The outer protects the inner. The (more) material protects the (more) spiritual. The core unit in the scale of the human being is the family. The woman (the more female determined consciousness) connects and carries the children and the man with her spiritual power. The man (the more masculine determined consciousness) protects the woman from the destructive material exterior and from the still unformed consciousness of the children, in which the ego begins to spread. The children’s egos are limited by the man and the children’s consciousness thereby recognizes the value of the mother accepting and nurturing them, who is the contrast to the limitation. Their consciousness is not flooded by the ego through the ego limitation, but has room for the soul light, which can then develop there. Thus they become whole and not one-sidedly material and destructive. Together in this unity man and woman – in the connection of material and soul – act creatively. Act divinely. Pass this on exemplarily to their children. The roles can be naturally also exchanged: The man with strong feminine spiritual power is inside and the woman with materially masculine, acting power is outside. The roles are ultimately independent of gender. Also in the following.
Nowadays the family, the clan, is no longer in the center of the action. The connection of the materially acting (as a rule the man) exists with vast amounts of big and complicated things of the external world like work, politics, reputation, competition, opinions, while the woman is also urged to train her materially acting side and to put it at the disposal of the external things – materially acting.
Thus a situation arises in which the man enters into a unity with the great complicated – and powerful – external factors and finds his support and security there. They are the earthly substitute for the soul-feminine, which was otherwise to be found in the family. It is now these external things that he protects, since they have become the interior of his unity. The woman, the family, thus becomes by definition something external that either serves the man’s (new) unity or must be fought against. If the woman remains soul-bearing, nurturing and passive, then she is exploited by the man as an external – serving resource – for his new unity. If the woman does not do justice to her carrying and nurturing role in the family any more, since she is urged to suppress her soul knowledge and to become a material (and ego-emphasizing) agent as well, she is fought against. Either way, it is the children whose ego is no longer limited. The father no longer perceives the limiting role and instead of demonstrating unity with the woman, the children are taught that feminine, spiritual is synonymous with weak and helpless. They are taught that unity is to be sought and found in external things and not in the connection between male and female on the level of matter and soul. Material and material is the new unity. Boys and girls follow this path because nothing else is shown to them. Because the parents themselves are no longer able to recognize anything else at all, because they themselves are children of parents who had already lost their way.
Below the unity of the family stands man himself. There, too, the material fights or uses the spiritual, expands until there is hardly any space left in the consciousness for the light of unity. No matter whether man or woman.