Can You Degrade Spiritually While Thinking You Are Growing?

In this conversation with Olya, I look at what spiritual degradation is and whether it is even possible to tell if a person is developing or degrading. Why can't development and degradation be measured by material yardsticks — money, grades, skills and recognition? Why, in any conversation, does the way we treat people win out in the end? And why might something that looks like degradation from the outside turn out to be the law of cause and effect — or simply life?

We talk about whether a modern person can be free of negative impulses, why people evolve anyway, why you don't only work off karma but also create it, why material success does not equal spiritual development, whether the material is a reflection or a projection of the spiritual, and why people judge others over the short term. This conversation is about how to see your path more broadly and to tell what is real from a social model of behavior.

What spiritual degradation is

We often say: this person is developing, while that one, on the contrary, is degrading. I was asked a question: if there is such a thing as personal degradation, does spiritual degradation exist? How does it happen, and how can you tell that a person really is degrading spiritually? But on what basis do we determine this at all? And are we able to truly see what is happening to that person? That is what I suggest we look at today. What do you understand by personal degradation?

– When a person doesn't develop on the material level at all: doesn't develop their skills, their abilities, if they have any, doesn't study anything practical. And if we move toward psychology — when they treat other people badly, when they somehow feed and strengthen their ego through certain actions. That, for me, is what personal degradation is.

– If a person treats people badly, you consider that degradation. But what if they used to treat people badly at minus ten thousand and now treat them badly at minus nine thousand — is that degradation or development? They still treat people badly. They used to kill a hundred people at a time, and now they kill five.

– With people, that's a difficult question. If a person treats others badly — whether it's minus ten thousand or minus nine — it's degradation either way. But if they used to treat people badly and started treating them well, that's evolution.

– And what if they then started treating people badly again?

– That's just how they live.

Why the way you treat people always wins

– Look, something very interesting comes out of this. You began by describing what degradation is in the material world, and you said it's easy to describe. First you talked about things related to skills, to a person's achievements, to their material results. Then, from the point of view of psychology, you looked at how a person treats people. But whatever questions I ask you, at some point the way a person treats people will always win out.

It's like the time I was sitting with my nephew and my daughters and asked my daughter how she feels at school. She said, “Six out of ten.” I went on asking: “What grade do you have in physics?” She says, “A.” “And in math?” “A.” “And in English?” “A.”

I say, “If you have top grades, why do you feel like a six out of ten?” She says, “Because that's how everyone studies.” I ask, “And if someone studies really badly, where are they?” She says, “At two points.” And I say, “What if this person studies badly but treats everyone well and loves every single person?”

And that's where it took off. If a person loves other people but looks bad, smells bad and studies badly, then essentially anyone gradually says, “Well, if he treats everyone well, then of course he's a good person.” And they start raising his score. Not everyone, of course: there is a certain cohort of people who will say this is complete nonsense and that what matters most is the cash, or the grades at school.

But fundamentally, whatever you say next, something awakens in a person. Someone who treats people out of kindness and love, sincerely helps everyone — not for their own sake, but for the sake of others — and does it simply because that's how they feel, immediately gets a higher score.

It turns out that in a person's life there is a huge number of different events that a modern person, with their way of thinking and their brain, fundamentally cannot measure against one another.

A person fundamentally lacks spiritual vision, spiritual perception. They are not able to determine what is truly significant, what is degradation and what is development.

Money and negative impulses: development or degradation

Now let's move on to how to look at this in the spiritual world. If a person earns money in the material world — is that development or degradation? Imagine they earn a lot of money. Is that development or degradation? From the point of view of the material world, of course it's development. But the fundamental question is different: how do you measure it?

In my example, where first ten people were killed and then nine, you didn't dare say the person was developing — you simply didn't dare. But if I had said that a person used to earn ten rubles and started earning twenty, you would have said: of course he's developing. But with people, with killing people — no: to develop, you must not kill people at all. Or not think badly at all.

And what does it mean not to think badly? Is a modern person capable of being outside the action of certain forces that cause a negative influence, a negative opinion of other people? If we look at the spiritual world, at the true causes of things like a negative attitude toward other people, we will see that there can be no situation in which a person has been totally, one hundred percent freed of it. In theory, of course, it's achievable, but fundamentally a modern person does not live in those energies. In any case, they have various impulses of a negative attitude toward other people.

Do you have impulses of a negative attitude toward other people? Of course you do. And so do I. It's present, it lives. Of course it has a degree of influence, of impact, but that degree cannot be studied materially or assessed materially. So, since this is in you, are you in degradation all the time?

A person evolves anyway

Look, fundamentally a person evolves and develops. Fundamentally. This development really can happen through very different circumstances and paths, and a person can live through negative aspects of their development. But look even at the universal development of humanity: it descended into its current state — and, in essence, in terms of perceiving the spiritual world, knowledge and the order of the world, it did degrade.

