The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Origin of Suffering

[ 1 ] Even more so than the other lectures in the winter series, the next three are interconnected: today’s “On the Origin of Suffering,” the next one, “On the Origin of Evil,” and the one after that, “How Do We Understand Illness and Death?” However, each of these three lectures will also stand on its own and be understandable in its own right.

[ 2 ] When a person contemplates the life around them, when they engage in self-reflection and seek to explore the meaning and significance of life within themselves, they find a peculiar guardian standing at the gate of this life—one that is at times a warning and at times utterly enigmatic: suffering.

[ 3 ] Suffering—which, in turn, is closely linked to what we intend to examine in the following lectures, namely evil, illness, and death—sometimes appears to human beings as something that intrudes so deeply into life that it seems to be connected to the most fundamental questions of existence. For this reason, the question of suffering has been one of the most fundamental aspects of all worldviews since the earliest times of humankind, and whenever people have attempted to assess the value of life or to discern its meaning, they have sought above all to understand the role that suffering and pain play in human life.

[ 4 ] Suffering appears like a troublemaker in the midst of a joyful life; it appears as a diminishment of the zest for life and hope in life. It is precisely those who seek the value of life in its joy, who seem to exist solely for that joy, who have felt this troublemaker—suffering and pain—the most. How else could one explain that among a people as full of life and so absorbed in the joy of living as the Greeks were, a saying should appear like a dark spot in the starry sky of Greek beauty—the saying of the wise Silenus in the retinue of Dionysus: “What is best for man?” The best thing for a human being is not to be born, and once born, the next best thing is to die soon after birth.” — Perhaps you know that Friedrich Nietzsche, when he sought to understand The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Ancient Greece, drew upon this saying to show how, at the very foundation of Greek wisdom and Greek art, human suffering and sorrow—over suffering and all that is connected with it—play a significant role.

[ 5 ] But now we also find another saying from ancient Greece, one that is hardly much younger—a brief aphorism that simultaneously shows us how, in a certain sense, an insight is dawning once again from this ancient Greek tradition: that the suffering and pain of the world do not, after all, play merely a fateful role. It is the saying found in the works of one of the oldest Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, that insight arises from suffering. Here, two things are brought together, one of which a large part of humanity would undoubtedly like to erase from life, while regarding the other—insight—as one of life’s highest goods.

[ 6 ] It has always been believed that life and suffering—at least the lives of people today and of the higher beings on our Earth—are deeply intertwined. Thus, not only are the knowledge of good and evil and suffering intimately connected at the very beginning of the biblical creation myth, but we also see, on the other hand, from the perspective of the Old Testament, how a bright, luminous view of suffering dawns from within a dark one. When we look around in the Old Testament, when we trace the creation myth in relation to this question, it becomes clear to us that within this ancient worldview, suffering and sin were brought together, that suffering was viewed as the consequence of sin. Today, with a way of thinking that—even where one does not really intend to—tends toward a materialistic worldview, it is no longer easy to understand how one could seek the cause of suffering in sin. But if we are spiritual researchers and learn to put ourselves in the mindset of earlier ages, then we will see that it is not entirely nonsensical to believe in such a connection, and the next lecture will show us that there is a way to perceive a connection between evil and suffering. Explaining suffering in terms of its causes, however, proved impossible for the worldview of ancient Judaism. Thus we see that at the heart of this worldview, which links suffering and sin, stands the remarkable figure of Job—that figure who shows us, or seeks to show us, how suffering and unspeakable pain can be connected to a completely innocent life, and how undeserved suffering and pain can exist. In the awareness of this uniquely tragic figure, Job, we see yet another connection between suffering and pain beginning to emerge—a connection with the ennoblement of the human being. Suffering appears to us here as a trial, as the root of an upward ascent, of higher development. Thus, in the sense of this tragedy of Job, this suffering need not by any means have its origin in evil, but can itself be the primary source, so that what emerges from it represents a more perfect phase of human existence, of human life. All of this is quite foreign to our contemporary, modern way of thinking, and the broader mass of our educated audience today can no longer relate to such a way of thinking. But you need only reflect a little on your own life, and you will see that perfection and suffering have very often appeared side by side before your very eyes, and that there has always been an awareness within humanity of the connection between suffering and perfection. This awareness will lift us up to what we must now consider in the context of spiritual research, namely, the connection between suffering and spirituality.

