A day will come when we can no longer hide the good or evil within us

At the present time we can more or less hide the good or evil within us. A day will come when we can no longer do this, when the good or the evil will be written indelibly on our forehead, on our body, and even on the face of the earth. Humanity will then be split into two races. In the same way that we encounter boulders or animals today, in the future we will encounter beings of pure evil and ugliness. When a human being’s facial features become an expression of that individual’s karma, then people will separate themselves according to the stream in which they apparently belong. Everything depends on whether human beings have conquered the lower nature within them or whether this lower nature has triumphed over the spirit. 

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 94 – Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse: Appendix: Cosmogony – Paris, 14th June 1906

Translated by James H. Hindes

Previously posted on February 27, 2017

We would perhaps bring evil, bad qualities to light if we followed our lower nature

Somebody, who lives among us, would perhaps bring evil, bad qualities to light if he followed his lower nature, but within him, mixed with the lower nature, the higher one lives which keeps it in check. You can compare this mixture with a mixture of a yellow liquid and a blue one in a glass, resulting in a green liquid in which we can no longer distinguish yellow and blue. The lower nature is mixed with the higher one in the human being that way and both are not to be distinguished. As you can extract the blue liquid from the green liquid by chemical means, so that only the yellow fluid remains, and the uniform green is separated into a duality, in blue and yellow, you separate the lower nature from the higher one by means of the esoteric development. You pull the lower nature out of the body like the sword from the scabbard, which remains alone then for itself. This lower nature comes out in such a way that it appears almost nightmarish.

When it was still mixed with the higher nature, nothing of it was to be noticed. Now, however, when it is separated, all evil, bad qualities come out. Human beings who had seemed benevolent before often become quarrelsome and envious. These qualities sat already in their lower nature, however, were controlled by the higher one. You can observe this with many people who are led on anomalous ways. The human being becomes a liar very easily when he enters the supersensible world. He easily loses the ability to distinguish true from wrong. It belongs inevitably to the esoteric training that the strictest training of the character is paralleled by it. What history tells of the saints as their temptations is not a legend but literal truth.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 54 – The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy: Inner Development – Berlin, 7th December 1905

Previously possted on November 19, 2016

We would perhaps bring evil, bad qualities to light if we followed our lower nature

Somebody, who lives among us, would perhaps bring evil, bad qualities to light if he followed his lower nature, but within him, mixed with the lower nature, the higher one lives which keeps it in check. You can compare this mixture with a mixture of a yellow liquid and a blue one in a glass, resulting in a green liquid in which we can no longer distinguish yellow and blue. The lower nature is mixed with the higher one in the human being that way and both are not to be distinguished. As you can extract the blue liquid from the green liquid by chemical means, so that only the yellow fluid remains, and the uniform green is separated into a duality, in blue and yellow, you separate the lower nature from the higher one by means of the esoteric development. You pull the lower nature out of the body like the sword from the scabbard, which remains alone then for itself. This lower nature comes out in such a way that it appears almost nightmarish.

When it was still mixed with the higher nature, nothing of it was to be noticed. Now, however, when it is separated, all evil, bad qualities come out. Human beings who had seemed benevolent before often become quarrelsome and envious. These qualities sat already in their lower nature, however, were controlled by the higher one. You can observe this with many people who are led on anomalous ways. The human being becomes a liar very easily when he enters the supersensible world. He easily loses the ability to distinguish true from wrong. It belongs inevitably to the esoteric training that the strictest training of the character is paralleled by it. What history tells of the saints as their temptations is not a legend but literal truth.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 54 – The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy: Inner Development – Berlin, 7th December 1905

Life in Devachan

Life in Devachan, if viewed in its reality, loses every element of comfortlessness; that the human being, when he ceases to regard it from his earthly, egotistical standpoint, can experience it as a condition of infinite blessedness — even apart from the fact that all freedom from the physical body, freedom from the lower nature in which he is enclosed here, brings with it a feeling of intense relief. The fact that these encasements have fallen away — this in itself brings a feeling of beatitude. Devachan is thus a time of expansion and expression in all directions; there is a richness and an absence of restriction that are never experienced on the earth.

Source: GA 99 – Theosophy of the Rosicrucian – V. Mans Communal Life Between Death and a New Birth. Birth into the Physical World – Munich 29^th May 1907