Introduction

Moral ideals are the shining lighthouse or polar light in the age of the consciousness soul, guiding mankind to its future of transformation and spiritualization of the lower bodies (see Schema FMC00.431). In this age of the developing consciousness soul, Man becomes 'ripe' to become a citizen of the spiritual moral cosmos by now becoming aware and influenced by the moral cosmos, and/but having to make a conscious choice out of full freedom and inner strength to do the good, to choose for love. (see Schema FMC00.428A on Human character - the I and threefold soul).

This is how the human being becomes Free Man Creator and participates to creation though his thoughts, feelings and actions creates elementals that will develop as Seeds for future worlds

"Free Man Creator" was chosen as a shortest key to coin an essential message of spiritual science (and Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy specifically).

It expresses the importance of the fact that Man is truly the first spiritual entity that was totally set free in creation, set free of the work of the creative hierarchies and divine providence. Freedom of choice as a precondition to develop love. The implication of this, which can not be underestimated and requires so much insight to truly realize in its full extent, is that Man becomes Creator through all his thoughts, feelings and actions. Man contributes directly to the creation of future worlds, he co-creates the Seeds for future worlds. The implication is responsibility. With conscious free choice comes a responsibility which extends far from what Man currently sees as the impact of his actions.

The teachings of reincarnations add perspective to this, because we ourselves will come back again and again in this world we co-create. And the future, not just the past, is created by the impulses coming from waves of incarnating individualities like yourself, a spirit in a physical body. Again the implication is responsibility.

Therefore the topic of Free Man Creator is also about the most fundamental questions that Man can ask:

• what is the Meaning of life?
• where are we coming from?
• where are we going?
• who are we, really? .. which is the same question as 'Man, know Thyself'

Source: https://anthroposophy.eu/Meaning_of_Free_Man_Creator

Overview

Cosmic perspective - contributing to creation and future worlds

• "What lives in Man as morality shines out into the cosmos solar, spiritual radiance .. even if only a dozen people possess moral and spiritual enthusiasm" (1920-12-18-GA202) and this is the creation of a new center (see Schema FMC00.188 on Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension). This is how the Earth will become a new sun for a new cosmos, with the center being the Second Adam group soul of the Christ and spiritualized humanity. This process is further discussed on Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension.
• Moral and ethical ideals are the 'seeds of future worlds' and basis for a new creation on Future Jupiter (1921-09-24-GA207)

Ennobling morality

• Humanity is in process of a long-term development (see also The great journey of humanity) that includes a free choice between good and evil, a choice for love and selflessness and ennobling one's moral character (or egoistic selfishness and through evil races, eventually being thrown off the course of regular evolution with the Eighth sphere).

  • The individual ennobling of one's soul and astral body is to eliminate the differences of race and nation. If morals are not ennobled, this will lead to brutality in every possible form in human culture and society (1904-12-23-GA093)
  • For each human being individually, improving human character and soul is part of each path of initiation, see eg Initiation exercises#Elemental balance - transformation of soul mirrors

The moral and karma - and journey between death and a new birth

• The universe is moral: between death and a new birth, Man experiences orientation amongst the beings of the higher hierarchies as moral orientation. Cosmic thoughts light up as bearers of morality. The ether is permeated with moral impulses (1922-11-26-GA219)
• The 'moralizing' mission of Man in the cosmos: the astral body constantly judges the moral value of our deeds. After death this totality of moral judgements is inserted into the soul which introduces it into the cosmos. (1922-09-14-GA215)

Various

• In the spirit world moral laws and the physical laws of nature coincide, see Spirit world#1912-02-25-GA143
• Moral ideals (1920-12-18-GA202, 1921-07-24-GA206, 1921-08-07-GA206, 1921-09-24-GA207, 1921-10-02-GA207)

• The increasing affinity of Man and mankind with moral values in the Current Postatlantean epoch has to do with the Development of the I.

  • Rudolf Steiner describes how empathy, compassion, conscience (only) arose (as late as) in the fourth cultural age.
  • The current fifth and next sixth cultural ages will bring an ongoing increase in spirituality and selfless love (which will be more characteristic of and in the next great Sixth epoch). For some pointers, see ao Sixth cultural age#1915-06-15-GA159 for moral quality of brotherly love, and faculty number 4 (karmic foresight) on Schema FMC00.081 on Christ in the etheric.
  • For further study and understanding, see also Human character - the I and threefold soul and the nature and impact of the consciousness soul (Schema FMC00.428A below), as well the important 1910-09-11-GA123 (links below) that goes along with this, and Schema FMC00.190.
• Morality maps to the Good in Truth, Beauty, Good (TBG), it is linked to 'power' or 'inner strength' (everything that lives itself out in the will)

Inspirational Quotes

Robert F. Kennedy

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

See also 1904-11-09-GA089 and Schema FMC00.188 that explain the creation of a new center, exactly as is captured in this image by Robert F. Kennedy. More on Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension#A new center gets created

1910-11-12-GAXXX

Moral qualities produce results: they bring about karmic effects. They may change during one incarnation .. but in the next incarnation they must descend right down into the physical organism.

