A Missão da Nova Revelação para a Ação Moral de Rudolf Steiner
Comentários/tradução de Sonia von Homrich
Ninguém que
realmente saiba quais as consequências da imoralidade pode, em verdade, ser
imoral, pois somos chamados a ensinar as verdadeiras consequências que resultam
das causas. Deve-se, de fato, direcionar a atenção das pessoas para elas
enquanto ainda são crianças. A imoralidade só existe porque as pessoas não têm
conhecimento. Somente a escuridão da inverdade torna possíveis ações imorais.
Rudolf Steiner. O Significado da Pesquisa Espiritual para a
Ação Moral. Bielefeld. GA 127.6Mar1911
A palestra tinha como título : Die Mission der neuen Geistesoffenbarung für
das sittliche Handeln. “A missão da nova revelação para a ação moral.” Traduzida
para o Inglês do original alemão por Alan P. Cottrell.
A Palestra abaixo, pode ser visualizada em outras línguas
através da tradução oferecida neste Blog, na orelha, à direita da página.
Sources: Rudolf
Steiner – GA 127 – The Significance of Spiritual Research For Moral Action –
Bielefeld, March 6, 1911
https://rsarchive.org/GA/GA0127/19110306p01.html
ATENÇÃO – O que Steiner falava em suas palavras era
Antroposofia que só recebeu este nome após a saída dele da Presidência da Sociedade
Teosófica onde dava suas palestras de Antroposofia ou Ciência Espiritual de
Rudolf Steiner ou ainda Ciência Espiritual direcionada pela Antroposofia de
Rudolf Steiner.
Então por favor, leia ANTROPOSOFIA toda vez que se deparar
com a palavra Teosofia. A Antroposofia sempre foi, desde quando Steiner iniciou
a dar Palestras e Conferências bem diferente da Teosofia pois as bases da
Antroposofia são a Cristologia de Rudolf Steiner, com o método de pesquisa de Rudolf
Steiner, usando também a metodologia de Goethe.
A missão da nova revelação para a ação moral, Rudolf Steiner
The
objection is frequently made that theosophy does not really work its way into
the realm of morality. In fact it is said that through certain of its teachings
it in some respects not only does not counter egotism but furthers it. Those
who are of this opinion share the following thoughts. They say that theosophy
demonstrates how the human being develops his existence from life to life and
that the main point is that even if he suffers defeats he has the possibility
of striving ever higher, employing in a subsequent life the results of what he
has learned in a given life as in a kind of “school.” He who immerses himself
completely in this belief in human perfectibility will strive to render his “I”
ever more pure, to make it as rich as possible, so that he may ascend ever
higher and higher. This, so these people say, is after all really an egotistic
striving. For we theosophists, they say, seek to attract teachings and forces
from the spiritual world in order to elevate our “I” to ever greater heights.
This is therefore an egotistic basis for human action. These people maintain
further that we theosophists are convinced that we prepare a bad karma for
ourselves through imperfect actions. Thus in order not to do so the theosophist
will avoid doing this or that which he would otherwise have done. He therefore
refrains from the action for fear of karma. For the same reason he would
probably also do this or that which he otherwise would not have done, and this
too would be but one more quite egotistic motivation for an action. There are a
number of people who say that the teachings of karma and reincarnation as well
as the rest of the striving for perfection which originates in theosophy leads
people to work spiritually for a refined form of higher egotism. It would
actually be a severe reproach if one were able to maintain that theosophy
prompts people to develop moral action not out of sympathy and compassion but
out of fear of punishment. Let us now ask ourselves whether such a reproach is
really justified. We must reach very deeply into occult research if we wish to
refute such a reproach to theosophy in a really fundamental way.
Let us
assume that someone were to say that if a person does not already possess this
striving for perfection, theosophy will certainly never prompt him to moral
actions. A deeper understanding of what theosophy has to say can teach us that
the individual is related to the whole of humanity in such a way that by acting
immorally he not only does something that may earn him a punishment. It is
rather the case that through an immoral thought, an immoral action or attitude
he brings about something really absurd, something that cannot be reconciled
with truly healthy thinking.
