208 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
only if a person has seen that a selfish striving for plea-
sure cannot bring satisfaction. We human beings, whose
selfishness has yearned for the grapes of pleasure, find
them sour because we cannot reach them. Therefore, we
leave them and devote ourselves to a selfless way of life.
In the pessimist’s view, moral ideals are not strong
enough to overcome egotism. Instead, pessimists base
their dominion on the ground previously cleared for them
by the recognition of the hopelessness of self-seeking.
If human beings strove for pleasure by nature and were
unable to attain it, then annihilation of existence and sal-
vation through non-existence would be the only rational
goal. But if we hold that God is the actual bearer of the
world’s suffering, then human beings have to make it their
task to bring about God’s salvation. Attainment of that
goal is hindered, not furthered, by suicide of the individu-
al. Rationally, God can have created human beings only in
order for them to bring about His salvation by their ac-
tions. Otherwise, creation would be pointless. And this
kind of worldview does think in terms of extra-human
goals. Each of us must contribute our specific labor to the
universal work of salvation. If we withdraw from this la-
bor through suicide, what we ourselves were meant to do
must be undertaken by others who have to bear the tor-
ment of existence in our stead. And since God resides in
each being as the actual bearer of pain, the suicide does
nothing to diminish God’s suffering; rather, it imposes on
God the new difficulty of creating a substitute.
All of this presupposes that pleasure is the measure of
life’s worth. Life is expressed through a number of drives
[30]
[31]
