Evil. A reflection

Over the past few months I have quoted several religious and philosophical thoughts, as they were written down throughout the ages. If we were able to think them all together at the same time, we probably would have quite a complete idea of evil in its being, and we would also have a notion of how the view on evil has changed over the course of time. But we can only think one thing after another, and not everything at the same moment. An overall picture remains unattainable...

When we experience how the soul is a mediator between two forces that fight for her attention - a force pulling away from the earth on the one side; a force of growing more embedded with the earth on the other - we learn to experience another form of mediation. The soul also has to find the balance between the forces that come from within her, and the forces that come from the outside.  We are always seeking the balance between living in the sense-world and living in the world of thought and feeling, of wishes. In the inner life there is always this force that wants to absorb us in thoughts and feelings, dreaming away from reality. The outer life draws our attention, forces us to wake up from our dreams and find the way back to reality - as the senses present it to us.  Rudolf Steiner gave these forces their names: the dreaming away in thoughts is a being: Lucifer; the shining of the senses is also a being: Ahriman. Everything we experience comes from these two worlds. Were a sound balance to be achieved, no evil would be possible. Evil is not one part of a duality: good and evil. It is the extremity of being absorbed in thinking, or living in the shining of the senses.

There is a wonderful little piece of text that can guide us to the balance, pointing out what meditation in fact should be. It is an explanation of a scene in aMystery-drama by Steiner. Benedictus is the spiritual teacher, Capesius is a student.

' “The same predominance of the triad, of polarity or opposition in the triad, of harmonious balance,” Benedictus told Capesius, “is found in other areas of our life. Let us look from another point of view at thinking, mental images, or ideas. First of all you have mental images; you work out for yourself the answers to the secrets of the universe. The second would be pure perception; let us say, simply listening. Some people are more likely to ponder about everything introspectively. Others don't like to think but will go around listening, will receive everything through listening, then take everything on authority, even if it's the authority of natural phenomena, for there is, of course, a dogma of external experience, when one is pushed around willingly by the superficial happenings of nature.”

Benedictus could soon show Professor Capesius also that in lonely thinking there lies the luciferic attraction, whereas in mere listening, or in any other kind of perceiving, there is the ahrimanic element. But one can keep to the middle path and move between the two, so to speak. It is neither necessary to stop short at abstract, introspective thinking wherein we shut ourselves away within our own souls like hermits, nor is it necessary to devote ourselves entirely to seeing or hearing the things our eyes and ears perceive. We can do something more. We can make whatever we think so inwardly forceful that our own thought appears before us like a living thing; we can immerse ourselves in it just as actively as we do in something heard or seen outside. Our thought then becomes as real and concrete as the things we hear or see. That is the middle way.

In mere thought, close to brooding, Lucifer assails man. In mere listening, either as perception or accepting the authority of others, the ahrimanic element is present. When we strengthen and arouse our soul inwardly so that we can hear or see our thoughts while thinking we have then arrived at meditation. Meditation is the middle way. It is neither thinking nor perceiving. It is a thinking that is as alive in the soul as perception is, and it is a perception of what is not outside man but a perception of thoughts. Between the luciferic element of thought and the ahrimanic element of perception, the life of the meditating soul flows within a divine-spiritual element that alone bears in itself the rightful progress of world events. The meditating human being, living in his thoughts in such a way that they become as alive in him as perceptions of the outside world, is living in this divine, on-flowing stream. On his right are mere thoughts, on his left the ahrimanic element, mere listening; he shuts out neither the one nor the other but understands that he lives in a threefoldness, for indeed life is ruled and kept in order by number. He understands, too, that between this polarity, this antithesis of the two elements, meditation moves like a river. He understands that in lawful measure the luciferic and ahrimanic elements must be balanced in meditation.'

So here we can gain a new insight on evil, not as an extreme opposition to good; but as a distraction in two possible ways, away from the golden and sound balance.

Evil. A reflection by Mieke Mosmuller