The
statement has many implications. An immoral action not only implies a
subsequent karmic punishment; it is rather in the most fundamental respect an
action that one definitely ought not to do. Let us assume that a person commits
a theft. In so doing the person incurs a karmic punishment. If one wishes to
avoid this punishment one simply does not steal. But the matter is still more
complicated. Let us ask ourselves what really motivates the person who lies or
steals. The liar or thief seeks personal advantage — the liar perhaps wishing
to wiggle out of an unpleasant situation. Such an action is only meaningful if
one actually does gain an advantage through lying or stealing. If the person
were now to realize that he simply cannot have that advantage, that he is
wrong, that on the contrary he will bring about a disadvantage, he would then
say to himself that it is nonsense even to think about such an action. As
theosophy penetrates ever deeper into human civilization, people will know that
it is absurd, indeed that it is ridiculous, to believe that through lying or
stealing one can acquire what one seeks to acquire. For one thing will become
increasingly clear for all people as theosophy enters their consciousness: that
in the sense of higher causes we have to do not at all with totally separate
human individualities, but that along with the separate individualities the
whole of humanity forms a unity. One will realize more and more that in the
sense of a true view of the world the finger is more intelligent than the whole
man, for it does not presume to be something on its own, independent of the
entire human organism to which it belongs. In its dull consciousness it knows
that it cannot exist without the whole organism.
But people
continually embrace illusions. They fancy themselves separate by virtue of what
is enclosed within their skins. This they are, however, just as little as is
the finger without the whole organism. The source of the illusion is the fact
that the human being can wander about and the finger cannot. We are in the same
situation on earth as is the finger on our organism. The science that believes
our earth is a glowing hot, fluid sphere surrounded by a hard shell upon which
we humans walk about, and that this explains the earth, stands at the same
level as a science that would believe that in all essential respects the human
being consists of nothing more, nothing else than his skeleton, for what one
perceives of the earth is the same as the skeleton in man. The rest of what
belongs to the earth is of a super-sensible nature. The earth is a real
organism, a real living being. When one pictures to oneself the human being as
a living creature, one can think of his blood with its red and white
corpuscles. These can only develop in the entire human organism and thereby be
what they are. What these red and white blood corpuscles are for the human
being we human beings are for the organism of the earth. We definitely belong
to this earth organism. We form a part of the whole living being that is the
earth, and only then do we view ourselves correctly when we say, “As single
individuals we are nothing. We are only complete when we think our way into the
‘body’ of the earth, the body of which we perceive only the skeleton, the mineral
shell, as long as we do not acknowledge the spiritual members of this earth
organism.”
When a
process of infection arises in the human organism, the entire organism is
seized by fever, by illness. If we translate this into terms applicable to the
earth organism we can say that what occultism maintains is true: When something
immoral is done anywhere on earth it amounts to the same thing for the whole
earth organism as a little festering boil on the human body, which makes the
whole organism sick. So that if a theft is committed on the earth the result is
that the entire earth develops a kind of fever. This is not meant merely in a
metaphorical sense. It is well-founded. The whole organism of the earth suffers
from everything immoral and as individuals we can do nothing immoral without
affecting the whole earth.
It is
really a simple thought, yet people have a difficult time grasping it. But let
those people who do not want to believe it just wait. Let one try to impress
such thoughts upon our culture; let one try with these thoughts to appeal to
the human heart, the human conscience. Whenever people anywhere act immorally
their actions are a kind of infected boil for the whole earth and make the
earth organism ill, and experience would show that tremendous moral impulses
inhere in such knowledge.
