10 Good and Evil
In his Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner spends a lot of time describing the spiritual dimension of THINKING, as opposed to the physical dimension of FEELING. This is an issue peripheral to the subject at hand, but it is worth mentioning because the spiritual dimension of THINKING is manifested in the physical through WORDS. Hence, the importance of thoughts, specifically thoughts given form by speech, is not to be underestimated in our discussion of Good and Evil.
On the subject of the fight for Good in the abstract, fought with righteous thoughts, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes:
"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."
On this subject Miguel Angel Ruiz states:
"People like to say that the conflict is between good and evil. The real conflict is between truth and lies."
Calvin and Hobbes have this to say:
To be sure, the Hollywood version of demonic possession has forced the subject into a somewhat silly sideways flight into cartoon fantasy; but this does not mean that incarnations of evil are not present in our daily lives, always striving to insinuate their way into our will, and thence into our actions.
At first, we are surprised to find so many stories about demon possession and exorcism in the Gospel of Thomas, since the canonical gospels of Jesus only include a small number of such tales. Did Jesus deal with demons less often than Thomas did, or did the Church Fathers edit out stories of Jesus they thought unsuitable to followers of the Holy Catholic Church? We do not know, with any degree of certainty, how many such stories in the accepted Gospels were cut out by the church fathers, when they were deciding which of the ancient texts to canonize, and which to reject; but, clearly, the Gnostic Gospels, somewhat more than the Canonical Gospels, emphasize the battle between good and evil in a very PERSONAL sense; that is to say: all evil is PERSONIFIED in Thomas by individual servants (shall we say sons?) of Satan. Thomas insists that, no matter how you cut it, it is they whom we are fighting, because:
they are the ones who put all the wrong ideas into peoples' heads, and
it is these wrong ideas that are the root of all the pain and suffering man inflicts upon himself through wrong action.
The role of Satan in these Thought Transactions is real. Therefore, we Christians must look the Devil in the eye, and thus, defeat him with the Truth that radiates from our sense of Being and Identity in the Christ consciousness.
The subject of demons has been so vulgarized by pulp fiction, that the truth of demons has become somewhat obscured from our sight; as scientifically hip, moderne people, we are reticent to participate in anything remotely resembling superstitious behavior. Nevertheless the stories in Thomas, for me, have emphasized something I don't think about nearly enough: that is that we are in a battle for Good, and our actions make a difference. Furthermore, they either promote or defeat the temptations of the devil, as they either promote or defeat our aspirations along the spiritual path.
Philosophy, then, THINKING, is the primary weapon of the Soldier of God; and the devotee seeks to purify his thoughts by focusing on Divinely inspired Truth, expressed in language received from Heaven. WHY he does this is uniquely personal--there is a different reason for every person on the planet--but I must confess that the driving force, behind most of my own philosophical speculations, has always been fear of death. Trying to overcome my fear of death, I inserted myself into many different philosophical scenarios which describe the conquest of death. The idea is that if I can overcome the fear of death in my mind, I should be able to overcome it in outer realities as well. As I have grown spiritually, I have realized that the fear of Death is a metaphor for the fear of Evil. Little did I know that my battle with the fear of death was just the tip of the iceberg--that this one small battle was a single subdivision of a much larger cosmic scenario. I have now come to realize that my battle with death has just been a concealed battle with Satan over the possession of my very soul.
Consider the gargoyles atop the Notre Dame Cathedral, whose purpose is to hasten the people into the church for fear of hellfire. Likewise, I have used philosophy to usher myself into the presence of the divine, just so I can feel better about dying. The irony is that: coming to grips with death has also caused me to come to grips with lots of other things. This level of enlightenment has effected many changes in attitudes that I've upheld my whole life about dimensions of reality. I have made up my mind, and this has brought my heart into much closer contact with the Divine above me, and the Divine within me. Consequently, my life is a lot better now than it ever has been before. I believe Don Juan would classify this state of consciousness as the nagual, the mind state of someone who has all of his conceptual ducks in a row.
Let us now hear from a few philosophers on the subject of Good and Evil, to see if we can clarify our personal roles in the webwork of interconnected higher and lower realities.
From Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn we read:
"The battle between good an evil runs through the heart of every man."
