Symbolic thinking, Anthroposophy and Transhumanism

[Anthony66]

Cleric,

I have not said I find SS unconvincing, at least in its core ideas. Rather I am yet to be convinced of attempts to connect it to Christianity as broadly understood.

In terms of what you have outlined above, my attention is drawn to points 3 and 4, the depth structure of reality. Christianity in its various stripes has always maintained an ontological divide between the being of God and his creation. Eastern Orthodoxy blurs this somewhat with its doctrine of theosis, but still if pressed would want to maintain an impermeable barrier somewhere this side of the Godhead. SS on the other hand maintains a continuous gradient of being.

The nature of Jesus/Christ outlined by Steiner would have him on the wrong side of the councils of the early church. He would have been lucky to dodge a burning in the middle ages. Talk of a Macrocosmic Sun Being is quite unheard of in catholic Christianity.

There is a significant divide between the soteriology of traditional Christianity vs that of SS. Obviously there are differences between different theological schools of the former, but broadly they are about humans being forgiven for their sins by a merciful Father on the basis of the sacrifice of his Son, "not be works so that no one can boast". SS on the other hand paints a radical evolutionary program which places the onus right back on us.

I could go on and cover the whole theological landscape with the various points of divergence. But that should suffice for now.

What is characteristic of Christianity (together with the OT) is that it portrays the story of humanity – from its spiritual origins, through the fall, and the turn-around point where the Spirit penetrates the Earthly realm (the Word becomes flesh) and thus the human soul and the creation can ascend toward spiritualization (new Earth and new Heaven).

People often speak of religion as a simple lawbook dressed in mythical language – simply a way to put some behavioral framework for humans to comply with (and the extended narrative is that this is done for the sole purpose of controlling and exploiting them).

So this is the first thing – Christianity can only be grasped properly if we understand it as the blood and nerve of our existential movie. As such, it is not finished. Thus we’ll always fall into stagnation if we only seek some ‘formulation’ of Christianity (hopefully the ‘true’ one) as if it presents the ultimate and final dogma.

That it is not finished is clear from the bible itself. Even the Christ said

12 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.

It’s clear that the story is not yet finished. He continues:

13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

And elsewhere:

16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

So when we read these things we can’t fail but see how there are so much more things yet to happen. Why would the Christ speak of all these things if humanity was already saved and nothing more is expected from it? How could there be an absolute boundary between man and the Divine when the Christ explicitly says that we are one within another and that he and the Father will make their home in the human soul?

With all that in mind, what is your view on this expected sending of the Spirit? Could it be that it might be already happening? Could it be that this Spirit of Truth, who is to teach us and remind us of everything, be inspiring and spiritualizing human thinking? Would that not manifest as a sort of higher knowledge, a science of the deeper workings of reality? Not intellectual science, a metaphysical model, but inspired, revealed intuition, proceeding from the deeper strata of existence?

If this is not the way you expect the Holy Spirit of Truth, in what way do you expect it? What do you expect that it should reveal? If the practice of Christianity in its current forms was the final say, why would the Divine Spirit need to teach us anything more than that?

So we see that if we take the scriptures seriously, there's so much more to happen, so much to understand and be revealed. Based on the bible itself, one may not expect something similar to a science of the spirit only if they ignore what is written, and believe that the Earthly realm is already sealed tight. We only get the message of Christ properly if we become comfortable with the fact that our present life is open-ended. There's much that we still can't bear - an influx of the Spirit, that will ignite consciousness of the deeper mysteries of existence. In that sense, not only that we can see a connection, but we can truly say that the appearance of something like a science of the spirit is prophesized by the Christ himself. If such development of higher knowledge does not appear on the Earthly stage, we're bound to ask the same question I asked you above: "Then in what other way should this Divine Spirit of Truth manifest in the human soul?" Or do we simply ignore that part of the Word of Christ?

Cleric,

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've had successive overseas trips.

Of course any response to what is meant by particular words in the bible has to be prefixed with the question of provenance. Critical scholars generally agree that few words in the gospel of John can be ascribed to Jesus.

