78. Sex
A large part of the people on earth allow themselves to be weighed down heavily by thoughts about the intercourse between the two sexes, the male and the female. The only exceptions are the frivolous, who do not allow themselves to be oppressed by anything. All the others, however diverse they may be, openly or quietly withdraw into themselves to seek some solution. Fortunately, there are many people who long for the right guidance. Whether they would then follow it remains to be seen. The fact is, however, that they are very much preoccupied with it and to a large extent let themselves be oppressed by the consciousness that they are facing this question ignorantly.
They tried to solve or anchor it in questions of marriage, but did not come any closer to a satisfactory basic idea, since here too, as everywhere, the main thing is for the human being to know what he is dealing with! Otherwise he can never come to terms with it. He is left with restlessness.
At the same time, many very often confuse the correct term for this word “sex” from the outset. It is taken in a general way, whereas the real meaning of it lies much deeper.
If we want to have a correct picture of it, we must not be so one-sided as to force it into regulations which can only serve a purely earthly, social order and which are often completely contrary to the Laws in Creation. With such serious matters, it is necessary to delve into Creation in order to grasp the basic idea.
We call the term female and male two different sexes. The word sex, however, is misleading for the majority of people from the very beginning, because in some people’s minds the connection with procreation arises involuntarily. And this is wrong. The separation of male and female in this sense has something to do in the great idea of Creation only with the outermost, densest gross matter. It has nothing to do with the physical happening.
What is a sex? The spirit germ is sexless when it leaves the Spiritual Realm. There is also no division as is often assumed. Splittings are special exceptions to which I will discuss at the end of this discussion. Basically, a spirit germ always remains complete in itself. When the spirit germ becomes conscious during its wandering through Subsequent Creation, that is, the automatic reproduction of the actual Creation, it assumes, as I have already said several times, depending on the degree of its becoming conscious, the human forms known to us, which are reproductions of the images of God, of the Primordial Created Ones.
The decisive factor here is the type of activity of a spirit germ. That is, in which direction such a spirit germ, while becoming conscious, strives predominantly to develop the faculties resting in it, whether in a positive, powerfully driving way, or in a negative, quietly maintaining way. Wherever its main desire drives it.
It can do either according to its origin, because a spirit germ carries all abilities within itself, one like the other, intact. It is perfectly complete in itself. It only depends on what it develops from them. And in the activity that now takes place through it, even if this activity lies in the beginning only in strong desires, which increases to urge, the form shapes itself. The positive shapes the male form, the negative the female form. Here already the masculine and feminine show themselves outwardly recognizable by their form. Both are in their form the specific expression of the kind of activity they choose or desire.
Feminine and masculine therefore have nothing to do with the usual concept of a sex, but merely indicate the kind of activity in Creation. It is only in the gross materiality so familiar to human beings that the reproductive organs we understand by male and female shape themselves in form. Only the gross material body, that is, the earthly body, needs these organs for its reproduction.
The kind of activity in Creation thus forms the shape of the actual body, the male or the female, of which the gross material earthly body is in turn only a roughly fashioned image.
Thus, the sex act is also placed on the level where it belongs, that is, on the lowest level that exists in Creation, on the purely physical, which lies far away from the spiritual.
So much the sadder is it when a human spirit bends under the yoke of this activity, which belongs purely to the outermost shell, in such a way that it becomes a slave to it! And this has unfortunately become so common today that it gives a picture which shows how the inestimable and lofty spiritual can voluntarily allow itself to be trampled and held down under the cover of the coarsest materiality.
It goes without saying that such unnatural events must have an evil outcome. It is contrary to nature because the spiritual is by nature the highest in all Creation, and there can only be harmony in it as long as the spiritual reigns supreme, while everything else remains below it, even in the connection with the coarse earthly matter.
I need not point out here what a sad role is played by a person who bends his spirit under the rule of the coarsest material cover. A covering that only gains its sensitivity through the spirit and must lose it again when he takes it off, a tool in the hand of the spirit that certainly needs care to keep it usable, but can always remain only a controlled tool; for there is no communism in the order of Creation! Where this threatens to creep in, collapse comes as an unconditional consequence, for such a part must be rejected as pathological, so that disharmony does not find further entrance. With such a breakdown, the reciprocal action in Creation repairs the damaged areas.
The spiritual, essential, and ethereal form of the body changes as soon as a spirit germ changes its activity. If it changes from a negative to a positive form, the female form must change into a male form and vice versa, for the predominant form in activity shapes the form. For change, however, the shell of earthly gross matter cannot follow so quickly. It is not so capable of change as it is only meant for a very short time. Here a change becomes apparent in the case of reincarnations, of which there are many in most cases.
Thus it happens that a human spirit very often passes through its earthly life alternately in male and female bodies, according to its changing inner attitude. And this is necessary so that all the faculties of a spirit germ gradually come to development.
I have already said what is dominant in the willed activity is decisive for the emergence of the form, since a spirit germ will not necessarily operate entirely positively and also not necessarily entirely negatively.
The abilities that are not activated then remain dormant, but can be awakened at any time.
If, however, it does happen that a spirit germ develops all the positive parts, this does have such a strong effect on the negative, undeveloped faculties that they can be forced out, and thus also thrown off, whereby a splitting takes place. The different parts thus flung off are then forced to awaken for themselves, and will naturally assume the opposite form, that is, the female form, in their separateness. These are then split germs which must find each other again in order to enter as a complete whole. However, such a process is generally not to be assumed.
People’s view that there is a complementary soul to every human being is correct in itself, but not in the sense of a preceding split. The twin soul is something quite different. I have already emphasized this in my lecture “Marriage”. A complementary soul is merely one that matches another soul. That is to say, a soul which has just developed the abilities that the other soul has allowed to lie dormant within itself. This then results in a full complement, a joint working of all the faculties of the spirit, all positive and all negative. Such complementations, however, do not occur only once, but many times, so that a human being is not dependent on only one particular other human being when he wants to complement. He can meet many of them in his existence on earth as soon as he keeps his intuitive faculty pure and alert.
The conditions of life for happiness are therefore not at all as difficult to fulfil as they appear at first glance to the only half-knowing. Happiness is much easier to obtain than many think. Mankind must first know the Laws that lie in Creation. If it lives according to them, it must become happy! Today, however, it is still very far from this, and therefore, for the time being, those who come closer to the Truth in Creation will have to feel mostly lonely, which, however, does not make them unhappy at all, but carries a great peace in itself.
