Many new media outlets are offering a full range of views that report on specific events so that we can compare them to each other and choose what to believe. These sources are touting their integrity as superior to those who simply print one slanted viewpoint. What? How is this ok? How can we possibly discern which angle presents the truth?
Even scarier, we can’t tell who is real! We can watch a video of a performer singing a beautiful song, search for it, and find out the singer was AI generated – as was the band – and the song itself was AI generated. All produced without real people. What are we supposed to do?
The only thing we can do.
We take responsibility for ourselves. Each of us needs to strive for clarity by pursuing truths that were obscured for hundreds of years. We have looked at this together many times, but let’s talk about it again as we approach Halloween and All Saints Day; holidays that used to be powerful reminders of our spiritual selves but have become sentimentalized or just harmless fun.
We certainly shouldn’t preach morality to others; it doesn’t work even a little bit. Each one of us needs to find our own relationship to morality. We also don’t need to stop having fun or stop using technology or stop loving and trusting the people we know.
We do need to take seriously the karmic effects we have on ourselves and others by our thoughts and deeds. We may not be able to convince our leaders and our media to tell the truth, but we can demand this of ourselves. It may not seem like much, but it is powerfully effective in the world.
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
Human beings determine their future by their past, and because their innermost being is not confined to one incarnation but passes through many, the causes of what confronts them in a given life are to be sought in an earlier life.
We will now consider the chain of events that becomes comprehensible if we think of the consequences of human deeds, thoughts and feelings. It is often said in everyday life: Thoughts don’t cost anything!—meaning that we can think what we like and nobody in the external world will be affected. This is one important point where someone who has really grasped spiritual impulses is at variance with the materialistic thinker.
The materialist agrees that injury is caused if he throws a stone at somebody, but he thinks that a thought of hatred which he may harbor against a fellow human being does not hurt him. However, those who have real knowledge of the world know that far, far stronger effects proceed from a thought filled with hatred than can ever be caused by a stone. Everything we think and feel has its effects in the astral world, and the clairvoyant can follow with great precision the effect of a loving thought that goes out to someone, and the very different effect that is produced by a thought filled with hatred. When you send out a loving thought to someone, the clairvoyant perceives a form of light, shaped like a sort of flower-calyx, playing lovingly around that person’s etheric and astral bodies, thereby contributing something to his vitality and happiness. On the other hand, a thought of hatred bores its way into the etheric and astral bodies like a wounding arrow.
Very varied observations are to be made in this domain. There is a tremendous difference in the astral world if someone voices a thought that is true or one that is untrue. A thought is related to a specific thing and is true if it coincides with that thing. Every event that happens causes an effect in the higher worlds. If someone relates this event truly, an astral form rays out from the teller, unites with the form emanating from the event itself, and both are strengthened. These strengthened forms help to make our spiritual world richer and more full of content—which is necessary if humanity is to make progress.
But if the event is related untruthfully, in a way that does not coincide with the facts, then the thoughtform of the teller comes up against the thoughtform that has proceeded from the event; the two thoughtforms collide causing mutual destruction. These destructive ‘explosions’ caused by lies work in the way a tumor works in the body, destroying the organism. Thus, lies kill the astral forms that have arisen and must arise, and in this way, they obstruct or paralyze a part of evolution. Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity, and everyone who lies obstructs it. Therefore, there is this esoteric law: Seen with the eyes of spirit, a lie is a murder. Not only does it kill an astral form, but it also kills the self. Anyone who lies places obstacles along his own path. Such effects are to be observed everywhere in the spiritual world. The clairvoyant sees that everything a person thinks, feels and experiences has its effect in the spiritual world.
Excerpt from: Rosicrucian Wisdom: An Introduction, Lecture 6. The Law of Destiny, by Rudolf Steiner. May 30, 1907.
This sentence in the preceding paragraph: “Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity, and everyone who lies obstructs it,” should tell you everything you need to know about how important each of us is. People lie easily today. Haphazardly, intentionally, by omission, by accident, with malice, with kindness, for gain, for deception. Dr. Steiner indicates that the clairvoyant can see with precision the results of good thoughts and truth vs. the results of unkind thoughts and lies. With such vision, surely we would find our way to a remedy for ourselves.
The strange world we live in now of meanness and untruthfulness derives from each of us. We are either destroying or healing – no middle ground here. So share your beautiful selves with each other and help create the world we want.