Love

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Love (German: Liebe, from Middle High German: liep "lovely, good, pleasant, worthy, joy"), as the mutually promoting and appreciating striving towards each other, up to a conscious, knowing participation in the being of the other, transcending one's own being, is to be brought to the highest development on our earth. It is thus far more than a mere feeling of increased sympathy and affection. Rather, love is the living force which spiritualizes the etheric body into the life spirit (Buddhi) which is carried through by the Christ consciousness. This is the actual evolutionary goal of earth and human development. The earth shall thereby become the cosmos of love in the future. In this sense, love is considered the highest of the three Christian virtues mentioned by Paul 1 Cor 13.

The opposing force to love is hate, which is due to Lucifer's influence

„162“ (Lit.:GA 269)

. In pure love only the astral forces of sympathy rule and thereby all forms of egoism are excluded. In hate, egoism is intensified to the highest degree; only forces of antipathy prevail in this case.

Intuitive thinking and love

In intuitive thinking, which is able to put itself consciously into the innermost core of another being, the power of love lives in a purely spiritual way. In his "Philosophy of Freedom" Rudolf Steiner writes:

„No other human activity of the soul will be so easily misjudged as thinking. Wanting, feeling, they warm the human soul even in the after-experience of its original state. It is all too easy for thinking to leave the soul cold in this after-experience; it seems to dry up the life of the soul. But this is only the strongly asserted shadow of its luminous, warmly submerging reality into the world appearances. This immersion happens with a power flowing in thinking activity itself, which is the power of love in a spiritual way. One must not object that he who thus sees love in active thinking merely transfers a feeling, love, into the same. For this objection is in truth a confirmation of what is asserted here. For he who turns to essential thinking finds in it both feeling and will, the latter also in the depths of their reality; he who turns away from thinking and turns only to "mere" feeling and willing loses from these the true reality. Whoever wants to experience intuition in thinking, will also do justice to the emotional and volitional experience; but emotional mysticism and metaphysics of the will cannot do justice to the intuitive-thinking penetration of existence. The latter will all too easily come to the conclusion that they are in the real; the intuitive thinker, however, without feeling and alienated from reality, forms in 'abstract thoughts' a shadowy, cold conception of the world.“ (Lit.:GA 4, p. 143f)

Love as a reflection of the pre-earthly existence

„What we experience in the pre-earthly existence in association with the beings of the higher hierarchies leaves behind in our earthly life, as it were, a heritage, a faint shadow of this coexistence with the beings of the higher hierarchies. If we did not have this coexistence with the beings of the higher hierarchies between death and a new birth, we could not develop the power of love here on earth. For that which we develop here on earth as the power of love is, however, only a faint reflection, a shadow of the coexistence with the spirit beings of the higher hierarchies between death and a new birth, but it is nevertheless just a reflection, a shadow of this coexistence. That we can develop human love here on earth, that we can develop understanding for another human being here on earth, comes from the fact that we are able to live with the beings of the higher hierarchies between death and a new birth. By way of spiritual-scientific observation one can well see how those people who have acquired only a small gift in earlier earthly lives - we will shortly come to talk about how one acquires this gift - in order to live together properly with the beings of the higher hierarchies in its appropriate time after death, how these due to certain states are there completely devoted to these beings of the higher hierarchies, and yet how these people here on earth develop only a small power of love, namely of general human love, which expresses itself merely in the understanding of other people.

It is among the gods where we acquire in our pre-earthly existence the gift of looking at the other human being, of noticing how he feels, how he thinks, of comprehending with inner sympathy what he is. And if we had not - one can call it that - the aforementioned contact with the gods, we would never be able to develop on earth that insight into the other human being, which is the only thing that basically makes earthly life possible. When I speak of love and especially of general human love in this context, you must think of love in the concrete sense I have just described: in the sense of a truly intimate understanding of the other human being. And if one adds this understanding of the other human being to the general human love, then one has at the same time included everything that is human morality. For the earthly human morality, if it does not move in mere phrases or flowery words or in resolutions that are never fulfilled or the like, is based on the interest that one human being takes in the other, on the possibility of sincerely looking into the other human being.

The person who has an understanding of man will receive the social-moral impulses from this very understanding of man. So one can therefore say that man has gained all moral life within the earthly existence during his pre-earthly existence, in such a way that from the coexistence with the gods the urge remains for him to form such a coexistence at least in his soul also on earth. And this shaping of such a coexistence, so that one man with the other accomplishes the earthly tasks, the earthly mission, that alone leads in reality to the moral life on earth. So we see that love and the effect of love, morality, are definitely a consequence of what man has gone through spiritually in the pre-earthly existence.“ (Lit.:GA 219, p. 61ff)

The three stages of love by Plato

Plato depicted how love rises to its highest form through three stages that reflect the soul's elements:

  • Philía - the love of friends, based on mutual recognition and mutual understanding, is rooted in the intellect or mind soul. To this level belongs also that form of love which Plato called stoika and which is directed to certain objective interests or activities - to a "favorite occupation".
  • Agápe - the selflessly promoting love, which is directed as pure love of neighbor - up to love of enemy - without self-interest to the well-being of the beloved being, proceeds from the consciousness-soul, which already leans towards the spirit-self.
  • Éros - sensual-erotic love, the passionate desire of the beloved being, combined with the desire to be loved oneself as well, is an expression of the sentient soul.

In modern usage, the expression "platonic love" abbreviates to mean that the lovers are connected only by their mutual spiritual-emotional interest, but not by a sexual desire.

Faith, love, hope

Faith, love and hope are the three Christian virtues of which Paul says in the Song of Songs:

„1 If I spoke with the tongues of men and with the tongues of angels, and had not love, I should be sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And if I could speak prophetically, and knew all mysteries, and all knowledge, and had all faith, so that I could move mountains, and had not love, I would be nothing. 3 And if I give all my goods to the poor, and let my body be burned, and have not love, it is of no profit to me. 4 Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous, love does not take pleasure, it is not puffed up, 5 it does not act unseemly, it does not seek its own, it is not provoked, it does not reckon evil, 6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth; 7 it bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. 8 Love never ceases, whereas prophetic speaking will cease, and tongues will cease, and knowledge will cease. 9 For our knowledge is fragmentary, and our prophetic speaking is fragmentary. 10 But when that which is perfect shall come, then shall that which is in part cease. 11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, and thought as a child, and was wise as a child; but when I became a man, I put away that which was childish. 12 Now we see through a mirror a dark image; but then face to face. Now I know in bits and pieces; but then I shall know as I am known. 13 But now there abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but love is the greatest of these.“

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

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