[ 7 ] Do you remember how often, in this or that tragedy, the tragic hero has stood before your very eyes? Time and again, the poet leads the hero through suffering and agonizing struggles; and when he finally reaches the point where the pain reaches its peak and finds its conclusion in the death of the physical body, then what lives in the soul of the spectator is not merely compassion for the tragic hero, nor merely sorrow that such sufferings, as have just unfolded, are possible; rather, it turns out that the viewer has been uplifted and edified by the sight of suffering, that he has seen suffering subdued in death, and that from death has emerged the certainty that there is a victory over pain and suffering—yes, even over death itself. Nothing can artistically present this supreme victory of humankind—this victory of its innermost forces and impulses, this victory of the noblest impulse of its nature—as sublimely as the tragedy. If the awareness of this victory has been preceded by the experience of suffering and pain, and if, from such events—which can unfold time and again before the eyes of the theatergoer—we look up to what a large part of humanity today still perceives as the highest achievement of all historical development, when we look up to the event that divides our calendar into two parts—the event of redemption through Jesus Christ—then we may notice that one of the greatest exaltations, one of the greatest sources of comfort and hope for victory that has ever taken root in the hearts of people, sprang from the world-historical spectacle of suffering. The great, significant feelings of the Christian worldview that cut deep into the human heart—those feelings that are a source of hope and vitality for so many people, that provide the certainty that there is an eternity, that there is a victory over death— all these uplifting and inspiring sentiments spring from the vision of universal suffering—a suffering that strikes the innocent, a suffering that has not been brought about by any sin of one’s own person.

[ 8 ] Here, too, we see the highest aspect of human consciousness linked to suffering. And when we see how these things repeatedly arise in humanity, on both a small and a large scale, and how they constitute, as it were, the very essence of the whole of human nature and human consciousness, then it must surely seem to us as if suffering is somehow connected to the highest aspect of the human being.

[ 9 ] This is meant merely as a hint at a fundamental feeling of the human soul, one that breaks free again and again, and which stands, as it were, as a great consolation for the fact that suffering exists. If we now delve even more deeply and intimately into human life, phenomena may also present themselves to our souls that point to the significance of suffering. We will have to point out one such phenomenon here as an example; it may seem to have little connection to the subject, but if we engage more intimately with human nature, we will see that this phenomenon, too, points to the significance of certain aspects of suffering.

[ 10 ] Think once more of the tragic work of art, the tragedy, which can only come into being when the poet’s soul opens wide, steps outside itself, and learns to empathize with the suffering of others, to take on that suffering into its own soul. And now do not compare this feeling merely with that of comedy—for we will not arrive at a good comparison there—but with something that, in a certain sense, also belongs to art: with the mood from which caricature flows, which perhaps, with mockery and scorn, depicts in a distorted image what is taking place in another’s soul and manifesting itself outwardly. Let us try to picture two people in our minds, one of whom is tragically moved by an event or a person, while the other captures it as a caricature. It is not a mere comparison, nor a mere image, when we say that the soul of the tragic poet and artist appears to us as if it were stepping outside itself and expanding further and further. But what does this expansion open up to the soul? An understanding of the other person. Nothing allows one to understand another’s life more than letting their pain settle upon one’s own soul. But what must one do if one wishes to caricature? One must not engage with what the other soul feels; one must rise above it, reject it—and this rejection is the foundation of the caricature. No one will deny that, just as tragic compassion allows us to deeply understand another’s personality, caricature reveals what lives in the soul of the caricaturist’s own personality. We come to know far more about the caricaturist’s superiority, wit, perceptiveness, and imagination than about the person being caricatured.