From The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell discusses the symbology of a ceremonial mask:
"JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Whenever one moves out of the transcendent, one comes into a field of opposites. These two pairs of opposites come forth as male and female from the two sides. What has eaten of the tree of the knowledge, not only of good and evil, but of male and female, of right and wrong, of this and that, and light and dark. Everything in the field of time is dual, past and future, dead and alive. All this, being and nonbeing, is, isn’t.
This mask represents the middle, and the two represent the two opposites, and they always come in pairs. And put your mind in the middle; most of us put our minds on the side of the good against what we think of as evil. It was Heraclitus, I think, who said,
“For God all things are good and right and just, but for man some things are right and others are not.”
You’re in the field of time when you’re man, and one of the problems of life is to life in the realization of both terms. That is to say, I know the center and I know that good and evil are simply temporal apparitions."
Clearly, from these two preceding quotes, we can accept the idea that on certain plane of existence there is no good and evil--is all one in unity with the Father; however, on the material plane, man creates evil, so evil becomes a force to contend with. The presence of the Satanic minions, trying to manipulate us with false truths, is really represent a side issue, compared to the larger issue of the will of man himself, who chooses to do evil, acting out of his own flawed essential nature. The truth of evil exists in the abstract, but the FACT of evil is incarnated by Man's ACTS of inhumanity to Man.
From The Overcoming of Evil, by Rudolf Steiner--a lecture dated November 4th, 1917, we read:
"Does not the Christ Impulse deal with the great significant problem calling for a super-sensible interpretation of the problems of birth and death in the history of mankind's development? How many discussions there have been among Christians on the birth of Christ, how many thoughts and feelings have already been expended on this problem! How immensely significant is the part played by the death of Christ! The birth and the death of Christ reveal particularly pregnant points in the struggle which went on in human souls in connection with the problem of birth and death.
This struggle existed in human souls, because, I might say, it already existed in a more elemental, physical form in ages past. In ancient epochs men developed forces which had an influence upon birth and death, an influence which greatly differed from the merely natural one. The good and evil forces in man could to a great extent influence the health and illness of other people, and consequently also birth and death; this problem of birth and death was more connected with the human soul.
But during our own epoch, people will have to struggle with evil in the same elemental way in which they struggled with birth and death during the Atlantean age; particularly through the control of the different forces of Nature, the impulses that lead to evil will send their influences into the world in an immense, gigantic form. And the opposite forces, the forces of good, will have to grow out of the opposition to evil, and man will have to draw the strength for this opposition out of spiritual sources. . .
Those who wish to take in spiritual impulses will find the points of attack for the opponent forces and the points of issue for the impulses which have to develop out of the resistance offered to evil. . .
We have already described that ever since the last third of the 19th century the Beings whom I designated as the Fallen Spirits of Darkness are active among men. They belong to the Hierarchy of the Angels. In ancient days they were still servants of the good, progressive Powers. They worked for the establishment of social orders based on human blood-relationships. But now they live in the kingdom of man, and as retarded Angel-Beings they are active in all those human impulses which are connected with blood-relationships, with racial and national relationships, and they assert these in a Satanic way, to the detriment of social and other structures of mankind. . .
To-day these Spirits have begun their work in a forceful way by emphasizing the principle of nationality abstractly. This abstract emphasizing of the principle of nationality, this drawing up of programmes based on the principle of nationality, forms part of the strivings which must be described as the strivings of the Spirits of Darkness."
Reading this paragraph today makes us think of the hysterical Isis group who proclaim nationality over everything and all that we know as good; they have sacrificed every human virtue, that you can name, in service of a pseudo-religious national identity. Contrariwise, reading this paragraph in 1911 would make us think, immediately, of the entangling alliances which led to World War I and, indirectly, to the German fanatical nationalism that led to World War II. It just goes to show Man can figure out how to relate any negative prophecy to any contemporary condition, because the forces of evil always work their will in the same idiom, only with slightly different materials.
From The Etherisation of the Blood A Lecture By Rudolf Steiner, Basle, October 1, 1911, we read about the battle between Good and Evil in terms of the multi-dimensionality of Man's divided consciousness:
"The physical body, in its ordinary state, is asleep to what is then and there happening, and we can rightly speak of an awakening of our spiritual senses. In the night, of course, we are asleep in the normal way. It can therefore be said: ordinary sleep is sleep as regards the outer physical world; daytime consciousness at the present time is sleep as regards the spiritual world."
