It is still very hot here, although the temperature has dropped by 10 degrees. Last week we had temperatures above 40 degrees here, which is unique for this region. And of course, there is a great deal of discussion about that.
Naturally, the cause is seen in the warming of the Earth, and I do not want to say at all that it does not exist. But the question is to what extent the further interpretation of this phenomenon is correct. I naturally think it is not; that is clear.
Look, people always focus on what human beings do with their CO₂, with their nitrogen. Those are the culprits; something has to be done about them. It is taking bizarre forms, how one could eventually be controlled with regard to one’s emissions.
I once said that our greatest emission is, of course, our breathing. Will there also come a moment when it is said: you had better stop breathing, because that pollutes the Earth too much? Well, in that way one can complain about quite a lot of things.
But for me it is somewhat different. If you simply look at everything that is happening on this Earth. And if you were to allow the thought that the Earth is a living being—not some lump of stone with lava and fire inside, but a living being. If you were to allow that thought, then you would have much more possibility of understanding that what the inhabitants of the Earth, which we are, are doing is gradually becoming unbearable for the living being Earth.
There has been an enormous series of earthquakes in Venezuela. Of course, one can say: well, all right, that happens from time to time. But should we not also look at this from a spiritual point of view and ask ourselves: is it really about CO₂ and nitrogen? Or is it much more about the behaviour of human beings on Earth?
And when you see the, well, I think I may say, meaningless wars that are being fought, which so far lead absolutely nowhere, which have an origin of which you think: this simply makes no sense at all. But the course of events and where it is leading—there is no progress in that either.
Meanwhile, the remarkable phenomenon presents itself that the financial markets are flourishing because of it. So if, for example, you owned shares and saw that they were rising, you should really ask yourself what that is actually based on. For in reality there is great misery on Earth. One would expect that, with an oil crisis and everything connected with it, shares would collapse. But they do not; they rise. And as far as I am concerned, all this also has very clearly to do with the fact that there is a war industry.
It is not only a battlefield, but it is also an industry that prospers through it. And it is incredibly painful to hear time and again that the Netherlands is once again spending so many billions on the production of weapons. When you realise that every weapon produced is intended to kill human beings, then that is truly an unbearable thought.
How should a planet that is alive accept that upon it, upon that planet, there are inhabitants who belong to that planet and who behave in this way?
A number of years ago I came across a particular series of books about the personality of Kees Boeke, a Dutchman who was well known especially before the Second World War, but also afterwards. And what I find particularly interesting about this man is that he thought with complete consistency when it came to paying taxes.
He was a pacifist and believed that if he paid taxes, he would thereby be supporting the machinery of war. Now I do not want to advise anyone not to pay taxes—please understand that well—but it is nevertheless a very interesting example. For this man, together with his wife, really carried this through to the utmost consequence, so that time and again he ended up in prison for not paying taxes, and had to experience that all his possessions were seized, for example even his grand piano. He was an enthusiastic musician, a lover of Bach, but also a teacher. Yet he accepted all of this because the thought that his tax money would help to maintain the production of weapons was unbearable to him.
I think that is a great example. He also went out into the streets to preach, more or less, and every time he was arrested again and put back into prison. One cannot help but smile affectionately when someone goes so incredibly far in his life.
Well, once again, I do not want to persuade anyone not to pay taxes, but I do want to encourage people to have thoughts such as these. What are we, as humanity, actually still doing on this Earth? That is indeed the very great question. Was it not perhaps originally intended that the human being should undergo a moral development?
And perhaps here and there there is someone who does this consistently, like Kees Boeke. But taken as a whole, in the greater whole, it certainly does not become apparent that humanity in general is engaged in developing itself morally.
Scientifically, intellectually to some extent; politically perhaps, although I actually regard that more as a decline as well. Technology, of course, is developing on an enormous scale; there the development is obvious. But what is the human being actually still doing with that which smoulders within the human being as a possibility, like a fire? Namely, what is the human being doing with the fire of love? Not the fire of cannons, but that appreciation and joy which we could experience among one another.
Look, and by this I certainly do not mean that one should become a yes-man to everything other people do. That is something quite different.
Nor do I mean that one should say: well, one should not criticise what other people do either, because that would be against love. No, I do not agree with that at all. But that one could actually, from certain political or economic points of view or from global principles, come to spend money on weapons of which one knows that they are destructive—that is truly a disgrace.
And of course I immediately hear the comment: yes, but the threat, and surely we must be armed, and so on and so forth.
There was a fine short fragment by Maarten van Rossem in which he pointed out how many nuclear weapons were produced during the Cold War that—God grant it—have not been used. But how much has not been squandered on that? And what are we doing now? What is all this based upon? These are questions that one keeps asking.
And of course I already hear, once again, all the opinions in the comments about, well, how shall I put it, the great agendas that have been drawn up and are being pursued.
I see that as well, of course, but I would simply like to ask the question differently. I do not want to ask what conspiracies are being carried out, but rather how one, as a human being, should continue one’s moral development in this world and not fall on that great battlefield of the arms industry.
That is what I wanted to say in this heat, because I think that this is why it is becoming so unbearably hot on Earth.
