The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Love and Its Significance in the World

[ 1 ] When we speak of the fact that, at the present stage of development, human beings must come to what might be called an understanding of the Christ impulse, the question may well arise as to what becomes of a person who has never heard of the Christ impulse, who may not even have ever heard the name “Christ.” Will such a person therefore have to forgo the Christ impulse simply because they have not heard the name of Christ? Is it necessary, in theory, to know what is called the Christ impulse in order for the power of Christ to sink into the soul? Let us shed light on this question through the following reflections on human life from birth to death.

[ 2 ] Human beings enter the world; in early childhood, they are half-asleep. We must first learn to perceive ourselves as an “I,” to find ourselves as an “I,” and our inner life grows ever richer through the absorption of all that is bestowed upon us through this “I.” As death approaches, this inner life is at its richest, at its ripest; therefore, we can raise the great question: What becomes of our inner life when the body falls away? It is a characteristic of our physical and spiritual life in particular that the life experiences and knowledge we carry within our soul become ever more significant the closer we come to death; yet, as death approaches, certain qualities are increasingly lost, while others emerge that are entirely unique to each individual. In youth we gather knowledge, gain life experiences, and cherish hopes that we can usually only put to use later. The closer we come to old age, the more we begin to love the wisdom of life. This love of wisdom is not selfish, for it grows ever greater as we approach death; it grows in proportion to the diminishing prospect of having anything left of our wisdom. We love this inner content of the soul more and more. Spiritual Science can even become a temptation in this way, in that a person may realize that the next life depends on the acquisition of wisdom in this life. A good deal of selfishness extending beyond this life can thus arise from Spiritual Science, and therein lies a danger. Thus it can happen that Spiritual Science, misunderstood in the soul, can become a temptation; this is the allure of Spiritual Science. It lies in its very nature. One can observe that love for the wisdom of life arises just as a plant blooms when it is ready to do so. We can thus observe that love arises for something that is within ourselves. Human beings have often attempted to transcend the impulse of love for something within ourselves in a higher sense. We find, for example, among mystics the endeavor to develop the impulse of self-love in the sense of love for wisdom and to let this shine in a beautiful light. They try, through deepening their own inner life, to find the divine spark within themselves, to perceive their higher self as this divine spark. In reality, however, human beings, as wisdom of life, form only the seed for their next life. It is like the seed after the plant has gone through the year. Just as the seed remains, so does the wisdom of life; the human being passes through the gate of death, and that which matures there as the spiritual core of the being is the seed for the next life. The human being senses this; they can become a mystic and regard that which is merely a seed for the next life as the spark of God, as something absolute. People interpret it this way because they are embarrassed to admit to themselves that it is really just themselves, this spiritual seed. Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler speak of it as the God within ourselves because they know nothing of reincarnation. If we grasp the law of reincarnation, we recognize the significance of love in the world, both individually and as a whole. By karma we mean that which is the cause in one life and has its effect in the next. In the sense of cause and effect, we as human beings cannot truly speak of love, not in the sense of an act of love and its recompense. It involves an action and a recompense for it, but that has nothing to do with love: acts of love are those acts that do not initially seek their recompense in the next life.

[ 3 ] Let us imagine, for example, that we work and thereby earn a living. But it can also be different: we might work without taking any pleasure in it, because we are not working for a wage, but to pay off debts. We can create a mental image of a person who has already spent what he now earns through his work. They would prefer not to have any debts, but as it is, they must work to pay them off. Let us now apply this example to our general human actions: Everything we do out of love turns out to be a way of paying off debts! From an occult perspective, everything that happens out of love brings no reward, but is compensation for goods already consumed. The only actions from which we gain nothing in the future are those we perform out of genuine, true love. One might be alarmed by this truth. Fortunately, people are unaware of it in their conscious mind. In their subconscious, however, all people know it, which is why they are so reluctant to perform acts of love. That is the reason why there is so little love in the world. People instinctively feel that acts of love yield nothing for their ego in the future. A soul must be quite advanced in its development to take pleasure in acts of love from which it gains nothing for itself. The impulse toward this is not strong in humanity; yet through occultism, one can still gain strong impulses for acts of love.

[ 4 ] Our selfishness yields no acts of love, but the world gains all the more from them. Occultism teaches: Love is to the world what the sun is to physical life. No souls could flourish if love were to vanish from the world. Love is the moral sun of the world. Would it not be absurd for a person who takes pleasure in and has an interest in the growth of flowers in a meadow to wish that the sun would disappear from the world? Applied to the moral realm, this means: One must have an interest in ensuring that healthy development prevails in human relationships. It is wise for us to have spread as much love as possible across the earth. It is only wise to promote love on earth.

