Theosophy and Occultism

GA 90c — 20 October 1903, Berlin

XI. On Good and Evil

Everything we call evil has a different form in another cosmos. We can only speak of evil in a particular cosmos. In the lunar epoch, evil would have had a completely different form than it does today. We can therefore only speak of our earthly evil.

The fact that evil is possible is connected with the position of the earth in the cosmos. Our earth has a very specific task. Our cosmos is called the cosmos of love. The preceding, the lunarian cosmos, is called the cosmos of wisdom. It is called the cosmos of wisdom because what we have before us as fruits in our cosmos has been prepared.

The task of earthly development is essentially this: [the human being] has to incorporate Kama-Manas into the nervous system in the form in which [he/she] has come over from the lunar epoch. (A description of the lunar epoch follows here.)

In those days, people had everything except our intellect. The people of the lunarian epoch did not have the intellect. But they thought and did not present as we do. They participated in a much more universal spirituality. This more universal spirituality surrounded them as a spiritual power. It can be compared to a swarm of bees, which has a common soul. In the lunatic era, not every human being had an intellect of his or her own. They were driven to their actions by a wisdom that lived in the lunatic cosmos. This is similar to the instinct of animals.

What I have in my nervous system and what I have in my Kama-Manas has been prepared by the lunar wisdom. The lunar wisdom sought to develop the organs with wisdom. It had to prepare the human physical personality. This wisdom aimed to make the body physiologically and physically perfect.

The human soul arises through the influence of Kama-Manas. Universal wisdom descends like a drop into the individual personality. It is as if the individual bee had brought down within itself the wisdom of bees and did out of itself, out of its own decision, what it [otherwise] does instinctively. The wisdom is absorbed into the form, presents itself in the form. Now this wisdom must be used as a means to achieve love.

All those who have undergone regular development in the Lemurian epoch enter the earthly epoch, sacrificing physical, pranic, and kamic life.

But there are also beings who are unable to make this sacrifice. These have not undergone a completely regular development. They have descended too deeply into the physical-pranic-camic of the Lemurian epoch. Their attention was too strongly attracted. An intimate brotherhood arose from this. These entities have undergone too extensive a development. They have delved too deeply into the physical sphere. Therefore, in the earthly epoch, they do not have the ability to start where they need to start in order to undergo regular earthly development. They have drawn down too much of the physical-pranic. Therefore, on the one hand, they have too much of the wisdom principle, but on the other hand, they have too much affinity with the physical-pranic.

So there were beings in the earthly epoch who had too much intelligence to go through earthly development. They have to choose a higher physicality. Such a being is incapable of incarnating in our bodies. In the human body, such a being would be constrained on all sides. Such a being seeks incarnation in a different way, not descending into humanity, but seeking material from the manas bodies to embody the entity. They attract, as it were, the intellectual matter of human beings in order to embody themselves. This is a constant danger for earthly humanity. Exoteric wisdom describes this danger as the evil principle.

Because hyperintelligences have come over from the lunar epoch and push people aside from the regular path, we have evil. That is the origin of evil. Evil arises from the fact that hyperintelligences are present that push people out of the ordinary path. In Christian esotericism, these hyperintelligences are summarized under the name of “Lucifer”. This is also the principle of wisdom, but on a level that is not right.

The principle of kamic in a criminal nature clearly shows that people are thereby guided in the wrong way by the intellectual principle. Evil is thus a straying from the actual task of our cosmos, a straying from love. Love consists in sacrificing the individual physical-pranic for the higher purpose. Every predominant selfish urge stems from the fact that the person concerned feels more related to the physical than is right. There has been too deep an affinity with the physical. The point of equilibrium between the physical and the physiological is love. Misguided, it is driven into hyper-egoism.

The piano as an example. It is made with hammer and saw. If you work on it any further after it is finished, it misses the point and the instrument perishes. Earthly selfishness is nothing more than a charitable principle in the lunar epoch. It is something bad in the earthly epoch. There is actually no evil. Evil is good - just in the wrong place. Evil arises from the fact that a cosmic principle of development appears in the wrong context. Evil only appears evil to us as long as we look at it in a limited way. But it brings about something good in another place, which balances it out. For every evil in the world, there is a corresponding good that restores balance. This is also the meaning of the saying: “Only the Father in heaven is perfect; why do you call me perfect?”