Putting that aside, Acts 2 is normally understood to be the answer to the questions you pose. The Spirit came and men began to speak in other tongues. Peter stood up and preached and drew together various threads of scripture and the life of Jesus. The story came together as to how Jesus fitted in the out-flowing of redemptive history. In hearing this, "men were cut to the heart" and asked what should they do. The response - repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As a result they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Up to that point, things were quite veiled. Again if we believe the gospel writings, Jesus was quite cryptic about what he was about. The teaching that illuminated in the minds of the apostles, the further revelation alluded to in John, was that the death and resurrection of Jesus had salvific significance, not only for the Jews but for all mankind. The vehicle by which this salvation was made effective was through faith demonstrated through repentance and baptism.

It was a simple message once the threads had come together. At least this is the story of the religion for the masses.

[AshvinP]

Cleric,

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've had successive overseas trips.

Of course any response to what is meant by particular words in the bible has to be prefixed with the question of provenance. Critical scholars generally agree that few words in the gospel of John can be ascribed to Jesus.

Putting that aside, Acts 2 is normally understood to be the answer to the questions you pose. The Spirit came and men began to speak in other tongues. Peter stood up and preached and drew together various threads of scripture and the life of Jesus. The story came together as to how Jesus fitted in the out-flowing of redemptive history. In hearing this, "men were cut to the heart" and asked what should they do. The response - repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As a result they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Up to that point, things were quite veiled. Again if we believe the gospel writings, Jesus was quite cryptic about what he was about. The teaching that illuminated in the minds of the apostles, the further revelation alluded to in John, was that the death and resurrection of Jesus had salvific significance, not only for the Jews but for all mankind. The vehicle by which this salvation was made effective was through faith demonstrated through repentance and baptism.

It was a simple message once the threads had come together. At least this is the story of the religion for the masses.

Anthony, along with whatever Cleric responds, I would invite you to engage in a simple exercise. You are probably familiar with the aliasing metaphor that he has shared previously, and which was briefly used in the latest spiritual retracing essay. Imagine if some people encountered your post above but it was modified as such:

Putting that aside, Acts 2 is normally understood to be the answer to the questions you pose. The Spirit came and men began to speak in other tongues. Peter stood up and preached and drew together various threads of scripture and the life of Jesus. The story came together as to how Jesus fitted in the out-flowing of redemptive history. In hearing this, "men were cut to the heart" and asked what should they do. The response - repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As a result they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Up to that point, things were quite veiled. Again if we believe the gospel writings, Jesus was quite cryptic about what he was about. The teaching that illuminated in the minds of the apostles, the further revelation alluded to in John, was that the death and resurrection of Jesus had salvific significance, not only for the Jews but for all mankind. The vehicle by which this salvation was made effective was through faith demonstrated through repentance and baptism.

It was a simple message once the threads had come together. At least this is the story of the religion for the masses.

What I struck through was somewhat arbitrary and that is also the point. Wouldn't you agree this arbitrary sampling of your post reduces the meaning in some way, flattens it out, and renders 'the answer to the questions you pose' quite a bit less elucidating than you intended? Even though something of that holistic essence you intended is still there in the remaining words, that essence has been decohered and you, as the author, know that a lot of significant meaning is aliased from the reader's perception.

Couldn't a similar thing be happening with the 'story of the religion for the masses', which has become a somewhat arbitrary sampling of the holistic intuition of the significance of the Christ events, such as Pentecost? Could not evolution be the very process of restoring more and more of the struck-through words of that story?

[Anthony66]

Cleric,

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've had successive overseas trips.

Of course any response to what is meant by particular words in the bible has to be prefixed with the question of provenance. Critical scholars generally agree that few words in the gospel of John can be ascribed to Jesus.

Putting that aside, Acts 2 is normally understood to be the answer to the questions you pose. The Spirit came and men began to speak in other tongues. Peter stood up and preached and drew together various threads of scripture and the life of Jesus. The story came together as to how Jesus fitted in the out-flowing of redemptive history. In hearing this, "men were cut to the heart" and asked what should they do. The response - repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As a result they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Up to that point, things were quite veiled. Again if we believe the gospel writings, Jesus was quite cryptic about what he was about. The teaching that illuminated in the minds of the apostles, the further revelation alluded to in John, was that the death and resurrection of Jesus had salvific significance, not only for the Jews but for all mankind. The vehicle by which this salvation was made effective was through faith demonstrated through repentance and baptism.

