Moral impulses/Empathy towards others/Pre-earthly existence

Human morality is based upon – when it does not consist out of mere words or fine speeches or out of intentions that are never realised – the genuine interest of one person in the other, on the ability to truly see another person.

The human being who can empathise with others will, out of this understanding of other people, display social-moral impulses. One can also state that such a person has attained the moral capacities in this earthly existence in pre-earthly life, accomplished from living together with the gods and keeping the urge, at least in the soul, for such a living together on earth. And this shaping of such a living together, enabling one person to accomplish their earthly tasks together with others, that alone in reality forms the moral life on earth. So, we see that love and the effects of love, morality, is solely the result of what the human being experienced spiritually during pre-earthly life.

Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 219 – Das Verhältnis der Sternenwelt zum Menschen und des Menschen zur Sternenwelt – Dornach, 15 December 1922 (Page 62-63)

https://odysseetheater.org/GA/Buecher/GA_219.pdf#view=Fit

Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger

Previously posted on 22 July 2019

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

Connection of freedom with pure thinking and moral impulses

I laid stress in my Philosophie der Freiheit which was written in the early nineties, on the connection of the experience of freedom with what I called “pure thinking”. […] When we permeate pure thinking with moral ideas and impulses — that is, with ideas and impulses that are not associated with desires, or with sympathies and antipathies, but solely with pure, loving devotion to the deed that is to be done — when we do this and allow the impulse to quicken in our soul to action, then the action we perform is truly free.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA number unknown – The Threshold in Nature and in Man – Basle, February 1, 1921

Translated by Mary Adams

Previously posted on December 23, 2019

An excess of evil powers against a good humanity

The dream of Socrates, that virtue be able to be taught, will come true; more and more it will be possible on earth not only for our intellect to be stimulated and energized by this teaching but, through this teaching, for moral impulses to be spread abroad. 

Schopenhauer said, “To preach morality is easy; to establish it is most difficult.” Why is this? Because no morality has yet been spread by preaching. It is quite possible to recognize moral principles and yet not abide by them. For most people the Pauline saying holds good, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. This will change, through the moral fire streaming from the figure of Christ. Through this, the need for moral impulses on earth will be increasingly clear to man. 

Man will transform the earth in so far as he feels with ever-increasing strength that morality is an essential part of the earth. In the future, to be immoral will be possible only for people who receive immoral help, who are goaded in this direction, who are possessed by evil demons, by Ahrimanic, Asuric powers, and who strive for this possession.

This is the future condition of the earth: there will be a sufficient number of people who increasingly teach morality and at the same time offer a moral foundation, but there will also be those who by their own free decision surrender themselves to the evil powers and thus enable an excess of evil to be pitted against a good humanity. Nobody will be forced to do this; it will lie in the free will of each individual.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – Ga 130 – The Reappearance of Christ: Lecture IX: The Etherization of the Blood – Basel, October 1, 1911