[ 11 ] Having thus demonstrated, on the basis of certain symptoms, that suffering is indeed connected to something profound in human nature, we may hope that by understanding the true nature of human nature, the origins of pain and suffering will also become clear to us.

[ 12 ] The spiritual science we are advocating here is based on the premise that all existence around us has its origin in the spirit. A more materialistic view sees the spirit only where it appears as a crown upon sensory creation, like a flower rising from the root of material existence. This latter view perceives material existence all around it; it sees the physical, corporeal world organizing itself within living beings; it sees consciousness and sensation springing forth; it sees pleasure and suffering emerging within life; and it sees the spirit rising out of physicality.

[ 13 ] When we look at life around us in this way, even for true spiritual research, the spirit—as it appears to us in the sensory world—is, at first, a product of physical nature, from which it springs.

[ 14 ] In the last two lectures, we explored how, from the perspective of spiritual science, we must conceive of the whole human being—the physical, the soul, and the spiritual aspects. What we see with our eyes, what we can perceive externally through the senses—that which materialism regards as the sole essence of nature—is, in spiritual research, nothing other than the first link in the human being: the physical body. We know that, in terms of its materials and laws, this body is shared by human beings with the rest of the inanimate world. But we also know that this physical body is brought to life by what we call the so-called etheric or life body; and we know this because, for spiritual research, this life body is not a speculation but a reality that can be perceived once a person has awakened the higher senses that lie dormant within them. We regard the second part of the human being, the etheric body, as something that human beings share with the rest of the plant world. As the third component of the human being, we regard the astral body—the bearer of pleasure and displeasure, of desire and passion—which human beings share with the animal kingdom. And then we see that human self-consciousness—the ability to say “I” to oneself—is the crown of human nature, which the human being shares with no other being; that this “I” emerges as the flower of the three bodies: the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Thus we see a connection among these four members, to which spiritual research has always pointed. The Pythagorean tetrad is nothing other than this tetrad: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I.” Those who have studied theosophy in depth know that this “I” develops from within itself what we call the spiritual self or Manas, the life spirit or Buddhi, and the actual spiritual human being or Atma,

[ 15 ] Let this be set before you once more, so that we may orient ourselves correctly. To the spiritual researcher, therefore, the human being appears as a fourfold being. Now we come to the point where true spiritual research—which sees behind the essences with the eyes of the spirit and penetrates to the deepest foundations of existence—differs profoundly from a purely external approach to things. Admittedly, we also say that, as the human being now stands before us, chemical and physical laws must form the basis of the body, of life, the basis of sensation, of consciousness, and the basis of self-consciousness. But when we approach the essence from the perspective of spiritual science, the matter presents itself to us in exactly the opposite way. What appears to us, in the sense of phenomenon, as the ultimate—consciousness, which stands out from the physical body—appears to us as the original creative force. At the very foundation of everything, we perceive the conscious spirit, and that is why the spiritual researcher recognizes how nonsensical the question “Where does the spirit come from?” is. That can never be the question; one can only ask: “Where does matter come from?” But for spiritual research, matter has sprung from the spirit; it is nothing but condensed spirit.

[ 16 ] A parable: Imagine a vessel filled with water. Imagine that part of this water has cooled until it freezes into ice. What, then, is the ice? Ice is water—water in a different form, in a solid state. This is how the spiritual researcher also views matter. Just as water relates to ice, so does spirit relate to matter. Just as ice is nothing other than a result of water, so matter is nothing other than a result of spirit; and just as ice can turn back into water, so spirit can once again take its origin from matter, can emerge from matter once more—or, conversely, matter can dissolve back into spirit.