But this is an evolutionary process of development. That is exactly how it went. Can we say that since it went this way, it was meant to happen? That it is the natural path for a person to acquire a certain system of energy and knowledge, a certain state — in order to find sunlight within themselves anew, to see and truly come to know what human life is, including, of course, coming to know the entire spiritual foundation of human life? Then a person, it seems, is developing and moving — they are definitely evolving.

Karma — the law of cause and effect

The laws of cause and effect, by the way, came about because of the appearance of dark energies, not light ones. Once again: the law of cause, effect and karma is a process that arose as a consequence of the arrival of dark forces that wanted to capture the human being. Because if karma had not appeared, humanity would actually have degraded completely. It would have degraded in any case.

Olya, take cause and effect away from yourself — and you will degrade completely, you won't be able to recover. Your ability to recover exists only because you live all the time in a system of lessons — but you don't want to live in it.

There are paradoxical things in this system of lessons. Someone might say that the stronger the lesson, the more a person develops. But at the same time, that isn't so. A strong lesson can lead to sadder consequences: a person may be unable to restore cause and effect and become far more subject to certain energies that will capture them forever.

Already there are people on planet Earth who have no “I.” This is a very complicated story. And indeed, various descriptions indicate that at some point a person will stop incarnating and, in essence, stop developing. Because right now incarnation is necessary for evolutionary development. And death, again, came as a consequence of the appearance of dark forces. Had this not happened, the human being could not have developed normally in an evolutionary way — they would only have degraded.

And don't think that people's spiritual beings are some awakened, incredibly powerful spiritual element of an angelic nature. Not at all. So the question you're asking has to be studied meditatively; you have to immerse yourself in it very deeply. And, of course, set aside your own material, social reasoning, which leads to false conclusions. Finding patterns here and drawing conclusions is really very hard.

After all, we live in a social world. And when you live in a social world, you will in any case be a hostage of the laws of karma — you could call it that. Because in any case there will be impulses at work in you that generate new karma.

And I want to tell you that in most cases serious things happen completely outside a person's consciousness: they have no idea at all what is happening or where they really are.

Material success and the true path

So when we talk about the spiritual world, it is very important to understand: a person's development in the material world is not necessarily the reason a spiritual being will develop. In the material world you can gain some prosperity, strengthen your material activity — the activity you devoted yourself to from the very beginning. Be famous, socially correct, socially stable, have power, a good job, a profession, strive to develop, develop your skills.

From the very beginning you said exactly what you really think: strive to develop skills. You will strive toward that — and not deal at all with the tasks that concern your true path. Or, even worse, not notice them, not see them, not understand them, not pay attention to them — and not pay attention to the most important thing.

How many hours a day do you watch your words

After all, you've seen various assignments and take part in them: treat other people well, watch your words, your speech, watch your thoughts, how attentively you listen to another person.

How many hours a day do you give this your attention? And how much attention a day do you devote to judging someone, gossiping about someone or discussing someone — or to developing materially, earning money?

Paradoxically, these days everything is measured by time spent on something, by experience. How much real experience is there in this? How much does a person actually do it? What are they really learning? In how many universities, schools, conversations at home is this present? Let's set aside conversations at home and leave schools and universities.

There is information that it's very important for a person to treat other people properly. People are taught to listen to others attentively; they are taught this as a discipline. Let's not be disingenuous: of course, this is present. In a number of places some attention is paid to it — so that a person can listen to someone else. Somewhere it's instilled — and, interestingly, usually in American schools.

On the whole, I like the American education system quite a lot. Although, compared with something, it is by no means even, probably, a seven out of ten. But what I mean by seven or ten will differ somewhat from world education systems.

Here's an interesting aspect: when a small child goes into first grade, the children gather there every morning and listen to each other attentively; people speak to them very politely and smile at them. My son has just gone into fifth grade. And he comes home and says, “Why can't they keep talking to me at school the way they used to?” It's the same school — elementary school there is, I think, the first five grades. “Why,” he says, “can't they talk to me the way they used to?” So at this age children really do get a certain projection of attention.

But I had nothing like that in kindergarten, let alone at school. That was the army — honestly, it was more like a proper army.

Does spiritual degradation exist

So, of course, from the point of view of your spiritual being, degradation and development are possible everywhere, if we use such words. Clearly there is a layer of perceiving spiritual space, and life in general, where time does not exist, no division exists, and it doesn't matter at all whether you exist or have disappeared. But if we move into a layer of assessment, then, of course, from the point of view of a person's spiritual system there is both degradation and development — and it is primary.

Olya, you say, “If the material exists, then the spiritual exists one hundred percent.” But spiritual degradation and development can exist while the material may not exist.

And in general, you shouldn't overstate the significance of your own life too much — if you look at everything that's happening honestly and truly reasonably.

Any increase in significance — the significance of this life, of this time, of this week — is a material illusion, nothing more.

Just as a year ago this week did not matter to you, or as what will happen in ten years doesn't matter to you. It supposedly matters, but that's just the imaginary significance of the future, not a real sense of that day: how, what, where and in what situation things will happen. After all, the situation will change.