One can
preach morality as much as one likes; it will not help people one bit. But
knowledge such as we have developed here would not seize hold of people merely
as knowledge. If it found its way into the developing culture, if it streamed
into the soul already in childhood, it would provide a tremendous moral
impulse, for in the end no moral preachments have any real power to overwhelm,
to convince the human soul. Schopenhauer is quite right when he says that to
preach morality is easy but to establish it is difficult. People have a certain
antipathy toward moral preachments. They say, “What is being preached to me is
the will of someone else and I am supposed simply to acquiesce to it.” This
belief will become more and more dominant to the degree that materialistic
consciousness becomes dominant.
One says
today that there is a morality of class, of social standing, and what such a
class morality considers to be right is then applied to the other class. Such
an attitude has found its way into human souls and in the future it will become
worse and worse. People will come increasingly to feel that they themselves
want to find everything that is to be acknowledged as correct in this sphere.
They will feel that it should originate in their own inclination toward
objective knowledge. The human individuality wants to be taken ever more
seriously. But at the moment in which the heart, for instance, were to realize
that it too would be sick if the whole organism became sick, man would do what
is necessary in order not to fall ill. At the moment in which man realizes that
he is embedded within the total organism of the earth and has no business being
a festering boil on the earth's body — at that moment there exists an objective
basis for morality. And man will say, “If I steal I am seeking my own personal
advantage. I refrain from stealing because if I do steal I shall make sick the
entire organism without which I cannot live. I do the opposite and thereby
bring about something advantageous not only for the organism but also for
myself.”
In the
future the moral awareness of human beings will form itself in this general
way. He who, through theosophy, finds an impetus to moral action will say to
himself that it is an illusion to seek personal advantage through an immoral
action. If you do that, you are like an octopus that ejects a dark fluid: you
eject a dark aura of immoral impulses. Lying and stealing are the seeds of an
aura into which you place yourself and through which you make the whole world
unhappy.
People say,
“All that surrounds us is maya.” But such truths must become truths for life
itself. Let us suppose that one can demonstrate that through theosophy
humanity's moral development in the future will enable man to see how he wraps
himself in an aura of illusions when he seeks his own advantage. If one can
demonstrate this, it will become a practical truth to say that the world is a
maya or illusion. The finger believes this in its dull, half sleeping, half
dreaming consciousness. It is bright enough to know that without the hand and
the rest of the body it is no longer a finger. The human being today is not yet
bright enough to know that without the body of the earth he is actually
nothing. But he must become bright enough to know this. The finger therefore
enjoys a certain advantage over man. It does not cut itself off. It does not
say, “I want to keep my blood for myself or cut off a portion of myself.” It is
in harmony with the whole organism. Man must, to be sure, develop a higher
consciousness in order to come into harmony with the whole organism of the
earth. In his present moral consciousness man does not yet know this. He could
say to himself, “I inhale the air. It was just outside, and now it is inside
the human body. Something external becomes something internal. And when I
exhale, something internal again becomes something external. And so it is with
the whole man.” The human being is not even aware of the simple fact that
separated from the surrounding air he is nothing. He must undertake to develop
an awareness of how he is locked into the entire organism of the earth.
How can the
human being know: “You are a member of the whole organism of the earth?”
Theosophy enables him to know this. It shows man that first there existed a
Saturn condition, then a Sun condition, then a Moon condition. Man was present
through all these conditions, although in a quite different way from today.
Then the earth proceeded from the old Moon condition. Gradually the human being
arose as earthly man. He has a long development behind him and in the future he
is to advance to other stages of development. Man in his present form has
arisen with the earth in its present form. When through the study of theosophy
one traces how man and the earth have arisen it becomes clear in what way man
is a part of the whole organism of the earth. Then it becomes clear how earth
and man gradually have emerged from a spiritual life, how the beings of the
hierarchies have fashioned earth and man, how man belongs to the hierarchies,
even though he stands at the lowest stage. Then theosophy points to the central
Being of the entire earthly evolution, to the Christ as the great archetype of
the human being. And from all these teachings of theosophy the awareness shall
spring forth for man, “Thus ought you to act.”
