Sacrifice

From Anthroposophy

Evolution is a matter of receiving and giving, as illustrated via the evolutionary pathway covered in Twelve Conditions of Consciousness.

In the spiritual cosmos, the highest divine nature is love, pure love is selfless, and the highest form of love is sacrifice.

The highest stage of development in the evolution of all spiritual beings in the cosmos, is to grow to this selfless giving and come to the stage of giving one's own substance away. Ceasing to exist, in order to give life to other life. Continuing to live in what lives on, in another form.

For us humans, this is still far from our current stage of evolution. It requires imaginative soul work to get closer to this image and reality. We can do this, as an exercise, by contemplating the border between our current physical world and the spiritual world. In nature, we see life being torn away and disappearing at a large scale, and we feel like the physical life stops. But at the other side, it continues and becomes stardust from which new life is built and will be born.

Aspects

Sacrifice

  • For the soul in the process between death and a new birth, sacrifice is also the law of the spirit world (1908-10-26-GA107)
  • relation with giving, selflessness, and sacrifice as the highest form of love
  • The creative act of sacrifice to emanate one's own substance is related to the 'shedding of budhi' (oa 1904-11-10-GA089), see Christ Module 7 - cosmic dimension. From Schema FMC00.077A follows that we can distinguish:
    • CoC-level 8 sacrifice: when a spiritual hierarchy has reached the state they can offer the lowest member as sacrifice. For example: the sacrifice of the Thrones during Old Saturn, of the SoW during Old Sun, .. now of the SoF during Earth. They offer this to the next level up, a hierarchy that is also still evolving.
    • CoC-level 10 sacrifice is of a different nature: on Old Sun, the Cherubim came to meet the Archangels going through the human stage (CoC-4). It is said that on Old Saturn they were not yet able to do this (at CoC-level 9). Similarly we find a process of the Seraphim emanating out of free will on Old Saturn. See Process description on the Discussion section on Old Saturn.
  • Meaning of Free Man Creator

Suffering

  • true, profound genuine knowledge is born out of sorrow, of suffering, of grief (1923-05-20-GA226)
  • Four Noble Truths - are the foundational teachings of Buddhism that provide a framework for understanding the nature of suffering and the path to liberation. Various ways to phrase these four noble truths:
    • 1) Life is suffering, 2) desire and ignorance cause suffering, 3) cessation: suffering ends by through breaking the cycle of craving and desire, 4) the Eightfold Path of Buddha is the path to liberation from suffering.
    • or: 1) this is suffering, 2) this is the origin of suffering, 3) this is the cessation of suffering, 4) this is the path leading to cessation of suffering

Inspirational quotes

Sacrifice

'Gospel of John 15:13 and Kephalia

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

and:

There is no greater love than this, that a Man lays down his life for his fellow Man.

1908-10-26-GA107

Just as renunciation is the counterpart of deprivation, so is the feeling of sacrifice related to bliss: sacrifice that is ready to pour out [into the world] what is received [on another level] as bliss .. not becoming poorer through the offering, but richer. Only a being living entirely in materiality, thinks that it loses itself through sacrifice. No, a higher, richer development is linked with sacrifice in the service of universal evolution.

1912-05-24-GA155

Thus it is that spiritual beings are linked together. Everything that apparently perishes, gives up its spiritual part to the environment.

Suffering

1864 - Fyodor Dostoevsky

in 'Notes from the Underground'

suffering is the sole origin of consciousness

1906-11-08-GA055

.

(SWCC, order changed, literal phrasing retained) - the below is a densely written summary of an important key point, please read full lecture here

As so many other things, so too pain is known only by its fruits.

Substance denuded of life decays, it has the peculiarity of dispersing. Life sets itself again and again against disintegration; thus life preserves. Life in substance means: resistance to decay. .. To throw off old material and form new again — that is life.

.. Consciousness can arise only where there is life, can spring only from life. .. Whenever life is continually destroyed as life, where a being stands close to the threshold between life and death, where life threatens all the time to vanish again from the living substance, then consciousness arises.

Not every life can always renew itself inwardly in this way. It must have reached a higher stage, if it is to renew itself from itself. Only a life that is so strong in itself that it perpetually bears death within can awaken to consciousness. .. Whenever life comes up against external nature destruction takes place, and when it becomes greater even produces death.

Out of pain consciousness is born. ... Consciousness within matter is thus born out of suffering, out of pain. ... a kind of destroying process of the lower by the side of a creating process of the higher.

.. a creation in compassion is born when we transform the sufferings of others in our own greater consciousness-world.

And so finally out of suffering arises love. For what else is love than spreading one's consciousness over other beings?

