Toward Universal Human Love 

By Margarete van den Brink

Translated by Philip Mees

The saying Love is as old as mankind expresses a truth

Love as a warm, connecting force among human beings came into existence when in the infinitely distant past the first human being came to the earth. The first human being came to the earth when the I, as an individualizing force, connected itself with the corporeality of the becoming human being.

To understand this, we have to know that the developing human body in that primeval time still had a primitive, animal-like form. High creative angel beings in the service of the Almighty, however, worked in such a way into this corporeality that it was able to take an I into itself. This I was needed because only in that way human beings would be able to become autonomous and self-conscious individuals who could bring the divine spirit that lived in them—and thus also wisdom and love—to expression in its highest form.

The I connects spirit and body, heaven and earth

In esoteric tradition the I is described as an active, creative spiritual power which, on the one hand, has its roots in the human body, specifically in the blood, and thus permeates the entire organism. On the other hand, it is open to the divine world and becomes the bearer of the spiritual self. In this way the I connects the earthly, physical part of human beings with their heavenly part, their spirit. Through the I human beings become human and distinguish themselves from the animals. Although the animal has, just like human beings, a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body, it does not have an I. In the course of evolution its corporeality came to a stop in a certain form and hardened. Thus the different animal species developed. Their corporeality, however, was not able nor suited to incorporate an I.

Because on the one hand, the human I is founded in our corporeality and, on the other hand, takes the working of the spirit into itself, the human being can walk erect, think, and speak, as well as develop to ever higher levels of consciousness. Because they have no I, animals cannot do that.

Gift of the Elohim or Spirits of Form

Our I is also a gift of the divine world to human beings. High creative hierarchical beings who are called “Spirits of Form” or “Elohim,” donated I-substance from themselves in a gesture of offering and let it trickle as I-power into human bodies.

This process is described in the book Genesis in the Bible as follows:

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)

Esoteric tradition says that this grand event in the evolution of humanity did not take place just like that, on one day, as some people think. In reality this trickling in of the I into human corporeality was a very long process that took many hundreds of thousands of years.

Esoteric tradition points out that the name “the Lord God” does not indicate God the Father, part of the Trinity. But it refers to one of the high divine beings from the ranks of the Spirits of Form that in the Jewish Torah and also in the Old Testament is known under the name of Yahweh or Jehovah.

As a result of the ever-strengthening connection of the I and the divine spirit working into it with the corporeality, great changes were taking place in the becoming human beings. In that primeval time, they gradually came out of the watery element to live more and more in the airy element on earth. Thus the lungs developed. The air that these primeval human beings were therefore able to breathe brought it about that red, warm blood developed in the body. In this blood the I could express itself better all the time.

But something else also happened. With the I, love also streamed into human beings. Before that time, love also existed on earth but it worked from the outside in. It came from the Spirits of Form or Elohim. These high spiritual beings, who worked in the service of the Logos or the Word, performed their creative development work on the human being from the sun. With the light of the sun, they radiated love to the becoming creation. Thus from that primeval time, divine love streamed and worked into the earth in the rays of the sun.

What happened now when the human I connected itself with the corporeality? With the trickling in of the I, divine love also streamed into the I of the becoming human beings.

The result was that a kind of “primal love” was born in human beings. For this “primal love” they did not need to do anything. It was there and did its work. Thus, in that infinitely far past a connection grew between the blood in which the I expressed itself and love. That combination had a remarkable effect.

Love and blood relationship

What was the result? Because love in that phase of evolution was bound to the blood and the I, it was still limited to those who were related to each other through the blood or in other ways. In other words, only those people felt connected with each other and loved each other who had the same blood. Later one only married and had children within one's own family circle. This marriage based on blood relationships existed for long, long times in the history of humanity. Even in our days we can find remainders of it, for example, there where marriages between nephews and nieces are still common.

Initially these unions were restricted to the immediate family, but later they expanded to the people's own tribe or folk. But it remained characteristic that one only loved and married a person who belonged to one's own tribe, people or race. All others were considered strangers from which, certainly in marriage matters, you had to keep your distance. This too we can still observe in our time.

At that time, when love through the blood relationship still reigned supreme, and the I was unfolding more and more in the organism via the blood, human beings did not yet experience themselves as individuals, as autonomous beings. They still felt themselves entirely as parts of the greater whole, the family, tribe, folk. In other words, they experienced their own identity in their connection with a related group and thus, in what is called a common I or group I. Rudolf Steiner compared the relationship of an individual person to his family at that time with the way one finger relates to the hand of which it is part. People therefore did not experience the I as something personal, standing on its own two feet as we do today, but as something that forms part of a greater, common whole.

