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| The dark radiation. The necessity of contrast |
35. While in the first half of the spiral the effects of the Creative Principle have the purpose of developing an individual's love or desire for matter, so in the latter half the tendencies of that same principle have the purpose of developing the individual's love towards all living beings in existence.
The consequence of this is that, in the first half, with an increasing stimulation towards the desire for material things, the individual actually becomes more and more bound up with those things created, in other words, entangled in matter.
And to the same extent as this entanglement is taking place, so the individual's love towards other living beings deteriorates.
And at the point where this deterioration culminates, the individual will come to experience the strongest feeling of his own I's separation from other living beings in existence.
This feeling will be recognized as the same as what we call the "sense of individuality".
So in the first half of the evolutionary spiral, the power of creation - with its stimulation of the individual's desire for, and concentration on material things instead of on living beings - will cause a renewal of that sense of individuality, being the same as the "sense of an I".
This continual focus on material things, instead of on the other I's, gradually obliterates any feeling for those other I's, to the advantage of that same individual's own I.
Through this, that same individual in the first half of the spiral will not only appear with a body dense and full of matter but also with a kind of rising culmination in self love, an egoistic and insatiable desire to seize physical matter from its fellow beings, yes, even that very stuff from which they have built up their bodily structure.
It is this basis which supports that form of life experience which, for example, stimulates the beast of prey and, in a later part of terrestrial mankind's consciousness, promotes cannibalism and meat-eating.
Of course, it must be thoroughly understood here that in these written lines there is not in any way the least grain of reproach or attack on anyone; indeed, considering the basic effects of the Creative Principle in the first half of the spiral cycle, these circumstances exist to a great extent as a condition of life and must therefore support that instinct in living beings of self-preservation.
When the individual is quite lacking in sympathy with his surroundings and therefore, to the same degree, is in no state to consider or to sacrifice himself for his fellows, such an egoistical existence stimulates such tendencies which we describe as hate, envy, jealousy, ruthlessness, lust for power, pride, self-satisfaction, and boastfulness, the universal consequences of which in the form of murder, manslaughter, war, mutilation, suffering and illness promote the culmination of "unpleasantness" (all we have learnt to know as "evil") and this again constitutes the darkness in the spiritual world of existence. So here in Livets Bog I have called the effects of that side of the Divine Creative Principle the "dark radiation". As this radiation has the purpose of stimulating the experience of darkness for living beings, and so determines in all of them a development of those faculties without which any experience of light would be an impossibility, this dark radiation, or so-called "evil", in its deepest cosmic analysis constitutes a divine blessing. In this connection it will be well to remember that whatever the form of experience, it is precisely and solely conditioned by a previous experience of its contrast or opposite. No living being in existence, therefore, will be able to experience anything without having experienced its opposite beforehand. For example, how could we experience black if we had not experienced white? How could we recognize light if we had not experienced darkness? And how could we know that something was pleasant if we had not previously experienced something unpleasant? All sense perception, and with it every possible form of life experience, depends, therefore, on the conditions of contrast in existence. Without these, no life and no consciousness would be possible; an all-embracing death would reign, an everlasting "nothing". But as it is an actual fact that the universe does not constitute an eternal death, but an eternal life - not a "nothing" but a "something" - it will also be a fact that the Creative Principle's dark radiation will become the first essential divine basis for the living beings' journey towards the light. |
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