Viktor Frankl

What is to give light must endure burning

quote often attributed to Viktor Frankl, but there's no clear evidence that he wrote or said these exact words in any of his published works, including 'Man's Search for Meaning'. This expresses the idea that offering something meaningful, impactful, or illuminating to others often requires personal sacrifice or struggle. Frankl's own experiences and philosophy emphasize finding purpose (even) in suffering, and that sometimes enduring hardship is a necessary part of achieving something valuable or bringing light to others.

2010 - Eleonore Stump

.

in 'Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering '(2010)

A perfectly good God allows suffering not because he is indifferent to it, but because he can bring a greater good out of it - one that wouldn’t be possible without the suffering.

see also Manicheism

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.193 is a metaphoric illustration that can be used as a reminder of the beautiful imagination sketched in 1911-10-31-GA132 and the nature of sacrifice (and the arising of warmth on Old Saturn).

FMC00.193.jpg

Schema FMC00.077A provides additional perspectives for personal contemplation. See also the Twelve Conditions of Consciousness.

Schema FMC00.094 illustrates Rudolf Steiner's coverage on the topic of the Meaning of life in two lectures in 1912. The schema below puts the question in a broader perspective and can be approached from various angles. One of which is the 'receiving from above' and the 'giving back upward arrow'. That is: how death, or not-developing one's self, or sacrifice, is 'giving life' on another level, in another way.

FMC00.094.jpg

Lecture coverage and references

Coverage

The starting place to learn about sacrifice is the GA132 cycle, where Rudolf Steiner sketches an imaginative picture of the sacrifice of the Thrones in the first lecture on Old Saturn, 1911-10-31-GA132.

This needs to be seen in context of Twelve Conditions of Consciousness for coverage of prime reference lecture 1905-08-12-GA091

Lecture extracts

Sacrifice

Gospel of John 15:13

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Kephalia (Manichein text)

There is no greater love than this, that a Man lays down his life for his fellow Man.

see also Manicheism

1905-08-07-GA091 and 1905-08-08-GA091

The relation between will-atman as the highest principle of Man as a sevenfold being is explained in the lecture 1907-01-28-GA096 on the Lord's Prayer, see also the concept of the three Logoi

Man is today essentially a consciousness, or understanding being, whereas in many ways his will is limited. He understands the surrounding world as a totality — that is, to a certain degree — but has no real control over all that he penetrates with his knowledge.

This control by his will is a development of the future, and it will become ever stronger until he attains that central goal of existence known to spiritual science as “the great sacrifice,” signifying the power of will to sacrifice oneself completely, not merely in driblets of human sacrifice of the kind of which man is capable today with his puny present feelings and will power. In future time he will have developed the strength to sacrifice his whole being by letting it flow directly into material substance.

One may picture this “great sacrifice,” the highest expression of will in divine nature, by imagining oneself before a mirror in which one's image is reflected. This image is, of course, an illusion, a semblance. Now carry over this image to the point of imagining yourself dying, sacrificing your existence, your feeling and thought, your very being, to inject life into that image. Spiritual science in all ages has called this phenomenon the “outpouring,” “the emanation.” If you could really make this sacrifice, it would be clear that you would no longer be here because you would have given up your whole being to this reflected image to imbue it with life and consciousness.

When the will has become capable of making the “great sacrifice,” it actually creates a universe, great or small, whose mission is bestowed upon it by its creator. Such is the creative will in the Divine Being.

1908-10-26-GA107

discusses sacrifice as the law of the spirit world, and renunciation as a law of the astral world (and an intermediate stage or 'way to get there') (SWCC)

.. it must be possible for someone who through exercises enters the spirit world, not only to experience all nuances of bliss in the sphere-music, but must also develop in oneself the feeling of the opposite of bliss. Just as renunciation is the counterpart of deprivation, so is the feeling of sacrifice related to bliss: sacrifice that is ready to pour out what is received as bliss — to let it flow out into the world.

  • Those divine spirits whom we call the Thrones, had the feeling of self-sacrifice when they began to play their part in the creation. When they poured out on Old Saturn their own substance, they sacrificed themselves for the newly-arising humanity. What we have today as substance is the same as they streamed out on Old Saturn.
  • .. in the same way, the Spirits of Wisdom sacrificed themselves on the Old Sun. These divine spirits have ascended into the higher worlds; they have taken in the experiences of bliss not only passively, but by passing through the spirit world they have learnt to sacrifice themselves. They have not become poorer through the offering, but richer.


Only a being living entirely in materiality, thinks that it loses itself through sacrifice; no, a higher, richer development is linked with sacrifice in the service of universal evolution.

