There is a hundred times more hatred than love among human beings

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.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 239 – Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume V: Lecture II – Prague, 30th March, 1924

Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19240330p01.html

Previously posted on 3 July 2019

Double egoism

It is not enough for us merely to introduce ideas such as those of reincarnation and karma — the question is, in what way we introduce them. If they become merely an incentive to egoism, then they do not raise our civilised life, they only serve to sink it lower.

There is another way again in which reincarnation and karma become unethical — anti-ethical — ideas. Many people say: “I must be good, so that I may have a fortunate incarnation next time.” To act from such a motive, to be virtuous in order that one may have as pleasant a time as possible in the next incarnation — this is not simple egoism, but double egoism.

Yet this double egoism is what many people did actually get out of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. Our civilisation possesses so little of any altruistic or religious impulse, that it is incapable of conceiving even such ideas as those of reincarnation and karma in the sense that would make them a stimulus to altruistic, not to egoistic actions and sentiments.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 191 – Cosmogony, Freedom, Altruism – Lecture 4 – Dornach, October 10th, 1919

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19191010p01.html

Previously posted on 2 July 2019

All men need to be alone to a certain extent

All men need to be alone to a certain extent, and this is not just egoism. Someone who always wants to help others will at some point feel that he can’t help anymore if he doesn’t get the forces for this out of solitude. One who always wants to talk will someday sense that his words are empty if he doesn’t let spiritual forces come to him in solitude. We must be alone for prayer and meditation; communal prayer can only bring men to a certain groupsouledness.

One who thinks that it’s egotistical to go into solitude simply feels the need to be with other people, not to help them. A supposedly selfless wish to help can really come from egoism, where one simply seeks sociability. For instance, the magnetic healing that’s used to lessen others’ pain could just come from the need to have a pleasant feeling from stoking someone’s body. Although love and egoism are opposite poles, it’s nevertheless true that in certain boundary cases they come very close to each other and it’s difficult to tell them apart.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA266-II – Esoteric Lessons – nr. 34 – Karlsruhe, 14 October 1911

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266/English/UNK1999/19111014e01.html

P.S. Actually a remarkable statement when one considers that Rudolf Steiner repeatedly says, that he liked sociability a lot. He had very many friends and acquaintances and, especially in his younger years, regularly sat late into the night in coffee houses in Vienna. Not to mention he was also married for several years to Anna Eunike, a widow with five children. An “ordinary” person, with such a life, would not even get around to reading a book, but Steiner studied all sorts of things and knew more about everything than all the others put together. He also traveled all over Europe giving lectures. An incredible genius.

Translated with DeepL

Interest is a quite specially golden impulse

By this word “interest” something is expressed which in a moral sense is extremely important. It is much more important that one should bear in mind the moral significance of interest, than that one should devote oneself to thousands of beautiful moral axioms which may be only paltry and hypocritical. Let it be clearly understood, that our moral impulses are in fact never better guided than when we take a proper interest in objects and beings. In our last lecture we spoke in a deeper sense of love as an impulse and in such a way that we cannot now be misunderstood if we say that the usual, oft-repeated declamation, “love, love, and again love” cannot replace the moral impulse contained in what may be described by the word ‘interest.’

Let us suppose that we have a child before us. What is the condition primary to our devotion to this child? What is the first condition to our educating the child? It is that we take an interest in it. There is something unhealthy or abnormal in the human soul if a person withdraws himself from something in which he takes an interest. It will more and more be recognised that the impulse of interest is a quite specially golden impulse in the moral sense the further we advance to the actual foundations of morality and do not stop at the mere preaching of morals. Our inner powers are also called forth as regards mankind when we extend our interests, when we are able to transpose ourselves with understanding into beings and objects.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 155 – Anthroposophical Ethics -Lecture III – 30 May 1912, Norrköping

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA155/English/APC1928/19120530p03.html

Damn interesting, but continue

About knowledge and morality

After all, in the ordinary everyday life of the physical world it is the case that moral impulses can speak up from the depths with great certainty to the simplest human soul, to the most unlearned human soul. And even many a highly learned man, even many a man who perhaps counts himself among the philosophers or is a scientist, can be put to shame in the moral field by a simple personality who does not call much his own in terms of knowledge, and who nevertheless is able to perform the most self-sacrificing deeds of genuine human love from the depths of his soul in the most difficult cases. Ordinary knowledge, external physical knowledge, need certainly not lead down into the depths from which the moral impulses spring, the impulses from which morality is to be founded.

Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 62 – Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung: XIIl. Die Moral im Lichte der Geistesforschung – Berlin, 3 April 1913 (page 423)

https://odysseetheater.org/GA/Buecher/GA_062.pdf#view=Fit

Translated with DeepL

Art of Hans Georg Leiendecker