The Significance of Spiritual Research for Moral Action

Here Steiner counters the notion that esoteric inner development is outside the realm of morality. Steiner says here: "People continually embrace illusions. they fancy themselves separate by virtue of what is enclosed within their skins.... At the moment in which man realizes that he is embedded within the total organism of earth and has no business being a festering boil on the earth's body—at that moment there exists an objective basis for morality." In this lecture, Steiner makes the case and encourages us to become moral for the right reasons and through the proper process—not because we feel the need to be "good" persons or to avoid "bad" karma. 1 lecture, Bielefeld, March 6, 1911 (GA 127)