So, of course, from the point of view of the spiritual world, a person can sink very seriously. But to look into this subject at all, you need to be, on the whole, sufficiently convinced that life is spiritually primary and that the material world is a projection of the spiritual world. Otherwise it makes no sense at all to think about spiritual degradation. That is, what happens in the world becomes important to you roughly the way it does in a computer game, where you have a saved hero and need to get through a level. Roughly that level of importance. But in reality, everything matters only up to a point. And the instincts of the basic, real things will take everything away much faster — especially in emergency, difficult situations.

The material — a reflection or a projection of the spiritual

– There's a saying that material reality is a reflection of the inner. And you just said that the material is a projection of the spiritual. Is that about the same thing or about different things? And what, then, does “a projection of the spiritual” mean?

– Unequivocally, the material world is a projection, and also a reflection, because it is a consequence. But that's only a part. As Rudolf Steiner describes it: if positive events took place in the spiritual world at the end of the nineteenth century — the victory of the light spiritual forces over the dark ones — then in the material world victory went to the dark ones. Those are the kinds of connections there are.

The spiritual world is always primary in the events that take place. Always primary, not secondary.

You might object: wait, but if a person is able to create karma, then they create it from here, from the material world. But that isn't so. It is the impulses of your spiritual being and your system that do something within a certain set of events.

Where hatred in a person comes from

For example, a person may feel hatred toward other people. And they feel it not because they have read textbooks. In our world there's a lot of discussion that people are taught to feel hatred, or that they read it in some books. But if you actually pay attention: some people read nothing, grow up in the same family — and one wants to kill a kitten while the other wants to save it. Why does that happen? What is this energy — without words, without any books, without descriptions?

You can read one of them a thousand texts saying kittens should be killed — he won't believe it and won't do it. Horror and fear of it will only grow stronger in him; he won't go in that direction. And someone else will believe it the first time and say: kittens should be killed. The kitten is a good example, because many people saw this as children in the behavior of their peers or relatives. And not only with kittens — with all kinds of animals. It's simply an observation.

In exactly the same way, someone believes it's acceptable to hit another person. Someone does believe it's acceptable to hit — or believes that he is in charge. But in charge until when? Then society decided that, for example, parents are in charge until you come of age. That's exactly how it works. But coming of age is an invented parameter. Which world did you take it from? How did you distribute it, and how did you teach this authority?

So from the point of view of the spiritual world, degradation is elementary — this is very important. It is not just elementary: it is an absolutely working scenario of a system degrading.

But then the question again: what do we mean by degradation, Olya? If you look at what actually happens in the world: people are made presidents and then put in prison. People receive awards and ovations, and then they are punished and brutally beaten. People listen to someone, show him, cite his videos everywhere — and then it turns out that this person hates other people. This is simply everywhere now.

People take a short-term view

People take a short-term view. Even if at the moment this person is speaking he carries positive energy — who said that in twenty years he won't carry a different energy? Even if people examined it and saw it. And he needed to live through this positive energy in order to prepare, for example, for walking a certain difficult path — when an impulse of hatred switched on in him. So is that degradation, Olya, or not?

Imagine: at first an impulse of positive development, of movement, is switched on in a person. He helps everyone a great deal, everywhere. But there is a time for him that is meant to switch on a certain energy of fear, of dread, in him — and that will develop a very strong quality of negativity toward other people.

I have a question for you: is this a person's degradation, the law of cause and effect, or simply life?

In this case, no degradation exists at all, because this is an aspect of a person's development laid down from the very beginning. Who told you this is degradation?

About some people they say, “He's downshifted,” or “He's gone dumb.” And about another they say, “Look how great and famous he's become.” That is, at first he spent twenty or thirty years tormenting children, fighting, killing kittens, and then he became a patron of the arts and really became a positive person. But for the first part of his life he carried the rarest negativity — simply the rarest — because of certain energies. Some will put it down to him simply having developed. But you could also say that a certain energy was simply switched on in him, and that's all.

Development cannot be judged from the outside

It's like someone being born into a family without money, and someone else into a family with money. From the point of view of the material world, if you remove the spiritual world and remove the cause, the person immediately has an absolute achievement and result. And we all always love to look at such achievements and results and judge them exactly that way.

People don't want to judge it differently and truly look at cause and effect: what really happened to the person, what change is taking place inside them, in their system. Did they really degrade? Or is this the natural development of their life? Or did they really develop? Or are they at the very bottom of their development and haven't achieved anything at all — things simply had to be good for them in any case?

Imagine: a person is supposed to be doing well at a hundred thousand, but at the start of his life he had five, and then it became a thousand. Everyone will say, “Wow, look how he's developed!” But he hasn't developed. He was supposed to be at a hundred thousand. He did everything possible not to get there at all — and that's why the thousand happened for him automatically.

How do we assess this, how do we look at it? It's like all those absolutely unreasonable arguments about the second, third, fourth or fifth generation of wealth and money: who will become smarter, who dumber, who will spend the money properly and who won't. Simply a pointless discussion that will drag a person even further into darkness.

Such reasoning can be done sensibly, independently, normally — why not?

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