1920-12-18-GA202

How greatly is our sense of responsibility enhanced if we know that without people on the Earth, who can kindle authentic morality or glowing spiritual ideals in their soul, the human race would not aid our world's further evolution. Rather than working towards a new creation, they would help the world to die away.

This power of radiance present upon Earth works out into the universe, so that what lives as morality in us shines out - invisibly initially for ordinary human perception.

If a sad age dawned across the globe when millions and millions of people passed their days devoid of spirituality - in which I included morality, which is indeed part of it - the Earth would however still shine out in solar, spiritual radiance if only a dozen people still possessed lucid moral and spiritual enthusiasm.

1922-12-15-GA219

In the spiritual realm the whole reality is moral, whereas on Earth there is only a reflection of that reality. But Man, we must remember, belongs to both worlds.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.431 provides and overview on how the I 'plays on the instrument of the soul and the different strings of human soul life', what comes out as music and the expression of individual soul life, is what we know as and call human character.

• how the I pulses through, works on, and develops the human soul
• the human I works itself up sentient -> intellectual ->  consciousness soul and can express itself in each of the three areas of soul life
• the I works order & harmony in the soul life, so a mutual fructification of sentient, intellectual, consciousness souls

Note: the schema was assembled mainly on the basis of the original german lecture versions of 1909-10-29-GA068B and 1910-03-12-GA068B. Purpose was to present a foundation. It can most probably be enriched by including contents from the other five lectures.

See lowest row in the table, illustrating how moral ideals come from from the spiritual world through the consciousness soul and influence 'down' the intellectual and sentient soul and work in the lower bodies.

Schema FMC00.266 shows (see 1920-12-18-GA202 below and on Threefold Sun) how the spiritual Sun [1] works on Earth and Man [2], but that Man radiates this morality out into the cosmos [3], and after a certain distance is reflected: "the physical sun is only the seemingly physical appearance of a spiritual mirroring" [4].

Lectures

Overview coverage

1912-05-29-GA155 and 1912-05-30-GA155 provide an introduction in context spiritual foundation of morality

Reference extracts

1904-12-23-GA093

The essential secret, therefore, is this: The human being must know how to keep silence about the paths along which his I unfolds, and to regard his deeds, not his personal I, as the criterion.

The real heart of the secret lies in his deeds and in the overcoming of the I through deed. The I must remain concealed within the deed! Elimination of the interests of the personal I from the outstreaming flow of human karma, this belongs to the First Degree. Whatever individual karma the I incurs in the process is thereby wiped out. Nation, race, sex, position, religion ... all these work upon human egoism. Only when man has overcome them will he be free of egoism.

The astral body of every nation, every race, every epoch, has a definite color ... You will always find a color which is fundamental in the astral body of a human being who is a member of one of these classifications. This specific color must be eliminated.

Anthroposophical spiritual science works to level out the colors of the astral bodies of its adherents. They must be of like color — alike, that is to say, in respect of the basic color. This basic color gives rise to a certain substance called Kundalini, which holds together, within the human being, the forces which lead eventually to the spirit.

This leveling-out process will bring war and bloodshed in its train — war in the shape of economic strife among nations, pressure for expansion, suppression in every form, strife in the sphere of investment and profit, industrial undertakings, and so forth. And by adopting certain measures it will increasingly be possible to handle vast masses of people by sheer force; the individual will acquire greater and greater power over certain masses of the people. For the course of evolution is leading not towards greater democracy but towards oligarchy of the brutal kind, in that the power of the single individual will immeasurably increase.

If morals are not ennobled, this will lead to brutality in every possible form. This state of things will come, just as the great water catastrophe came to the Atlanteans.

1906-05-26-GA094

[Importance of ideal]

To understand the development of humanity, it must be viewed in its whole range, only so can we see its high ideal. To believe that an ideal is not necessary for action is a great error. A Man without ideals is a Man without power.

The function of an ideal in life is like that of steam in an engine. Steam comprises in a small area a vast expanse of 'condensed space' — hence its tremendous power of expansion. The magic power of thought is of the same nature.