Cosmos of love

The purpose of human development on earth is that the earth become a cosmos of love. The divine guidance of humanity visualizes that, just as the earth today in every detail expresses wisdom in all its creative forms and workings, in the future everything will radiate love—love generated by human beings.

For this task to come to fulfillment, however, love among human beings must not remain limited to one's own blood relationships, but reach out to all human beings on earth. For then only can a brotherly and sisterly bond grow across the earth that encompasses all human beings and unites them with each other. Love through the blood relationship was not, and is not able to do this. As love that is bound to the blood and the physical body, it was and is too limited in its nature. And yet, it has its merits. You might say that it forms a preparation for the higher love that is to follow later.

For to attain a love that encompasses all of humanity a different kind of love is needed, a love that is free. This means a love that is not bound to physical corporeality and one's own blood, but can be given in a free manner by one person to another, no matter who. Then only true, conscious love—in other words, spiritual love—becomes possible, universal human love.

Freeing ourselves from the bonds of blood

To become able to make that step, in the course of time human beings had to free themselves more and more from the bonds of blood and blood relationships, and build up a personality of their own with their own opinions and self-consciousness. In other words, they had to become individuals that could find their support entirely in themselves. After all, only persons who stand freely and self-consciously in themselves, and freely face another person, can give love to that other person.

To make this possible, the high divine beings who lead human evolution worked in us in such a way that love through the blood relationship gradually diminished. They keep doing that in our time. Their continuing work will have the result that this form of love will in due course completely disappear. Only in this way can the free I develop itself. How can they do that?

With the help of laws, traditions, and customs that gradually lead people not to marry within their own blood or family groups anymore—a change that has had enormous consequences. For because “foreign” blood mixes with other “foreign” blood, something new develops in the offspring, namely the intellect, the capacity to think for themselves. And in its turn, this capacity to think for themselves and form their own opinions leads to the development of their own feeling of I, self-consciousness. And that enables people to free themselves more and more from their environment and old bonds of family.

This is an esoteric law.

In our time we also see the results of this work of high spiritual beings everywhere around us. Our grandparents and great grandparents still felt deeply connected to the members of their families. In their time they associated practically exclusively with family members. They did not have, or rarely had, circles of friends and acquaintances such as we now have. Today people feel much less connected with their family. Aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews don't mean as much as they used to. And this process has not yet ended. It is ever continuing. In the future, it will even happen that love between mother and child which—largely based on the blood relationship—is still self-evident today, will cease to exist.

Spiritual love

If in our time and in the future a loving bond is to grow among human beings, it will require ever more activity on our part. We will have to make a real effort for it. You have to want to make contact and be interested in the other, in how he or she is different from yourself. You have to want to understand the other, so that out of insight and respect for the uniqueness of the other you learn to relate to him or her. If you do that, you give this other human being love that is born from insight, wisdom. Conscious love therefore. Love that does not proceed from the I that is bound to the blood, but from the spiritual self that lives in the I. That generates love that is permeated with insight and wisdom, spiritual love, real love.

It is also interesting to know that “automatic” love and feelings of connectedness among blood relationships are also declining because the divine beings who guided human beings from primeval times by means of the blood and kept them together in groups, are gradually withdrawing from those connections. As a result, these group formations are increasingly dissolving. The old group spirits do this so that human beings can make a new, next step in evolution. Their withdrawal enables other divine beings to work in and with human beings in a different, more free manner.

Increasing egoism

Because of these changes, however, there are still other serious things happening, developments that initially create problems. One consequence of the withdrawal of the guiding divine forces is that the I that is bound to the body, the normal, everyday personal I, the ego, is becoming ever more egoistic and self-seeking, yes may even become violent and aggressive. This is because by all these changes, negative spiritual beings who oppose human development get the opportunity to expand their effects in the personal I and the group I through the blood, and freely indulge their impulses there. This is another development of which we can witness the consequences today.

Not only are we human beings more and more self-oriented and do we increasingly pursue our self-interest in an egoistic way, group egoism is also increasing, because the group souls of “old,” blood based groups are becoming decadent as a result of the withdrawal of the “old” spiritual beings. As a result, they fall into decline and are influenced and taken over by negative forces. This leads to enmity and fights for power with anyone who does not belong to their own group. Today we see this in groups in which only their own ethnicity, their own religious views, skin color, etc. counts, and other groups are considered inferior and therefore have to be fought or even eradicated.

It is evident that we humans—if there were no other forces working in us—would because of such impulses eventually perish in a war of all against all. Self interest, egoism, and aggression, which would happen as side effects of this new step in evolution, would become so strong and get such power over us that we would become unable to connect with each other, let alone reach and understand each other. Instead there would be nothing but hatred, aversion, intolerance, conflict and destruction. Living together on earth would therefore become impossible and eventually cease to exist. That would mean the end of our human evolution.