[ 17 ] Thus we see an eternal cycle of the spirit. We see the spirit permeating the entire universe; we see material entities emerging from it and becoming condensed; and we see, on the other hand, entities that cause the solid to dissipate once more. In everything that surrounds us today as matter, there is something into which the spirit has flowed and solidified. Thus, we see solidified spirit in every material being. Just as we need only supply ice with the necessary heat to turn it back into water, so we need only supply the beings around us with the necessary spirit to awaken the spirit within them. We speak of a rebirth of the spirit that has flowed into matter and solidified within it. Thus the astral body also appears to us—the bearer of pleasure and displeasure, desire, and passion—not as something that could have emerged from physical existence, but as the very same element that comes to life within us as conscious spirit, just as that which appears to us as the element permeating the entire world, which—through the process of human life—is once again liberated from matter. That which appears last is at the same time the first. It has brought forth both the physical body and the etheric body, and when both have reached a certain level in their development, it appears, reborn anew from within them.

[ 18 ] This is how spiritual science views things. Now, these three elements—words are meant only to clarify—appear to us most clearly under three specific names. We perceive matter in a certain form; it appears to us in the external world in a specific way. We speak of form, of the shape of matter, and of the life that appears within that shape, and finally of the consciousness that appears within life. Just as we speak of the three levels—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—we also speak of the three levels: form, life, and consciousness. It is within consciousness that self-consciousness first arises. However, we will not concern ourselves with that today; we will save it for next time.

[ 19 ] Throughout history, and especially in our time, people have reflected deeply on what life actually means, and on the origin and purpose of life. Modern science has been able to uncover very few clues regarding the meaning of life and its nature. But there is one thing that modern science has long since embraced—and which spiritual science has repeatedly affirmed as its conviction and insight—namely: Life within the physical world differs materially from so-called non-life, the inanimate, essentially only in the diversity and complexity of its structure. Life can dwell only where a much more complex structure of matter exists than is found in the realm of the inanimate. You may know that life contains in its fundamental substance something that could be described as a protein-like substance, for which the term “living protein” would not be inappropriate. This living protein differs considerably from dead, inanimate protein in one respect. Namely, living protein disintegrates immediately once life has left it. Dead protein—for example, that from a dead chicken egg—cannot be preserved for any length of time in its current state. This is, in fact, the very nature of living substance: the moment life has departed from it, it can no longer hold its parts together. Even if we cannot delve further into the nature of life today, a single phenomenon can already point us to something that is deeply connected to life and characterizes it. And what, then, is this characteristic? It is precisely this property of living substance: that it disintegrates once life has departed from it. Imagine a substance stripped of life: it disintegrates; imagine a material entity that is not permeated by life: it has the property of disintegrating. What, then, does life do? It opposes decay time and time again; thus, life preserves. This is the rejuvenating aspect of life: that it repeatedly resists what would otherwise occur within its matter. Life in substance means: resistance to decay. Compare the external process of death with life, and it will become clear to you that life does not exhibit any of the characteristics that define the process of death—the disintegration into itself—but rather that it repeatedly saves substance from decay by opposing its disintegration. Thus, by renewing the substance that is disintegrating within itself, life is the foundation of physical existence and consciousness.

[ 20 ] We have not merely provided a definition of the word. It would be a definition if what the word signifies did not occur continuously. But if you simply observe a living organism, you will find that it continually takes in matter from the outside, incorporates it, while parts of itself are destroyed: a process through which life continually counteracts destruction. We are therefore dealing with a reality.