So we see that the human being ascends to Imagination and Inspiration and enters that sphere where the whole being is permeated with ever-new nuances of bliss, where the soul experiences everything around it, in such a way that everything not only speaks to the soul, but that all around the soul becomes an absorption of the spiritual tones of bliss.

The ascent to the higher powers of knowledge is attained through the transformation of one's whole life of feeling. And esoteric training has this sole purpose: that through the rules and methods that have been given us by the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings, and which have been proved and tested for thousands of years, the human being's feeling and will are so transformed that he or she may be led up to higher knowledge and experience. When pupils gradually develop and transform the content of their feeling and will through initiation exercises, they attain to these higher faculties.

1909-04-13-B-GA110

(SWCC)

In what does the continual increase in the power of spiritual Beings consist, how is it expressed?

It consists in this, that

  • in the first place they are in need of something, they want something, they demand something from the world, and that
  • later on they develop to the point, when they themselves have something to give.

The whole meaning and spirit of evolution rests on the fact, that we pass from taking, to giving. You have an analogy for this in human evolution in our life here between birth and death: the child is helpless, it must receive the help of those about it. It grows more and more out of this helplessness, and at last itself become a helper in its turn. So too in the great universal evolution of the human race.

1909-04-14-GA110

In terms of descriptive phrasing:

Vulcan is more than Sun, and with this it has reached the maturity of sacrifice, the maturity necessary for self disintegration.

1909-04-18-GA110

Now we have seen that guiding Beings are everywhere. We have seen with the earth, how the higher spiritual Beings — Angels, Archangels, Archai — descended, and at a time when humanity could not as yet help itself, they guided it until it reached a certain height. These are the spiritual beings of the Hierarchies who had reached their maturity in earlier times; but when this height is reached, when those Beings who had descended from the heights reach their goal, then other Beings have to become the leaders and guides of the said nations. When nations have to rise in a certain way still higher than their highest point, leading personalities have to give themselves up of their own free will to become the bearers of higher spiritual Beings; only then does it become possible to lead the nation a few stages beyond that which was originally planned for it. But in such cases one thing must happen; those who descend into the beings who have to lead the nation to a still higher point of civilisation, must take upon themselves all the Karma which the nation has been accumulating. This is the important law as regards taking upon oneself the Karma of nations and of races. From a definite point of time the guiding personalities have themselves to bear all the Karma of those nations and races. That was the essential reason that such individualities as Hermes, for instance, had to take upon them — their nations Karma, which had accumulated up to then. On each planet, such things are the reflected images of great Cosmic processes.

But we have reflected images which go further still. We have seen that the Thrones became Thrones, only because from created beings they themselves became Creators, that they were enabled to pass from a condition of taking to one of giving. The Thrones had once upon a time passed through their development in other world systems, and had progressed so far that they were able to let their own Substance stream out from them.

It is a higher grade of development to be able to give, to bring sacrifices, than merely to store up for oneself all that the Cosmos gives. This is again mirrored in human life. What is this human development? Look backwards in spirit to the Atlantean and Lemurian times, and then look forwards! Man receives the physical body, the etheric and astral bodies and the Ego, and then again the Ego works back on the other members, transforming the astral body, the etheric and physical bodies, into Manas, Budhi, and Atma, into Spirit self, spirit-Life and Spirit-man. Primeval wisdom has always taught that man transforms his astral body in such a way that this astral body consists at first partly of Manas and partly of the old astrality, but that later it becomes completely transformed, completely penetrated by the work and action of the Ego. Let us take a man who has not yet reached that grade of development when the astral body is completely penetrated by the work of the Ego; almost all men, with very few exceptions, are in that condition. That which man has already transformed goes with him through all eternity; that which he has not yet changed in which his Ego has had no part, must leave him, as a sort of astral shell, after he has passed through Kama-Loka; that shell dissolves in the astral world, not without its having brought about considerable mischief if as an astral body, it had bad desires and evil passions. Thus we can say that the development of man consists in. his leaving always less and less behind him in the astral world. Let us follow the process; the man dies. Soon after death the etheric body is dissolved; and the extract of it remains. The man passes through. Kama-Loka, and the untransformed shell detaches itself; that which has been re-worked goes with man through all eternity, it is brought back into each new incarnation. The more perfect the man is, the less there will be of those remnants left in the astral world; till at last he will have progressed so far that he leaves nothing of his astral body in Kama-Loka, so far — that he can injure no living being on earth through the remnants he leaves in Kama-Loka. Such. a man has then the possibility of seeing into spiritual worlds. For it is not possible to reach this condition without having reached a certain degree of clairvoyance in the Astral. The whole astral body has then been spiritualised, it has become Spirit-Self, and the whole of it is taken with him by the man to the spiritual world. Formerly that which was bad was left behind, now the whole astral body can be taken with him into all futurity. And in the moment when the astral body is so far advanced that it is completely transformed, in that moment the whole of this new astral shape is impressed upon the etheric body, so that the etheric body becomes a counterpart of the astral body. The etheric body does not need to be as yet quite transformed, but that is impressed upon it which has been refashioned in the astral body. You see, that we have here described a particularly exalted being, one who is eminently far advanced, because he has developed the whole of the Spirit-self. This Being is called Nirmana-Kaya in Eastern Science; for his astral body, his astral Kaya, has reached the stage when it leaves no remnants in the astral world.