Let us then rise to the thought of the ideal of humanity as a whole, guided by the thread of its evolution through the epochs of time.

1907-12-27-GA101

for full lecture, see: Group souls of humanity#1907-12-27-GA101

.. There is a sentence in occultism:

The knowledge of the White Lodge, which is called the secret of life-generation, is not handed over to mankind before Man has learned the secret of sacramentalism.

'Sacramentalism' is an expression of the fact that human action must be imbued with moral perfection, with holiness.

...

You see the consciousness of Man being elevated from mineral consciousness to plant consciousness. Again it is an occult statement:

Man will only attain the state of plant consciousness when he will no longer be able to separate his own well-being from the well-being of all other people. As long as the individual seeks his well-being at the expense of other people, the situation has not arisen in which consciousness could be raised a step higher.

1910-09-11-GA123

Reference pointer on the link between consciousness soul and Christ Impulse, for lecture extracts see:

• Man's transformation and spiritualization#1910-09-11-GA123
• Christ Module 12 - the cosmic 'I'#1910-09-11-GA123

1911-09-21-GA130

It is the Christ Impulse and is connected with the future ascent of humanity to Morality. Although Buddha's teaching is in a particular sense moral teaching, the Christ Impulse is not teaching but actual power which works as such and to an increasing degree imbues mankind with moral strength. (I Corinthians IV, 20)

1911-10-01-GA130

The Etherization of the Blood

[Man asleep]

It is different now, however, in the sleeping human being. When a human being sleeps, the occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside into the brain and also in the reverse direction, from the brain to the heart.

These streams, however, which in sleeping man come from outside, from cosmic space, from the macrocosm, and flow into the inner constitution of the physical and etheric bodies lying in the bed, reveal something remarkable when they are investigated. These rays vary greatly in different individuals. Sleeping human beings differ greatly from one another, and if those who are a little vain only knew how badly they betray themselves to esoteric observation when they go to sleep during public gatherings, they would try their best not to let this happen!

Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular coloring of the streams that flow into human beings during sleep; in a person of lower moral principles the streams are quite different from what is observable in a person of higher principles. Endeavors to disguise one's nature by day are useless. In the face of the higher cosmic powers, no disguise is possible. In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination toward moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in color — various shades tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet. At the moment of waking or of going to sleep, a kind of struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams upward from below. When a man is awake, the intellectual element streams upward from below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams downward from above. At the moment of waking or of going to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of the pineal gland. In the man of high morality and an outstreaming intellectuality, a peaceful expansion of glimmering light appears in the region of the pineal gland. This gland is almost surrounded by a small sea of light in the moment between waking and sleeping. Moral nobility is revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments. In this way a man's moral character is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the region of the heart. Two streams can therefore be perceived in man — one from the macrocosm, the other from the microcosm.

1915-03-14-GA159

is titled: 'Moral Impulses and Their Results'

1917-02-27-GA175

is titled: 'Morality, a germinating force'

1920-12-11-GA202

is titled: 'The Bridge between Morality and Nature - Birth and Death as Revelations of Love and Freedom'

1920-12-18-GA202

with subtitle: The moral as the source of world-creative power

Synopsis includes:

• Connection of the moral world-order with the physical world-order.
• The moral world-order has no place in the natural scientific thinking of today.
• The positive effect of moral ideals and ideas and the negative effect of theoretical ideas on the four organisms in man.
• Matter and energy die away to nullity; but man's moral thinking imbues life into substance and will.
• The natural world dies away in man; in the realm of the moral a new natural world comes into being; thus are the moral order and the natural order connected.

Note: see also longer extract of 1920-12-18-GA202 below, and schema FMC00.266 on Threefold Sun

quote A

.. moral intuitions are drawn from within the Earth and shimmer forth from human beings—from what can live in us as moral inspiration [2].

How greatly is our sense of responsibility enhanced if we know that without people on the Earth, who can kindle authentic morality or glowing spiritual ideals in their soul, the human race would not aid our world's further evolution. Rather than working towards a new creation,they would help the world to die away.

This power of radiance present upon earth [3] works out into the universe, so that what lives as morality in us shines out - invisibly initially for ordinary human perception.