[ 21 ] Shedding old matter and forming new—that is life. But life is not yet sensation, nor is it yet consciousness. It is a childish way of thinking on the part of some scientists that prevents them from grasping the concept of sensation correctly, to the extent that they attribute sensation even to plants, to which we must ascribe life. If one says this because some plants close their leaves and flowers in response to an external stimulus, as if they were sensing that stimulus, then one might just as well say that blue litmus paper, which turns red in response to an external stimulus, possesses sensation. We could then also attribute sensation to chemical substances because they react to certain influences. But that is not enough. If sensation is to be established, the stimulus must be reflected internally. Only then can we speak of the first element of consciousness—sensation. And what is this first element of consciousness? When we ascend to the next higher level in our exploration of the world and seek to grasp the essence of consciousness, we will not recognize it immediately, but we will sense it shining a little within our souls, just as we were also able to explain the essence of life to some extent. Where there is life, consciousness alone can arise; consciousness can spring only from life. If life springs from seemingly lifeless matter—as the composition of matter becomes so complex that it cannot sustain itself and must be seized by life to continually prevent its decay—then consciousness within life appears to us as something higher. Where life is constantly being destroyed as life, where a being constantly stands on the very edge between life and death, where life constantly threatens to vanish once more from living substance—there consciousness arises. And just as substance would have disintegrated in the first place had life not inhabited it, so now life seems to us to be disintegrating unless consciousness were to intervene as a new principle. Consciousness cannot be understood in any other way than by saying: just as life exists to renew certain processes, the absence of which would bring about the decay of matter, so consciousness exists to continually renew life, which would otherwise dissolve.

[ 22 ] Not every life can continually renew itself internally in this way. It must have reached a higher level if it is to renew itself from within. Only that life can awaken to consciousness which is so strong within itself that it can continually endure death within itself. Or is there no such life that contains death within itself at every moment? You need only look at human life and recall what was said in the last lecture under the title “Blood Is a Very Special Fluid.” Human life is continually renewed from the blood, and a profound German psychologist has said that in the blood, the human being has a double from whom he continually draws strength. But blood also possesses another power: it continually generates death from within itself. Once the blood has delivered the life-giving substances to the body’s organs, it carries the life-destroying forces back up to the heart and into the lungs. What flows back into the lungs is poison to life; it is what causes life to continually wither away.

[ 23 ] If a being works against decay, then it is a living being. If it is capable of giving rise to death within itself and continually transforming that death into life, then consciousness arises. Consciousness is the strongest of all the forces that oppose us. Consciousness, or the conscious mind, is the force that eternally brings life back into being from death, which must be generated in the midst of life. Life is a process that involves both an outer world and an inner world; consciousness, however, is a process that involves only an inner world. A substance that can die outwardly cannot become conscious. Only a substance that generates and overcomes death at its very center can be conscious. Thus, as a wise German theosophist has said, death is not only the root of life, but also the root of consciousness.

[ 24 ] Once we have grasped this connection, we need only observe phenomena with open eyes, and pain will become comprehensible to us. Everything with which consciousness begins is, at its origin, pain. When life opens itself to the outside world, when a living being encounters light, air, heat, and cold, these external elements initially act upon the living being. But as long as these elements act only upon this living being—as long as they are absorbed by it, just as they are absorbed by a plant as the vehicle of inner life processes—consciousness does not arise. Consciousness arises only when these external elements come into conflict with inner life, when destruction takes place. Consciousness must flow from the destruction of life. Without a partial death, a ray of light will not be able to penetrate a living being; the process from which consciousness springs will never be stimulated within the living being. But when the light penetrates the surface of life, causing partial devastation and tearing down the inner substances and forces, then that mysterious process arises which unfolds everywhere in the outer world in a very specific way. Imagine: The intelligent forces of the world had risen to such a height that the outer light and the outer air had become alien to them. They remained in harmony with them only for a time; then they perfected themselves, thereby creating a contradiction. If you could follow this process with the eyes of the spirit, you would see how, where a ray of light penetrates simple beings, the skin is slightly transformed and a tiny eye emerges. What, then, is it that first dawns within matter? In what form does this subtle destruction manifest itself—for it is destruction that is taking place here? It is pain, which is nothing but an expression of this destruction. Wherever life encounters the external natural world, destruction takes place, which, when it intensifies, brings about death itself. Consciousness is born out of pain. The very same process that created your eye would have become a process of destruction had it gained the upper hand in the being that has evolved within the human being. Instead, it affected only a small part, thereby enabling it to create, out of destruction—out of partial death—that reflection of the external world which we call consciousness. Consciousness within matter is thus born of suffering, of pain.