Again a sacrifice

The transition from the old, blood-bound love and egoistic self-love to universal human love—spirit-based love—is clearly a step of gigantic proportions, so great that it asked for another sacrifice and, with it, a gift from the divine world. Just as earlier in the history of human becoming, a deed was asked of a divine being that would make it possible for human beings to pursue their development. Because this step was so incredibly big, this deed of sacrifice had to come from a very lofty spiritual being. For what was at stake? The purpose was to reconnect humanity, which would otherwise have perished due to egoism, hatred, and violence, with the world of the spirit, with God, by a deed of selfless love, and thus save them from downfall.

The only being who possessed this capacity was Christ, God's Son, the high Sun Spirit who is divine love itself. With this high goal he descended to the earth and connected himself with Jesus of Nazareth. In the three years that He lived on earth he took full possession of Jesus' body. He purified the body and soul of Jesus, and permeated these with his divine power to their very core, into the bone marrow where the red blood is created, and thus transformed these into his divine substance.

It is moving to read in Rudolf Steiner's book The Fifth Gospel (GA 148) the description of how Jesus—who then already more and more becomes the Christ—at a certain moment realizes to what extent humanity has on its way to autonomy become entangled in the world of matter and the powers of evil. It becomes clear to him that they no longer have the strength to free themselves from this. Deeply moved by their fate and filled with love for human beings, Jesus Christ sees that only he, as God become human, is able to rescue them from this condition and thus enable them to progress.

He then decides to perform a deed to free human beings and bestow on them his divine love. For him this meant going through death on the cross and giving himself, meaning his divine forces, to humanity. In this way the separation from the divine world and the threatening demise on earth would be lifted, and human beings would again be connected with the world of the Father God.

Thus it happened, now some 2000 years ago, that Jesus Christ was captured, condemned, and crucified on Golgotha. The crucifixion took place on Friday before the Jewish Passover festival, at three o'clock in the afternoon.

In the hours that passed until his death his sacred, divine blood flowed from his crucified body and penetrated into the earth. It is deeply impressive to know that with this divine blood that flowed onto the earth, Christ spiritually drove out what worked too strongly in human beings as egoism in their I. That was not only their egoity, their sense of I, but the egoism that separates people from each other and would have become ever stronger if his sacrifice would not have taken place.

With this redeeming sacrificial deed, and together with the blood, his freely bestowed divine love streamed—again in a spiritual manner—into the hearts of human beings. With the love that thus emanated from him, Christ gave humanity the potential to overcome their egoism, their excessive self-love, and the aversion and hatred of other people in themselves. And they could learn to give love out of insight into the other and his or her possibilities and limitations—love that does not seek itself, but gives itself to everyone who needs it, irrespective of background and origin. Love therefore that is selfless and free of the bonds of blood and one's own group, and thus becomes spiritual soul love that one day will encompass and unite all human beings while preserving their individuality.

The I AM

But there was more. With his deed on Golgotha Christ brought even more to human beings, namely that which in esoteric Christianity is called “consciousness of the I AM.” The I AM is the consciousness that in every human being on earth a drop of the divine substance of Christ is living. The I AM of Christ—which is connected with his sacred blood—makes us humans conscious of the fact that besides, or rather, in our regular I this divine I is living and wants to unfold. For only in that way will we be able to fulfill the task that is connected with our humanity, namely to make a contribution so that besides wisdom love becomes a new carrying force on the earth.

When we listen inwardly we hear that in this connection Christ speaks to us as it were: “The ‘I AM' I have bestowed on you and that lives in you ever since my death and resurrection on Golgotha, is part of the divine power that has created everything on earth and in the cosmos, and that permeates and carries this and connects everything together. Become conscious in yourself that it is your task to unfold this divine element you have received—the creative power of wisdom as well as love—in yourself. The more you do this, the more you will feel connected with me and through me with the Father. For the Father and I are one.”

By giving himself the high Sun Spirit, Christ, connected himself down to the deepest depths with us human beings and our destiny on earth. This means not just with a few chosen ones or certain groups, but with all human beings on earth, irrespective of background, race, or religion.

Through Christ we can know ourselves rooted in our real, true I, in all eternity. Only out of this I will we be able to overcome what is scattered by the “old,” body-bound blood. For his I AM makes it possible that in the future, through the force and love of Christ-in-us, we humans will be able to unite with each other in feelings of sister- and brotherhood all across the earth.

The more profoundly we take these insights meditatively into ourselves and inwardly truly feel and experience them, the more they will become reality on earth.

That too is an esoteric law.

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Source: “True Knowledge of the Christ” by Rudolf Steiner, GA 100.