If a sad age dawned across the globe when millions and millions of people passed their days devoid of spirituality - in which I included morality, which is indeed part of it - the Earth would however still shine out in solar, spiritual radiance if only a dozen people still possessed lucid moral and spiritual enthusiasm.

quote B

Within this picture a moral world-order has no place. It is there on its own. Man receives the moral impulses into himself as impulses of soul. But if the assertions of natural science are true, everything that is astir with life, and finally man himself came out of the primeval nebula and the moral ideals well up in him. And when, as is alleged, the world becomes a slag-heap, this will also be the graveyard of all moral ideals. They will have vanished. — No bridge can possibly be built, and what is worse, modern science cannot, without being inconsistent, admit the existence of morality in the world-order. Only if modern science is inconsistent can it accept the moral world-order as valid. It cannot do so if it is consistent. The root of all this is that the only kind of anatomy in existence is concerned exclusively with the solid organism, and no account is taken of the fact that man also has within him a fluid organism, an aeriform organism, and a warmth-organism. If you picture to yourselves that as well as the solid organism with its configuration into bones, muscles, nerve-fibres and so forth, you also have a fluid organism and an aeriform organism — though these are of course fluctuating and inwardly mobile — and a warmth-organism, if you picture this you will more easily understand what I shall now have to say on the basis of spiritual-scientific observation.

Think of a person whose soul is fired with enthusiasm for a high moral ideal, for the ideal of generosity, of freedom, of goodness, of love, or whatever it may be. He may also feel enthusiasm for examples of the practical expression of these ideals. But nobody can conceive that the enthusiasm which fires the soul penetrates into the bones and muscles as described by modern physiology or anatomy. If you really take counsel with yourself, however, you will find it quite possible to conceive that when one has enthusiasm for a high moral ideal, this enthusiasm has an effect upon the warmth organism. — There, you see, we have come from the realm of soul into the physical!

Taking this as an example, we may say: Moral ideals come to expression in an enhancement of warmth in the warmth-organism. Not only is man warmed in soul through what he experiences in the way of moral ideals, but he becomes organically warmer as well — though this is not so easy to prove with physical instruments. Moral ideals, then, have a stimulating, invigorating effect upon the warmth-organism.

You must think of this as a real and concrete happening: enthusiasm for a moral ideal — stimulation of the warmth-organism. There is more vigorous activity in the warmth-organism when the soul is fired by a moral ideal. Neither does this remain without effect upon the rest of one's constitution. As well as the warmth-organism he also has the air-organism. He inhales and exhales the air; but during the inbreathing and outbreathing process the air is within him. It is of course inwardly in movement, in fluctuation, but equally with the warmth-organism it is an actual air-organism in man. Warmth, quickened by a moral ideal, works in turn upon the air-organism, because warmth pervades the whole human organism, pervades every part of it. The effect upon the air-organism is not that of warming only, for when the warmth, stimulated by the warmth-organism, works upon the air-organism, it imparts to it something that I can only call a source of light. Sources of light, as it were, are imparted to the air-organism, so that moral ideals which have a stimulating effect upon the warmth-organism produce sources of light in the air-organism. To external perception and for ordinary consciousness these sources of light are not in themselves luminous, but they manifest in man's astral body. To begin with, they are curbed — if I may use this expression — through the air that is within man. They are, so to speak, still dark light, in the sense that the seed of a plant is not yet the developed plant. Nevertheless man has a source of light within him through the fact that he can be fired with enthusiasm for moral ideals, for moral impulses.

We also have within us the fluid organism. Warmth, stimulated in the warmth organism by moral ideals, produces in the air-organism what may be called a source of light which remains, to begin with, curbed and hidden. Within the fluid organism — because everything in the human constitution interpenetrates — a process takes place which I said yesterday actually underlies the outer tone conveyed in the air. I said that the air is only the body of the tone, and anyone who regards the essential reality of tone as a matter of vibrations of the air, speaks of tones just as he would speak of a man as having nothing except the outwardly visible physical body. The air with its vibrating waves is nothing but the outer body of the tone. In the human being this tone, this spiritual tone, is not produced in the air-organism through the moral ideal, but in the fluid organism. The sources of tone, therefore, arise in the fluid organism.

We regard the solid organism as the densest of all, as the one that supports and bears all the others. Within it, too, something is produced as in the case of the other organisms. In the solid organism there is produced what we call a seed of life — but it is an etheric, not a physical seed of life such as issues from the female organism at a birth. This etheric seed which lies in the deepest levels of subconsciousness is actually the primal source of tone and, in a certain sense, even the source of light. This is entirely hidden from ordinary consciousness, but it is there within the human being.

Think of all the experiences in your life that came from aspiration for moral ideas — be it that they attracted you merely as ideas, or that you saw them coming to expression in others, or that you felt inwardly satisfied by having put such impulses into practice, by letting your deeds be fired by moral ideals ... all this goes down into the air-organism as a source of light, into the fluid organism as a source of tone, into the solid organism as a source of life.