[ 5 ] What does Spiritual Science offer us? We learn about the facts of Earth’s evolution; we hear about the spirit of the Earth, its surface, and its changes; about the development of the human body, and so on; we come to know precisely what lives and weaves within evolution. What does this mean? What does it mean when people do not want to know anything about Spiritual Science? They have no interest in what is there. For whoever does not know Saturn, whoever does not want to get to know the nature of the Sun and the ancient Moon, does not know the Earth either. Disinterest, the crudest form of selfishness, is what it is when people have no interest in the world. To have an interest in all of existence—that is the duty of human beings. So let us wish for and love the Sun with its creative power, with its love for the flourishing of the Earth and human souls! This learning of becoming Earth—that is to be the spiritual sowing for love of the world, for a Spiritual Science without love would be a danger to humanity. But we should not preach love; rather, it should and will come into the world through our spreading the knowledge of true spiritual things. Spiritual Science and genuine acts of love should be one and the same.

[ 6 ] Sensual love is the source of creativity, of what comes into being. Without sensual love, there would be nothing sensual left in the world; without spiritual love, nothing spiritual arises in the course of development. When we practice love, when we nurture love, forces of emergence and creative forces pour into the world. Should we justify this through reason? Surely the creative forces must also have poured into the world before us and our intellect. Certainly, as egoists, we can deprive the future of creative forces; but the acts of love and the creative forces of the past—those we cannot erase. We owe our very existence to the acts of love of the past. As much as we are strengthened by them, so too are we indebted to the past, and whatever love we can ever muster is the repayment of that debt for our existence. Therefore, we will come to understand the deeds of a highly evolved human being, for a highly evolved human being has a greater debt to the past. It is wise to repay one’s debts through acts of love. The impulse toward love grows as a person ascends; wisdom alone is not enough. Let us bring the significance of love in the workings of the world before our souls in this way: Love is that which always reminds us of the debts of life from the past, and because we gain nothing from paying off debts for the future, we ourselves gain nothing from our acts of love. We must leave our acts of love behind in the world, yet there they are inscribed in the spiritual events of the world. We do not perfect ourselves through our acts of love, but only through other deeds; yet the world is enriched by our acts of love. For love is the creative force in the world.

[ 7 ] Besides love, there are two other powers in the world. How do they compare to love? One power is strength; the second is wisdom. With strength, one can speak of weak power, of greater power, and of omnipotence; the same applies to wisdom—there are also levels up to omniscience and omniscience. It is not quite appropriate to speak of levels of love in the same sense. What is universal love, love for all beings? One cannot speak of an increase in love in the same way as one speaks of an increase in knowledge or power up to omniscience or omnipotence. Through such an increase, our own being becomes more perfect. But this is not the case when we love a few beings or more; this has nothing to do with the perfection of our being in this way. Love for all that lives cannot be compared to omnipotence; the concepts of greatness and progression cannot really be applied to love. Can one attribute the predicate of omnipotence to the divine being that lives and weaves through the world? Emotional prejudices must be set aside here: If God were omnipotent, then He would do everything that happens, and human freedom would therefore be impossible. God’s omnipotence would preclude human freedom! The omnipotence of the deity undoubtedly does not exist if human beings are to be free.

[ 8 ] Does the Divine possess omniscience? Since man’s striving to become like God is the highest goal, our pursuit must be directed toward omniscience. Is omniscience, then, the highest good? If omniscience is the highest good, then at every moment an immense gulf would open up between man and God, who is all-wise. Man would have to be conscious of this gulf at every moment if it were the case that God possesses the highest good—omniscience—for himself and has withheld it from man. — The most comprehensive attribute of the Godhead is not omnipotence, nor omniscience, but love—the attribute beyond which no further increase is possible. God is full of love, is pure love, is, so to speak, born of the substance of love. God is pure, unadulterated love, not supreme wisdom, not supreme power. God has retained love, but he has shared power and wisdom with Lucifer and Ahriman. He has shared wisdom with Lucifer and power with Ahriman, so that humanity might be free, so that humanity might continue to progress under the influence of wisdom.

