We can easily discern in the world today that which most of us would call evil. Evil seems to be everywhere around us in various forms in varying degrees. In the coming months, we will explore those spiritual forms of evil behind the happenings in the outer world and in ourselves. We will try to examine them as they exist on either side of the balance we discussed in June 2021 (Hanging in the Balance). In taking up the discussion of evil, today we will focus on how it exists inside of each one of us.
Various practitioners advocating for our healthy inner lives steer us away from acknowledging our own complicity with evil. But at the end of the day, none of us buy that we are blameless for the bad things we’ve done in our lives. We are haunted by them, and we are scared to confront the worst of them. We want to believe we are good people—and we are—but we also aren’t.
Evil may be a concept we are encouraged to avoid when we consider our own selves, but acknowledging our own goodness is just one aspect and can in no way be considered a complete picture of who we are. As we’ve pointed out in the past few blogs, we humans are infinitely complex. Evil exists in the world we live in, and one of the many places it exists is inside us. We need to find the right tools to think about it.
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
…It is surely not too far-fetched to think that important questions, such as that about the origin of evil, have not been able to be answered for the very reason that people were so reluctant to go beyond the kinds of knowledge and perception which depend upon these senses and this sense-bound reason; and so were unable to attain a different sort of knowledge…
It is perhaps legitimate to ask what results we are likely to obtain if we really try to pursue this path of spiritual research—which I have frequently described, and which is presented in detail in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Of particular interest to us today is the way in which what we normally call evil relates to this path.
When the spiritual researcher elevates himself to higher worlds… then all that he looks back on and recognizes as evil, or even only incomplete in his life, provides the greatest obstacle and hindrance to his path of development. The greatest obstacles are formed by those aspects which he looks back on and sees are unfinished or imperfect.
I certainly don’t wish to sound arrogant by suggesting that only perfect people can develop the capacity to perceive the spiritual world. All I am saying is that the path to spiritual perception involves a certain kind of martyrdom; for the moment we begin to be participators in the world of spirit, we look back on our life with all its imperfections and realize that these follow us like the tail follows a comet. We realize that we must carry them on with us into other lives, will have to try to resolve them, balance them out in the future; that all we blithely ignored previously and were as unaware of as the ground under our feet, now lies clearly before us as an inevitable task we must get to grips with.
It is this somewhat tragic realization, this perception of the nature of our ordinary, everyday selves, which hampers us when we try to ascend into the world of spirit. If it does not hamper us, if we do not feel burdened by the more ponderous, earnest aspects of life, we can be sure that we have not found a real path to the spirit. And even if we do not manage to get any further, this one realization is of great value, this infinitely clear and vivid perception of the evil and imperfection within ourselves. So, we can see that our very first steps of ascent into the world of spirit are accompanied by an experience of evil and imperfection.
Excerpt from: Evil Illumined through Science of the Spirit; Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, January 15, 1914.
All serious paths toward enlightenment require courage. Really? Why? It is because the first step of all of them is to know ourselves. In this blog, we have looked at various ways to know ourselves in these past years, but to progress on the spiritual path, this first step must be taken. It is inevitable. Few of us want to admit, let alone examine carefully, what evil lurks in the depths of our souls, a truly honest assessment of ourselves, so most of us do not start on the path to enlightenment.
How we manage this knowledge is painful, humbling and, ultimately, freeing. We can adopt a mood of genuine inquiry. We can focus on the motivation behind the deed, the motivation that lies deep within us. That is different than remembering the deed itself. Once we’ve thoroughly accepted that this or that inclination exists in us, we can focus our intention to rid ourselves of it.
Then it is natural to look honestly at those times when we’ve done good in the world, when we had nothing to gain for ourselves, but just did the right thing when it was in front of us. We must recognize the inclination which lies behind that, too.
Where do these inclinations come from? How do they get there? Why is there evil in the world? These are the larger questions we will be considering moving forward.