[ 25 ] When we recognize this connection between suffering and pain and the conscious spirit that surrounds us, then we can also understand the words of a Christian initiate who knew such things intuitively and deeply, and who saw pain at the very foundation of all conscious life—the words: “In all of nature, every creature groans in pain, eagerly awaiting the moment when it will attain the status of a child of God.” You will find this in the 8th chapter of Paul’s epistle, as a wonderful expression of this foundation of consciousness in pain. This also explains why significant, insightful people have attributed such a large, all-encompassing role to pain. I would like to cite just one example here. A great German philosopher says that when one looks at all of nature around oneself, pain and suffering appear expressed everywhere on its face; indeed, when one looks at higher animals, they reveal an expression of suffering to the observer with a deeper insight. And who would not admit that the physiognomy of some animals resembles the expression of deeply restrained pain? If we view the matter as we have just suggested, then we see the emergence of consciousness from pain, so that the being that forms consciousness out of destruction brings forth something higher out of the decay of life and continually recreates itself out of death. If the living could not suffer, consciousness could never arise. If death did not exist in the world, the spirit could never exist in the visible world. This is the strength of the spirit: that it transforms destruction into something even higher than life itself, and thus, in the midst of life, forms something higher—a consciousness. We then see the various experiences of pain developing further and further into the organs of consciousness. One can already see this in animals, which possess only a reflexive consciousness for external defense—much like a human who closes their eyes when there is danger to the eye. When the reflexive movement is no longer sufficient to protect inner life, when the stimulus becomes too strong, inner resilience arises and gives birth to the senses, sensation, the eye, and the ear. You may know from some unpleasant experience, or perhaps even instinctively, that this is how it is. Indeed, from a higher level of your consciousness, you know quite precisely that what has just been said is true. An example will clarify the matter further. When do you feel certain internal organs of your body? You go through life feeling neither your stomach, nor your liver, nor your lungs—you feel none of your organs as long as they are healthy. You feel them only when they hurt, and you actually only realize that you have this or that organ when it hurts, when you sense that something is wrong, that a process of destruction is beginning.

[ 26 ] If we take this example, this explanation, we see that conscious life is continually born out of pain. When pain comes to life, it gives birth to sensation and consciousness. This act of giving birth, this bringing forth of something higher, is in turn reflected in consciousness as pleasure, and there has never been pleasure without pain having preceded it. Down below, in the life that is just emerging from physical matter, there is still no pleasure. But when pain has given rise to consciousness and continues to work creatively as consciousness, then this creation is on a higher level and expresses itself in the feeling of pleasure. Pleasure underlies creation. Pleasure can only exist where inner or outer creation is possible. In a sense, creation underlies every pleasure, just as the necessity of creation underlies every displeasure. Take something that can characterize suffering at a lower level—for example, the feeling of hunger, which can destroy life. You counter this with food. The act of eating becomes a pleasure because food is capable of transforming into an enhancement of life, into the production of life. Thus you see that, on the basis of pain, higher creation—pleasure—arises. Suffering, then, precedes pleasure. Therefore, the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann are also correct in stating that suffering is a universal experience of life. However, they do not trace the origin of suffering deeply enough; they do not reach the point where suffering is meant to develop into something higher. The origin of suffering is found where consciousness arises from life, where spirit is born out of life,

[ 27 ] Just as we can now grasp what dawns upon the human soul regarding the connection between suffering and pain on the one hand, and insight and consciousness on the other, so too have we been able to demonstrate how something nobler and more perfect is born out of pain and suffering.

