Human love is food for the gods When we sleep our astral and I Am (our consciousness) leave our physical and etheric bodies lying in the bed, they stream out of us like the steam from a boiling kettle and they merge into the hierarchy in the heavens, the gods; the Angels, Archangels and other beings who dwell in the spiritual ozone, ozone that streams from them. When we sleep our astral and I Am absorb forces from this ozone and pour it into the physical and etheric bodies lying in the bed to repair the wear and tear caused to them during the day.
As we study spiritual truth we begin to realise that something seen in the physical world can have a very different appearance from the heavens – the flipside. So when we say that the gods assist us to repair our physical and etheric bodies while we sleep we can even say that the gods gain something by participating this way in our lives.
The relationship of man to the universe is difficult to understand. The earth is the planet of love, love is being developed upon this earth, it is being ‘bred’ here. The gods, by participating in mankind’s development, will learn to know love. Yet, it is the gods who bestow love. So they bestow it but they don’t know it!
Think about it in this way. It is entirely possible that one being may impart a gift to another, and only come to know his gift through the other. Picture to yourself a very rich person who has never known anything but riches. They will never have experienced the deep satisfaction of soul that results when the needy soul receives riches.
Picture this rich person as he gives some money to a poor person. The gift calls forth great thankfulness in the soul of the needy individual; this feeling of gratitude is at the same time a gift; it would never have existed if the rich person had not first given. So the rich person is the originator of the feeling of gratitude, although he does not himself feel it, and is only acquainted with it through its reflection, which streams back to him from the person in whom he roused it.
It is approximately in this way that the gift of love is imparted to man by the gods. They have progressed so far that they are able to kindle love in man so that he feels it, but they only learn to know it as a reality through man’s expressing love. From their heights the gods reach down into the ozone of humanity and feel the warmth of love. We know that the gods lack something when man does not live in love. The more human love there is on earth the more food for the gods there is in heaven, the less love there is, the more the gods hunger. The sacrifice of man to the gods is nothing else than the love, which streams up to them, which man has produced.
Rewritten from Universe, Earth and Man. Lecture 9 August 13, 1908
Editor’s note: The greatest love is to love where love is not returned.