This excerpt suggests that we confront the paradoxes of reality in different modalities of being, at virtually the same time. Further down he gives this summary of these different modalities:
"Thoughts: Shadow-images of Beings of the Astral Plane (Waking)
Sympathy and Antipathy: Shadow-images of Beings of Lower Devachan (Dreaming)
Moral Impulses: Shadow-images of Beings of Higher Devachan (Sleeping)
Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular colouring of the streams which flow into human beings during sleep; in an individual of lower moral principles, the streams are quite different from what is observable in an individual of noble principles. Endeavours to dissemble are useless. In the face of the higher Cosmic Powers, no dissembling is possible. In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination towards moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in colour — various shades tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet in colour.
At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep a kind of struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams upward from below. When a man is awake the intellectual element streams upwards from below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams downwards from above. At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of the pineal gland. In the man of high morality there is around the pineal gland as it were a little sea of light. Moral nobility is revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments. In this way a man's moral disposition is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the heart. Two streams can therefore be perceived in man — the one Macro-cosmic, the other, Microcosmic."
This idea, of microcosmic and macro-cosmic modalities of being, supports the idea that: the shedding of Jesus' blood onto the Earth forged a connection between the Etheric Body of Jesus and the Etheric Body of the Earth, thereby electing Jesus as sovereign ruler over the Earth's inhabitants. Moreover, we have previously affirmed that we ALL exist on Microcosmic and Macro-cosmic levels, and that we can influence Mundane doings through attention of mind, and through the enlistment of Heavenly Angels to come to our aid. It is important for us to keep this in mind, because it is the key to spiritual freedom--it is the key to awakening the Higher Self who sleeps within us.
Also, notice that Steiner's description of the battle for good and evil around the pineal gland is an affirmation of the multidimensional character of man's personality structure. The upshot is this: the battle between good and evil takes place in different modalities of being, and on different levels of consciousness. The battle around the pineal gland indicates that we engage in conflict with that the evil even on an unconscious level.
Steiner's idea of the daytime life of thought, and the nighttime life of will, is exactly like William Blake's theory of contraries:
"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell."
From C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity we read:
“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”
From C.S. Lewis', The Case for Christianity, we read:
“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible.On the subject of free will Baruch Spinoza has this to say:
Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.”
"If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil."
Friedrich Nietzsche:
"Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil."
Hermann Hesse:
"If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion."
This reminds us of the foregoing quote from Heraclitus:
“For God all things are good and right and just, but for man some things are right and others are not.”
Maimonides:
"One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good - he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad - he and the world is destroyed."
I mentioned earlier that the battle between God and Evil must inevitably invade the physical plane at some point. This is the point where abstract ideas culminate in physical action. Right action in this context requires the passion for battle we call "hatred". This drama is so beautifully portrayed in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra that I cannot help quoting this great passage again. The idea of a "joyful hatred", is summarized in the last line:
"Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him--a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner form the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a Person: but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation. It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came finding at last what hatred was made for."
Joyful hatred is kind of like humble pride--is is based on a totally REALISTIC assessment of the big picture, synthesizing the roles of Servant and King. As Heraclitus reminds us, there is no flaw in God, but we humans have no recourse but to react to the world in the terms of the world, which means aggressive action driven by Righteous Hatred of Evil, Righteous Hatred of what stands in opposition to the will of the Father.
Coming to an end, it is difficult to achieve a feeling of accomplishment when faced with such a monumental task as saying something meaningful about the Battle between Good and Evil; but this is all I have to say for the present, although I am sure we will return to this subject in future presentations. For now, let us summarize the main points of this discussion:
1. Son of God/Son of Man/Soldier of God,
2. Satan attempts to corrupt the Will of Man at every turn by impressing Wrong Thoughts on his mundane consciousness,
3. every thought that enters our heads, and every word that comes out of our mouths is either an affirmation of Divine Truth or a Satanic Corruption of the Truth.
4. if we personalize this battle, perhaps we can look Satan in the eyes and drive him from our midst.
To reiterate a point made earlier:
The role of Satan in these Thought Transactions is real. Therefore, we Christians must look the Devil in the eye, and thus, defeat him with the Truth that radiates from our sense of Being and Identity in the Christ consciousness.
Let us pray: Jesus, thank you for the Power of Thought, the Thought of Truth, and the Truth of You. Amen.
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