[ 28 ] Those who have attended my lectures frequently will recall my remarks that there is such a thing as initiation, in which a higher consciousness is present and through which a person rises from sensory things to a perception of a spiritual world; that powers and abilities lie dormant in the human soul that can be brought forth from the soul, just as sight is restored to one born blind through surgery; and that a new person then emerges, as it were, to whom the whole world appears transformed on a higher plane. Just as things appear in a new light to the person born blind after surgery, so do they appear to the spiritually reborn. But this, too, can only happen when the very process just described is repeated on a higher level. When what you find united in the average person is separated—when a kind of process of destruction takes place within lower human nature—then this higher consciousness, this vision into the spiritual world, can arise.

[ 29 ] There are three forces in human nature: thinking, feeling, and willing. These three forces are connected to the human physical organism. Certain acts of the will occur after certain thought and feeling processes have taken place. The human organism must function properly if these three forces are to be in harmony. If certain pathways are interrupted or certain parts are diseased, then there is no proper harmony between thinking, feeling, and willing. Because the organs of the will are paralyzed, the person is unable to translate their thoughts into impulses of the will. They are weak as a person of action; although they can think well, they cannot bring themselves to put a thought into practice. Another type is that in which a person is unable to allow their thoughts to properly guide their feelings, to bring the feelings into harmony with the thoughts behind them. The maniac is, in essence, nothing other than this.

[ 30 ] In modern human beings, there is a harmony between thinking, feeling, and willing; this is the state in which a normally educated person finds themselves today when faced with someone who is suffering, enabling them to adopt the appropriate emotional and volitional state. All of this is true for certain stages of development. It should be noted, however, that this harmony arises unconsciously in modern human beings. But if a person is to be initiated, if they are to look into the higher worlds, then these three members—thinking, feeling, and willing—must be torn apart. The organs of the will and of feeling must undergo a separation. The physical organism of an initiate is therefore also different from that of a non-initiate, even if anatomy has not yet been able to prove this. The connection between thinking, feeling, and willing is severed. The initiate would be capable of seeing someone suffering deeply without a single emotion stirring within him; he would be able to stand by coldly and watch it. And why is this so? Nothing may interconnect unconsciously within the initiate; he is a compassionate person out of his own free will, and not because something external compels him to be so. That is the difference between an initiate and a non-initiate. Such a higher consciousness creates, as it were, a higher substance, and the human being is divided into a feeling self, a volitional self, and a thinking self. Only then does the higher, newly born human being reign supreme over these three, and from this level of higher consciousness, those three are brought into harmony. Here, too, death and destruction must intervene once again. If this destruction were to occur without a new consciousness simultaneously emerging, madness would ensue. Madness would thus be nothing other than the state in which the human being is shattered without the higher, conscious entity having been created.

[ 31 ] Here, too, a dual process takes place: a kind of process of destruction of the lower alongside a process of emergence of the higher. Just as poison is present in the veins of the blood, and just as consciousness is generated in the ordinary human being between the red and blue blood, so too is the higher consciousness generated within the initiated human being through the interplay of life and death, and bliss arises once again from a higher joy—the creative act that emerges from death.

[ 32 ] This is what a person senses when he perceives the mysterious connection between pain and suffering and the highest state a human being can attain. That is why the tragic poet allows the hero, who perishes in suffering, to give rise to the victory of life—the awareness of the victory of the eternal over the temporal. That is why Christianity rightly sees in the passing of Christ Jesus—in his earthly nature—amid pain and suffering, torment and misery, the victory of eternal life over temporal transience. That is also why our lives become richer and more meaningful when we can expand them beyond what lies outside ourselves, when we can lose ourselves in the life that exists outside of ourselves.

[ 33 ] Just as we create a higher consciousness out of the pain that is stimulated by an external ray of light and overcome by us as living beings, so too, when we transform the suffering of others into our own, greater world of consciousness, a creative act of compassion is born from our receptivity to the suffering of others. And so, ultimately, love also arises from suffering. For what is love other than extending one’s consciousness to other beings? If we ourselves are willing to forgo as much, to give as much, to make ourselves as much poorer as we give to another being, and if we are capable—just as the skin that receives the ray of light and, out of its pain, is able to form a higher being, an eye—if we are capable of drawing a higher life from the extension of our own life over other lives, then within ourselves, from what we give away to the other being, love—compassion for all creatures—is born.