[ 9 ] If we seek to fathom all that is creative, we arrive at love; the foundation of all life is love. There is another impulse within evolution that leads to beings becoming ever wiser and more powerful. Perfection is achieved through wisdom and power. We can see how the development of wisdom and power changes in the course of human history: We have a continuous evolution, followed by the Christ impulse, which once entered humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha. Love, then, has not entered the world piecemeal, but rather love flows into humanity as a gift from the Divine. Love flows into humanity as a complete and finished whole; but human beings can gradually take up the impulse. The divine impulse of love is a singular impulse, just as we need it as an earthly impulse.

[ 10 ] True love is not subject to increase or decrease. Love is something of a completely different nature than wisdom and power. Love does not raise hopes for the future; love is a down payment for the past. In this way, too, the Mystery of Golgotha enters into the development of the world. Was the Godhead then indebted to humanity?

[ 11 ] Through the influence of Lucifer, a certain element entered into humanity, and in order to accommodate it, something of what had previously existed had to be taken away from humanity. This new element led to a downward trajectory, to which the Mystery of Golgotha offered the possibility of atoning for all guilt. The impulse of Golgotha did not come to take away the sins we commit in the course of our development, but rather to provide a counterbalance to what entered humanity through Lucifer. Let us suppose that someone knows nothing of the name of Christ Jesus, nothing of what is communicated in the Gospels, but that he has knowledge of the radical difference between the character of wisdom and power and that of love. Such a person is, in the true Christian sense, a Christian even if they know nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha. Whoever understands love in such a way that they know love is there to pay debts and brings no advantage for the future is a Christian. To comprehend the nature of love—that is to be a Christian! Through mere theosophy with “karma” and “reincarnation,” one can become a great egoist if one does not add the impulse of love, the Christ impulse; for only then does one attain that which bridges the egoism of theosophy. One achieves balance through an understanding of the Christ impulse. Because theosophy is necessary for humanity, it is given to it today. But there lies a grave danger in the fact that, if one merely practices theosophy without the Christ impulse—the impulse of love—then people will only increase the egoism within themselves through theosophy, nurturing it even beyond death. We must not conclude from this that one should not practice Theosophy, but rather we must learn to recognize that an understanding of the essence of love is an integral part of Theosophy.

[ 12 ] What actually happened during the Mystery of Golgotha? We know that Jesus of Nazareth was born, that he developed in the manner described in the Gospels, that the baptism in the Jordan took place in his thirtieth year, that the Christ then lived for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and that he accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha. Many people now believe they must portray this Mystery of Golgotha as humanly as possible; they believe it was an event that should be recorded as an earthly deed, an act of the earth. But that is not the case. Viewed from the higher worlds, only then can the Mystery of Golgotha be seen as it unfolded on earth.

[ 13 ] Let us once again consider the beginning of the Earth’s evolution and that of humanity. Humanity possessed certain spiritual powers at that time; then Lucifer approached them, and this brings us to the point where one can say: the advancing gods relinquished their omnipotence to Lucifer so that humanity might become free. But humanity sank deeper into matter than was intended; it slips away from the advancing gods, descending further than was intended. How, then, can the advancing gods draw humanity back up to themselves? To understand this, we must look to the council of the gods, not to the Earth. For the gods, Christ performs the deed to bring humanity back to the gods. Lucifer’s deed is thus a deed in the supersensible world; Christ’s deed takes place in the supersensible world, but also in the sensible world—a human being cannot perform it. Lucifer’s deed took place in the supersensible world. But now Christ has descended to Earth to perform his deed on Earth, and human beings are the spectators of this deed. The Mystery of Golgotha is a divine deed, a divine affair, with human beings watching. The gate of heaven is opened, and a divine deed shines forth. The only deed on Earth that is entirely supersensible; therefore, it is no wonder that those who do not believe in the supersensible do not believe in the deed of Christ at all. The deed of Christ is a divine deed, the deed that the gods perform for themselves. The Mystery of Golgotha derives its splendor and unique significance from this, and human beings are invited to witness this deed. A historical testimony to this cannot be found, for people have seen only the outward appearance of it; but the Gospels are written from the perspective of the supernatural, and so they are easily denied by those who have no sense for the supernatural.

