Learn to Think! and the Quest for Freedom

The human being is not only constantly developing in outer appearance, but also in his inner being. This crisis offers a special opportunity to look at this developing inner self. Questions about what is good or right, what is truth, what is truthfulness, what is the value of human beings and what is morality are questions that are particularly acute among people today. One of the questions is that of freedom and unfreedom.Watch video on YouTube

One of the remarkable discoveries in my life has been that mankind is evolving. Now you can say: Yes, you should have learned that at school and so on, you know the theory of evolution, don't you? But I don't mean that, I mean that there is not only an external development going on, but that humanity is also developing within. And so you can't say at all that, what we call thinking today, because we have it the way we have it, that that was the same thinking let's say in Greek times. That was really a great discovery for me, to realize that the development of humanity is going on, and that therefore you should actually imagine that when you look at a present-day human being, you look at yourself as you live inner life, that that is so much different from the inner life of a Greek, for example, that you can't imagine at all what that was like. And the interesting thing is, of course, that if you consult the great old masters in a book like the one I wrote, you will find the same words. You will find the word 'thinking', for example, and you will find the word 'desire', but you must keep in mind that although these principles of course continue in their own way until now, you can thus consult such masters, however that what they are talking about is quite different from what we are doing. And when you then get to know what phase of human development we are now involved in, what kind of development, then you have to say that it consists of becoming aware of the fact that you are there, at the inner level, so that you not only know that your body is there, but that you also know from within that you are there. You can, of course, hold whole psychological and also neurological treatises on that, but what matters to me is the direct sensation that you know you are there, and that you not only know you are there, but that you also have a whole range of ideas about how you would like to be, how you would not like to be, how you think other people should be and how you think they should not be and that you are therefore really engaged in a determination, a self-determination, with regard to how you think a human being should be. You're making your way to an awareness of answers to the questions: What is right, what is proper, what is wrong, what is truth? What is truthfulness, what is the value of the human being? What is morality, and so on and so forth. We are working on that, and I said earlier that I understand this crisis primarily as a part in that process. We have an opportunity to really look at our inner selves and become better and better acquainted with what you actually are and are capable of as a human being, what you can know and what you cannot know, what you can feel, whether you can exert a certain influence on this, whether you can educate your emotional life, whether you can school your morality, whether you can become an increasingly moral person. That really is our time and that is why our time is the time of psychologists. Because you may look to others for help in that. But my conviction is that you really have to seek the help within yourself. And that seems to me the challenge in these times. The word crisis has to do with the meaning: judgment. It's the same word. So we are exposed to judgment but that judgment in our time should come less and less from the outside, and more and more from within. Judging ourselves. And it's all not positive, of course, what we're experiencing. I may give the impression of seeing things in a positive light, but of course I can see how painful and difficult the world situation is. It is a judgment. But we are at a point where we have to learn to transform that judgment, which is still coming from the outside, into a judgment that is coming from the inside. And that is the moment of turning from unfreedom to freedom. Because when you judge yourself and you direct your actions according to that self-formed judgment, then you will always have the feeling and the certainty that you are free. Even when you have an obligation to do something. Suppose you should have an obligation, then it is obvious to think that you are not free, because you don't want to have an obligation, that is really a characteristic of our time. But you have the possibility to examine the motives with your power of judgment in such a way that you could come to the conclusion that you also think you should you yourself. And when you yourself find that you must, then you no longer have any obligation, for then you are free. Then you have freed the compulsion from the obligation, from the pressure, because you yourself also think that you have to do that. I find that an extraordinarily liberating insight that really relates to our time. And that at the same time the opposite seems to be happening in this world, that we are being imposed from the outside what we should do, that is of course part of the whole process. Because if that wasn't there, then you wouldn't be stimulated to come to your own judgment. For example, I wouldn't want to come to a let's say established morality with respect to vaccinating or not vaccinating. That, of course, is imposed on us. We get a morality imposed from the outside that you are a good person if you get vaccinated and that you are not a good person if you don't get vaccinated. And that is substantiated, actually with statistical evidence. Now, of course, with statistics, that's already a rather nonsensical course of action, when you think about an individual. Because an individual doesn't follow statistics, only groups do, they follow statistics, and that's where statistics come from, but the individual, of course, has no relationship with statistics at all, because you could very well say that a vaccination gives 50% protection but that doesn't matter to the individual because he is protected or not. And he has no chance of being protected or not protected, that is not determined by statistics, that is determined by his whole constitution. You can see from this that the whole statistical foundation is actually already something that you shouldn't be able to base it on. But anyway, that's what's being done and so we're being imposed from the outside whether you're virtuous or not. And I would therefore like to call for neither one nor the other to be accepted. So don't say you have to be vaccinated because otherwise you're no good, but also don't say you shouldn't be vaccinated because otherwise you're no good. Because of course that's the other side that arises, that there are people with the same fanaticism who endorse not getting vaccinated and then actually do the same thing as the others, namely not understand that there are people who due to certain circumstances do need to get vaccinated. I hope you understand what I mean. I want to point out with all my might that you have to judge for yourself. So, you can't avoid making your own judgments about the totality of the situation and, based on that totality, ultimately drawing your conclusions. And when you have drawn those, and you know how you came to that and how strong you are in that, then you are free. Then even if you get vaccinated when you don't really want to, you can still do that in freedom. And when you feel you have to be vaccinated, then you can freely choose not to be vaccinated. So that would seem to me to be the solution for the future because it seems that we have been judged with a life sentence. In the beginning this was estimated to be a few months, then a year, once the vaccination was available it would all be resolved, now the view is 2022 I believe, but there are already other variants and combinations of different diseases, and it seems that this will not end for a long time and you'll really have to find a way to maintain freedom in this situation. You can see that sometimes in videos that come along on youtube. There are people who radiate with great strength that they are able to maintain complete freedom despite all the restrictions. And we should all really do that. We are living in the time of the development of self-judgment and it all seems very difficult, the external circumstances seem to force us to follow certain measures and when there is a lockdown and your store has to close then you cannot have the freedom to open it. But you can use your judgment to think through the whole thing and feel it through and then know why you are following that, that order.

We live in a time that asks a lot of us, and you often feel that all the values that are human, that they are being systematically undermined, step by step, and you could sit by and think: it's totally lost. I can't do that, and I can't do that because I sense in myself a resurrection force that is always there, which makes you know that you can also see everything differently. I have tried to show that in my novels - in fact in all novels - that for every person there is a possibility to see the negative in a different light, you cannot make the negative positive, but you can shine a different light on it. And that's what we really need to learn in our time anyway. So, when I say: all people will eventually become brothers, sisters, you could say: that is a utopian thought, that is a wishful thinking, it doesn't look like that at all. But it does look like it, and anyone who takes the trouble to follow world events with activity can also learn to experience the data that are there differently. I am making an attempt to express this in words and of course I feel the powerlessness in this, because of course what I actually want to say can never really be fully expressed. But I know that it is possible to shine a different light on the situation and that light also comes from outside in a certain sense, but it comes from outside in a way that is actually from within. 

In earth development we are not only dealing with governments, with global associations and institutions that do opinion forming, but we are also dealing with a spiritual presence in earth development. We humans are a very important link in this. And we can. We can turn to a light that places everything in a positive meaning. We know the look very well, that when a day is very dark and cloudy and rainy, that there can come a moment when suddenly the sun breaks through. Then in fact nothing has changed, in the whole composition of the details, only the light shines differently. That is what humans have within them as a possibility, and I will not cease, as long as I am able, to point this out.