Suffering

1906-11-08-GA055

on suffering

When we realise this connection of suffering and pain with the conscious spirit that surrounds us, we shall well understand the words of a Christian initiate who knew such things fundamentally and intuitively, and saw pain at the basis of all conscious life. They are the words:

In all Nature sighs every creature in pain, full of earnest expectation to attain the state of the child of God.

You find that in the eighth chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans as a wonderful expression of this foundation of consciousness in pain. Thus one can also understand how thoughtful men have ascribed to pain such an all-important role. I should like to quote just one example. A great German philosopher says that when one looks at all Nature around one, then pain and suffering seem to be expressed everywhere on her countenance. Yes, when one observes the higher animals they show to those who look more deeply an expression full of suffering. And who would not admit that many an animal physiognomy looks like the manifestation of a deeply hidden pain?

1908-10-27-GA107

about the nature of suffering

1909-04-21-GA110

(to be checked still if this quote comes from Q&A)

Suffering is a phenomenon that accompanies higher development.

It is something you cannot do without on the way to attaining knowledge or insight.

One day a person will say to himself: I am grateful to the world for the joy it gives me. But if I were given the choice, what should I keep: my joys or my sufferings, I would prefer to keep my sufferings, because without them I would not be able to gain insight.

Every suffering, after a certain period of time, will seem like something that could not be done without, for we have to grasp it as part of the development contained within evolution.

There is no development without suffering, just like there is no triangle without angles.

When we come to a union with Christ, we will be convinced that all of our past suffering was an integral part of such unity. Suffering is necessary to attain unity with Christ - it is an absolute factor in development.

1923-05-20-GA226

... every genuine knowledge is born out of sorrow, of suffering, of grief. True, profound knowledge is never born out of joy. True, profound knowledge is born out of suffering.

Discussion

Note 1 - On suffering

Suffering can have many faces, physical emotional deeper psychological and spiritual ... caused by discrimination, betrayal, injustice.. by failures in personal or professional ambitions, career setbacks, divorce .. personal traumas by loosing one's beloved, or experiencing horror like war, murder, rape .. by missing the basics of life (re Maslow's pyramid of needs): hunger, cold, safety, respect or loneliness due to lack of appreciation/belonging.

Life hardships, suffering and pain make it less obvious and harder to endure life, they strengthens the will to keep going and living. Life is no longer obvious as we are confronted with limits of our control and need to dig into our inner resources to survive, unlike before. This raises our awareness as one faces one-self, in aspects of beliefs, behavioral patterns, etc that need to be revisited or let go. The distractions of an easy life (the fun and joy part) are no longer there in the same way and this brings one closer to the essence of life, the essential meaning of life. Because we have this experience we can also see it in the world around us, and relate to the suffering of others .. it brings humility and compassion, more appreciation of help and support of others.

Link with karma and our life's mission, incarnate life being about learning and growing. So we set out our life's plan to learn and grow.

From the perspective of the second of the four noble truths of Buddhism 'desire and ignorance cause suffering', a certain theme may fill an incarnation.

  • Some incarnations may be filled with suffering, the person reaches bottom to the extreme. People loose their beloved, their children, everything they have. An illustration is told by Sri M on his incarnation [C] - see KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#KRI 88: Sri M.
  • In contrast, taking Sri M's incarnations as example, another incarnation [A] was a life of pleasure seeking and extravagance. Such incarnations where one 'has it all' often also hit its limits, as 'having it all' in a material way may bring home the void of 'suffering from desire' through feeling the emptyness in one's life, lack of meaning and love, and may set in motion the path of the soul seeking for the spirit.
  • Other incarnations one has tailwind in one's practical mundane life, and a person devotes oneself to study, spiritual growth, or the arts .. so investing in learning and getting out of ignorance as a cause of suffering.

Related pages

References and further reading

  • Rudolf Meyer: Vom Sinn des Leidens und von der Entwicklung des inneren Lebens (1943, 1983)

Suffering

  • Eleonore Stump (1947-)
    • Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (2010)
    • Atonement (2018)
      • provides a theodicy that explains how God’s existence can be compatible with the presence of suffering


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