[ 14 ] From a certain point of view, the Mystery of Golgotha is one of the highest experiences within the spiritual world. The deed of Lucifer took place at a time when human beings were still participants in the supersensible world; the deed of Christ takes place in the midst of material life: it is a physical-spiritual deed. We can comprehend the deed of Lucifer if we explore the world with wisdom. But wisdom alone is not enough to comprehend the deed of the Mystery of Golgotha. We may possess all the wisdom of this world, yet the deed of Christ may still remain incomprehensible to us. For love is necessary to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. Only when love flows into wisdom and back again does it become possible to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha—only then, when a human being develops a love for wisdom in the face of death. Love united with wisdom—that is what we need when we pass through the gate of death, for otherwise we die without a wisdom united with love. Why do we need it? Philosophy is love of wisdom. Ancient wisdom was not philosophy, for ancient wisdom was not born of love, but of revelation. There is no such thing as an Eastern philosophy, but there is such a thing as Eastern wisdom. Philosophy as the love of wisdom entered the world with Christ; thus we have the entry of wisdom arising from the impulse of love. Through the Christ impulse, it came into the world. We must now apply the impulse of love to wisdom itself.

[ 15 ] The ancient wisdom that the seer attained through revelation is expressed in the sublime words of humanity’s primordial prayer: Ex Deo nascimur, “We are born of God.” That is ancient wisdom. Christ, who emerged from the spiritual worlds, has united wisdom with love; it will overcome selfishness—that is its goal. But it must be offered independently and freely from being to being: that is why the era of love began at the same time as that of selfishness. The starting point of the cosmos is love; from it, selfishness has grown of its own accord. Yet the impulse of Christ, the impulse of love, will in time overcome the divisive forces that have entered the world, and humanity can gradually become partakers of this power of love. In uniquely monumental words, we feel love pouring into the hearts of people in the words of Christ: “Where two are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Thus the ancient Rosicrucian saying resounds within the love bound up with wisdom: In Christo morimur, “In Christ we die.”

[ 16 ] Humanity was predestined by Jehovah to group soulhood, to a gradual permeation with love through blood kinship; as an individual, humanity lives through Lucifer. Thus, there was originally a union of human beings, followed by a separation brought about by the Luciferic principle, which fosters human selfishness and independence. With selfishness, evil entered the world. This had to happen because good could not be attained without evil. Through humanity’s victories over itself, it provides the opportunity for the unfolding of love. Christ brought to humanity, which was sinking into selfishness, the impulse toward this self-overcoming and the power thereby to defeat evil. And now, through the deeds of Christ, those who were separated by selfishness are being brought together. Thus the words of Christ, who speaks of the deeds of love, become true in the deepest sense when he tells us: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me!” — That divine act of love has flowed back into the earthly world; it will gradually permeate the development of humanity and, despite the waning physical forces, revive it in the spirit, because it did not arise from selfishness, but solely from the spirit of love: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus, “Through the Holy Spirit we shall rise again.”

[ 17 ] But the future of humanity will consist of something more than just love. Spiritual perfection will be the most desirable goal for earthly human beings—you will find this described at the beginning of my mystery play *The Trial of the Soul*—but no one who understands the deeds of love will see in their own striving for perfection anything of which they could still say: this striving is selfless. Perfection is something through which we seek to strengthen and nurture our being, our personality. But we must see our value to the world solely in the deeds of love, not in the deeds of self-perfection. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived about this. If one seeks to follow Christ on the path of love toward wisdom, then of such wisdom, which he places in the service of the world, only that much is of value as is imbued with love.

[ 18 ] Wisdom steeped in love, which both nurtures the world and leads it to Christ—this love of wisdom also excludes falsehood. For falsehood is the opposite of truth, and whoever is absorbed in love within the truth knows no falsehood. The lie stems from selfishness, without exception. When we have found the path to wisdom through love, then we have broken through by the growing power of overcoming, through selfless love, even to wisdom. Through this, the human being becomes a free personality. Evil was the ground into which the light of love could shine; but it is love that makes the meaning of evil, the place of evil in the world, recognizable. The light has become recognizable through the darkness. Only the free person can become a true Christian.

[ 19 ] Question about white lies: Withholding the truth out of love—a white lie—is always a very complicated act. A white lie told out of love may be a necessity; at first, it may even seem like a good deed under certain circumstances, but it creates a bond in a very complicated way. Through the white lie, we have become karmically bound to the person in question—specifically, we have become bound to their weakness. We will have dealings with them again later. We will have to tell them the truth later. We will later have to balance this out through a rather unpleasant truth that we must tell them, as a factor in their development. It is good that this is so, for when we are compelled to tell a white lie, it is already karmic—and thus selfish—because a white lie, even as a white lie, is a selfish act; it has nothing to do with a true act of love. For a measure of cleverness is always part of a white lie. It does not arise solely from a decision of love. Spiritual Science shines even into the smallest and most subtle recesses of the human heart.