The science
of the spirit shows us how we can feel ourselves to be a part of the whole life
of the earth. The science of the spirit shows us that Christ is the Spirit of
the earth. Our fingers, our toes, our nose, all our members dream that the
heart provides them with blood. They dream that without a central organ they
would be nothing, for without a heart they are not possible. Theosophy shows
man that in the future of earthly evolution it would be folly not to take up
the idea of Christ, for what the heart is for the organism Christ is for the
body of the earth. Just as through the heart the blood provides the whole
organism with life and strength, so must the Being of Christ have moved through
all single souls on earth, and the words of St. Paul must become truth for
them: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” The Christ must have flowed into all human
hearts. Whoever wanted to say, “One can continue to exist without Christ,”
would be as foolish as eyes and ears if they wanted to say that they could
continue to exist without the heart. In the case of the single human body the
heart must of course be present from the beginning, whereas the heart entered
the organism of the earth only with the Christ. For the following ages,
however, this heart's blood of Christ must have entered all human hearts. He
who does not unite himself with it in his soul, will wither away. The earth
will not wait with its development; it will come to the point to which it must
come. Human beings alone can remain behind, that is, they would balk at
receiving Christ in their souls. A number of human beings would stand there in
their last incarnation on earth and not have reached the goal: they have not
recognized Christ, have not received Christ-feeling, Christ-knowing into their
souls. They are not mature. They do not take their places in the development to
higher stages. They separate themselves off.
Such people
do not immediately have the opportunity to collapse completely as would the
nose and ears if they detached themselves from the whole human organism. But
occult research shows that the following would happen to those who do not want
to permeate themselves with the Christ element, the life of Christ, as this can
be attained only through theosophy. Instead of living on upwards with the earth
to new levels of existence they would have assimilated substances of decay, of
disintegration, and would first have to enter upon other paths. If in the
sequence of incarnations human souls take up the Christ into their knowledge,
their feelings, their whole soul, the earth will fall away from these human
souls just as a corpse falls away at a person's death. The corpse of the earth
will fall away and that which, permeated with Christ, is present in a state of
spirit and soul will proceed to form itself into new existence and will
reincarnate itself on Jupiter.
What will
happen now with those people who have not taken the Christ into themselves?
Through theosophy they will have abundant opportunities to be able to recognize
the Christ, to be able to take the Christ into themselves. Today people still
resist doing so. They will resist less and less. But let us assume that at the
end of the development there were those who even then continued to resist.
There would then exist a number of people who could not join the rest in
advancing to the next planet. They would not have reached the actual goal of
the earth. These people would constitute a veritable cross on that planet upon
which human beings will then develop further. For while this group will be
incapable of sharing in the experience of the actual and proper Jupiter
condition and what develops there, they will nevertheless be present on
Jupiter. Everything that is subsequently material is first present in a
spiritual state. Thus everything that people now, during the period of the
earth develop spiritually in the way of immorality, of a refusal to take the
Christ into themselves, is first present in a soul-spiritual state. But this
will become material. It will surround and penetrate Jupiter as a neighboring
element. This will be made up of the successors of those persons who did not
take the Christ into themselves during the earth condition. What the soul
develops in the nature of immorality, of resistance to the Christ will then be
present materially, in an actually physical state. While the physical part of
those people who have taken the Christ into themselves will exist in a finer
form on Jupiter, the physical part of these other people will be fundamentally
coarser. Occult research paints before the eye of the soul an image of what
will be the future of the people who will not have reached earthly maturity.