[ 34 ] This is also the basis of the Greek poet’s saying: “From life came learning, from learning came knowledge.” Here, as already mentioned in the previous lecture, insights based on the latest scientific research once again converge with the findings of ancient spiritual research. Ancient spiritual research has always maintained that the highest knowledge and the highest teaching can arise only from suffering. If we have a diseased limb and have suffered pain from it, we know that limb best of all; in the same way, we know best what we have stored within our own souls. Knowledge springs forth from our own suffering as its fruit.

[ 35 ] The same principle also underlies the crucifixion of Christ Jesus, which, as the Christian view holds, was soon followed by the Holy Spirit spreading throughout the world. We now understand, then, the emergence of the Holy Spirit from the crucifixion of Christ Jesus as a process to which the parable of the grain of wheat points. From destruction, new fruit must emerge, and so, too, from the destruction—from the sufferings endured on the cross—is born the Spirit who pours out upon the apostles at Pentecost. This is clearly stated in the Gospel of John when it says: the Spirit was not yet there, for Christ had not yet been glorified. Anyone who reads the Gospel of John more deeply will find significant insights to take away from it.

[ 36 ] You may hear some people say that they would not want to be without their pain, since it has brought them insight. Every person who has died can teach you that what I have said is true. Would human beings wage the battle against the destruction within themselves all the way to actual death if pain, like a guardian of life, did not stand constantly by their side? Pain alerts us to the fact that we must take precautions against the destruction of life. Out of pain, we create new life. In the notes of a modern naturalist on the facial expressions of the thinker, we read that there is something on the thinker’s face like a restrained pain.

[ 37 ] If this is indeed the case with the elevation that flows from the knowledge gained through pain—if, that is, it is true that suffering gives rise to learning—then it is not without reason—as we shall see next time—that the biblical account of creation links the knowledge of good and evil with suffering and pain. That is why those with deeper insight have rightly emphasized time and again how the origin of purification—the elevation of human nature—lies in pain; and when the theosophical worldview, in the great law of destiny, karma, points to the sins and transgressions a person has committed in past lives through the sufferings they endure in the present life, then we understand such a connection solely from the perspective of deeper human nature. What we have wrought in the external world in past lives is transformed from wild forces into sublime ones. Sin is, as it were, like a poison; yet when it is transformed into the substance of life, it becomes a remedy. Thus, sin can contribute to the strengthening and elevation of the human being, and so, in the story of Job, pain and suffering are presented to us as an elevation of knowledge and of the spirit.

[ 38 ] This was meant to be just a sketch, intended to point out the connection between earthly existence and suffering and pain. It was meant to show how we can understand the meaning of suffering and pain when we see how they solidify and crystallize in physical things and organisms, all the way up to human beings, and how, by liquefying what has solidified, the spirit can be reborn within us—when we see that the origin of pain and suffering lies in the spirit. What the spirit gives us is beauty, strength, and wisdom—the transformed image of the original source of pain. That is why a man of great insight, Fabre d’Olivet, was not wrong to use the comparison to show that the highest, noblest, and most purified aspects of human nature arise from pain—that the emergence of wisdom and beauty from suffering is comparable to a process in nature: the birth of the precious, beautiful pearl. For from what is it born? From the illness of the mollusk, from the destruction within the pearl oyster. Just as the beauty of the pearl is born of illness—and thus of suffering—so too are knowledge, noble human nature, and a purified human spirit born of suffering, of pain.

[ 39 ] Thus, we may well say, in accordance with the ancient Greek poet Aeschylus: From suffering comes learning, and from learning comes knowledge. And just as with many other things, we may say of pain that we have truly grasped it only when we recognize it not only in itself but also in what arises from it. Like so many other things, pain, too, is recognized only by its fruits.