18. The Origin of Evil and the Evil in the Light of Spiritual Science

Thus, when we approach the mystery of the life of evil people, we see that we must apply spiritual scientific forces that show how evil must be regarded in its true nature as justified, even though it can also be experienced as good in its equally true meaning in another world. The events of the sensory world and the history of human thought teach us that those who remain in the sensory world cannot explain how pain and evil can penetrate it. Schopenhauer and Hartmann, in their pessimistic worldview, explain well how evil predominates in the world, but they do not quite manage to say how, in their opinion, the divine-spiritual source can be freed from the evils of existence and how the human soul can be freed from evil. Wherever evil, pain, suffering, and so on appear in the physical world, the spiritual researcher finds that all this suffering appears as a seed for a development that is only to take place later in the spiritual world. We can illustrate this again with an analogy – [not to rely on it, because spiritual science does not rely on analogies, but on facts]: When a desperate person throws himself in front of a speeding locomotive, two spheres of the sensory world collide [which are incompatible with each other]: What is necessary for the unfortunate person to continue living is crushed, and the forces of the locomotive, which are otherwise beneficial, push themselves onto others with whom they are incompatible. But if the person rises in time, they could also be saved, and the forces of the locomotive could remain effective in a good sense; the soul of this person would be able to draw new strength from its sudden change of heart to make a new start in a further stage of life and recover completely.