We now
breathe air. On Jupiter there will in essence be no air. Instead, Jupiter will
be surrounded by a substance that, in comparison to our air, will be something
refined, something etheric. In this substance those human beings will live who
have reached the goal of the earth. Those others who have remained behind,
however, will have to breathe something like a repulsively warm, boiling, fiery
air infused with a dank stuffiness full of fetid odors. Thus the people who did
not attain the maturity appropriate to the earth will be a cross for the other
Jupiter people, for they will have a pestilent effect in the environment, in
the swamps and other land masses of Jupiter. The fluid-physical components of
the bodies of these people will be comparable to a liquid which constantly
seeks to solidify, freezes up, coagulates. Consequently these beings will not
only have this horrendous air to breathe but also a bodily state in which the
blood would seem continually to congeal, to cease to remain fluid. The actual
physical body of these beings will consist of a kind of slimy substance more
revolting than the bodily substance of our present snails and fully equipped to
secrete something like a kind of crust surrounding them. This crust will be
softer than the skin of our present snakes, like a kind of soft scaly armor.
Thus will these beings live in a rather less than appealing manner in the
elements of Jupiter.
Such a
picture as that contemplated in advance by the occult researcher is ghastly to
behold. But woe to those who, like the ostrich, do not want to look at the
danger and wish to shut their eyes before the truth. For it is just this that
lulls us into error and illusion, while a bold look at the truth imparts the
greatest moral impulses. If human beings listen to what truth says to them they
will feel, “You are lying.” Then there will arise in them an image of the
effect of this lie upon human nature in the Jupiter condition, the image that
shows that the lie creates a slimy, pestilent breath for the future. This
image, arising again and again, will be a reason to direct the impulses of the
soul to what is healthy, for no one who really knows the consequences of
immorality can in truth be immoral, for one is called upon to teach the true
consequences that result from the causes. One should in fact direct people's
attention to them while they are still children. Immorality exists only because
people have no knowledge. Only the darkness of untruth makes immoral actions
possible.
To be sure,
what can thus be said concerning the connection between immorality and
ignorance should not be intellectual knowledge but wisdom. Knowledge by itself
participates in immorality and if it turns into sophisticated cleverness it can
even be roguery, while wisdom will affect the human soul in such a way that the
soul rays forth truth, innermost morality.
My dear
friends, it is true that to establish morality is difficult; to preach morality
is easy. To establish morality means to establish it out of wisdom, and one
must first have this wisdom. Here we see that it was after all a rather
intelligent utterance on the part of Schopenhauer when he said that to
establish morality is difficult.
Thus we see
how unfounded it is when people who do not really know theosophy come and say
that it contains no moral incentives. Theosophy shows us what we accomplish in
the world when we do not act morally. It provides wisdom, and from this very
wisdom morality streams forth. There is no greater arrogance than to say that
one need only be a good person and all will be in order. The trouble is that
one must first know how one goes about really being a good person. Our
contemporary consciousness is very arrogant when it wishes to reject all
wisdom. True knowledge of the good requires that we penetrate deeply into the
mysteries of wisdom, and this is inconvenient, for it requires that we learn a
great deal.
So when
people come and tell us that reincarnation and karma lay the foundation for an
egotistical morality we can thus reply, “No! True theosophy shows man that when
he does something immoral it is roughly the same as if he were to say, ‘I'm
taking a sheet of paper to write a letter,’ and then takes a match and sets
fire to the sheet of paper. That would be grotesque nonsense. A person finds
himself in the same situation with respect to a wrong action or an immoral
attitude.”
To steal
means the same thing for the real, deeper human essence as when one lies. If
one steals, one plants into the essential human being the seed that will cause
one to develop a slimy, repulsive substance and to surround oneself with
pestilent odors in the future. Only if one lives in the illusion that the truth
is in the present moment can one do such a deed. In stealing, man places into
himself something that amounts to the same thing as a flaying of the human
being. If man knows this he will no longer be able to do an immoral deed; he
will not be able to steal. Just as the plant seed sends forth blossoms in the
future so too will theosophy, if it is planted in the human soul, send forth
human blossoms, human morality. Theosophy is the seed, the soul is the
nourishing ground and morality is the blossom and fruit on the plant of the
developing human being.