These processes are withdrawn from the field of man's consciousness but they operate within him nevertheless. They become free when he lays aside his physical body at death. What is thus produced in us through moral ideals, or through the loftiest and purest ideas, does not bear immediate fruit. For during the life between birth and death, moral ideas as such become fruitful only in so far as we remain in the life of ideas, and in so far as we feel a certain satisfaction in moral deeds performed. But this is merely a matter of remembrance, and has nothing to do with what actually penetrates down into the different organisms as the result of enthusiasm for moral ideals.

So we see that our whole constitution, beginning with the warmth-organism, is, in very fact, permeated by moral ideals. And when at death the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego emerge from the physical body, these higher members of our human nature are filled with all the impressions we have had. Our Ego was living in the warmth-organism when it was quickened by moral ideas. We were living in our air-organism, into which were implanted sources of light which now, after death, go forth into the cosmos together with us. In our fluid organism, tone was kindled which now becomes part of the Music of the Spheres, resounding from us into the cosmos. And we bring life with us when we pass out into the cosmos through the portal of death.

You will now begin to have an inkling of what the life that pervades the universe really is. Where are the sources of life? They lie in that which quickens those moral ideals which fire man with enthusiasm. We come to the point of saying to ourselves that if today we allow ourselves to be inspired by moral ideals, these will carry forth life, tone and light into the universe and will become world-creative. We carry out into the universe world-creative power, and the source of this power is the moral element.

So when we study the whole man we find a bridge between moral ideals and what works as life-giving force in the physical world, even in the chemical sense. For tone works in the chemical sense by assembling substances and dispersing them again. Light in the world has its source in the moral stimuli, in the warmth-organisms of men. Thus we look into the future — new worlds take shape. And as in the case of the plant we must go back to the seed, so in the case of these future worlds that will come into being, we must go back to the seeds which lie in us as moral ideals.

And now think of theoretical ideas in contrast to moral ideals. In the case of theoretical ideas everything is different, no matter how significant these ideas may be, for theoretical ideas produce the very opposite effect to that of stimulus. They cool down the warmth-organism — that is the difference.

Moral ideas, or ideas of a moral-religious character, which fire us with enthusiasm and become impulses for deeds, work as world-creative powers. Theoretical ideas and speculation's have a cooling, subduing effect upon the warmth-organism. Because this is so, they also have a paralyzing effect upon the air-organism and upon the source of light within it; they have a deadening effect upon tone, and an extinguishing effect upon life. In our theoretical ideas the creations of the pre-existing world come to their end. When we formulate theoretical ideas a universe dies in them. Thus do we bear within us the death of a universe and the dawn of a universe.

Here we come to the point where he who is initiated into the secrets of the universe cannot speak, as so many speak today, of the conservation of energy or the conservation of matter. [e.Ed: The law propounded by Julius Robert Mayer (1814-1878)]. It is simply not true that matter is conserved forever. Matter dies to the point of nullity, to a zero-point. In our own organism, energy dies to the point of nullity through the fact that we formulate theoretical thoughts. But if we did not do so, if the universe did not continually die in us, we should not be man in the true sense. Because the universe dies in us, we are endowed with self-consciousness and are able to think about the universe. But these thoughts are the corpse of the universe. We become conscious of the universe as a corpse only, and it is this that makes us Man.

A past world dies within us, down to its very matter and energy. It is only because a new universe at once begins to dawn that we do not notice this dying of matter and its immediate rebirth. Through man's theoretical thinking, matter — substantiality — is brought to its end; through his moral thinking, matter and cosmic energy are imbued with new life. Thus what goes on inside the boundary of the human skin is connected with the dying and birth of worlds. This is how the moral order and the natural order are connected. The natural world dies away in man; in the realm of the moral a new natural world comes to birth.

Moral Ideals:

• stimulate the warmth-organism.
• produce in the air organism — sources of Light.
• produce in the fluid organism — sources of Tone.
• produce in the solid organism — seeds of Life. (etheric)

Theoretical thoughts:

• cool down the warmth-organism.
• paralyze the sources of Light.
• deaden the sources of Tone.
• extinguish Life.

Because of unwillingness to consider these things, the ideas of the imperishability of matter and energy were invented. If energy were imperishable and matter were imperishable there would be no moral world-order. But today it is desired to keep this truth concealed and modern thought has every reason to do so, because otherwise it would have to eliminate the moral world-order — which in actual fact it does by speaking of the law of the conservation of matter and energy. If matter is conserved, or energy is conserved, the moral world order is nothing but an illusion, a mirage. We can understand the course of the world's development only if we grasp how out of this 'illusory' moral world-order — for so it is when it is grasped in thoughts — new worlds come into being.