there arises a dreamy pre-vision of the hatching of the little winged chicken.
This bliss in the work of creation exists at every stage of cosmic life, and warmth pours from it.
In the sphere of Cosmic Intelligence — which may be conceived as the world of thoughts accessible to the higher Self (Manas) — this warmth seems to pervade the whole universe, emanating from the creative life of soul (Budhi).
We can divine the presence of a creative sphere in existence before our Earth and ‘brooding’ over it.

Discussion

Related pages

References and further reading

Leo Tolstoj: 'The kingdom of God is within you is (1893)
Vladimir Solovyov: 'The meaning of love (1894)
Robert Sardello: 'Love and the World: A Guide to Conscious Soul Practice (2001)
Athys Floride: 'Die spirituelle Verwandlung der Liebeskräfte als Voraussetzung zur Weltverjüngung im Sinne von Novalis (2010)