It was a simple message once the threads had come together. At least this is the story of the religion for the masses.

Anthony, along with whatever Cleric responds, I would invite you to engage in a simple exercise. You are probably familiar with the aliasing metaphor that he has shared previously, and which was briefly used in the latest spiritual retracing essay. Imagine if some people encountered your post above but it was modified as such:

Putting that aside, Acts 2 is normally understood to be the answer to the questions you pose. The Spirit came and men began to speak in other tongues. Peter stood up and preached and drew together various threads of scripture and the life of Jesus. The story came together as to how Jesus fitted in the out-flowing of redemptive history. In hearing this, "men were cut to the heart" and asked what should they do. The response - repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As a result they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Up to that point, things were quite veiled. Again if we believe the gospel writings, Jesus was quite cryptic about what he was about. The teaching that illuminated in the minds of the apostles, the further revelation alluded to in John, was that the death and resurrection of Jesus had salvific significance, not only for the Jews but for all mankind. The vehicle by which this salvation was made effective was through faith demonstrated through repentance and baptism.

It was a simple message once the threads had come together. At least this is the story of the religion for the masses.

What I struck through was somewhat arbitrary and that is also the point. Wouldn't you agree this arbitrary sampling of your post reduces the meaning in some way, flattens it out, and renders 'the answer to the questions you pose' quite a bit less elucidating than you intended? Even though something of that holistic essence you intended is still there in the remaining words, that essence has been decohered and you, as the author, know that a lot of significant meaning is aliased from the reader's perception.

Couldn't a similar thing be happening with the 'story of the religion for the masses', which has become a somewhat arbitrary sampling of the holistic intuition of the significance of the Christ events, such as Pentecost? Could not evolution be the very process of restoring more and more of the struck-through words of that story?

Of course what we have the in scriptures/traditions may represent a "sampling" of the information available. The question is whether that sampling fulfills the conditions of the "Nyquist frequency" whereby the original signal can be reconstructed from the samples (using signal processing metaphor). Appeals might be made to 2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." This text is a favorite among evangelicals in arguing the sufficiency of scripture. I have always thought its use overstates the case.

The texts from John that Cleric cited are suggestive of under-sampling. So are the texts where Jesus is suggestive of a secret knowledge, for example Mark 4. See the interview with Elaine Pagels at:


In short, I think I'm comfortable with the under sampling thesis. I'm still working through finding the connection between the old faith and what is proposed here, particularly when there are points of apparent contradiction, c.f. repeated earth lives vs Hebrews 9:27, "And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment..."

[AshvinP]

Cleric,

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've had successive overseas trips.

Of course any response to what is meant by particular words in the bible has to be prefixed with the question of provenance. Critical scholars generally agree that few words in the gospel of John can be ascribed to Jesus.

Putting that aside, Acts 2 is normally understood to be the answer to the questions you pose. The Spirit came and men began to speak in other tongues. Peter stood up and preached and drew together various threads of scripture and the life of Jesus. The story came together as to how Jesus fitted in the out-flowing of redemptive history. In hearing this, "men were cut to the heart" and asked what should they do. The response - repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As a result they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Up to that point, things were quite veiled. Again if we believe the gospel writings, Jesus was quite cryptic about what he was about. The teaching that illuminated in the minds of the apostles, the further revelation alluded to in John, was that the death and resurrection of Jesus had salvific significance, not only for the Jews but for all mankind. The vehicle by which this salvation was made effective was through faith demonstrated through repentance and baptism.

It was a simple message once the threads had come together. At least this is the story of the religion for the masses.

Anthony, along with whatever Cleric responds, I would invite you to engage in a simple exercise. You are probably familiar with the aliasing metaphor that he has shared previously, and which was briefly used in the latest spiritual retracing essay. Imagine if some people encountered your post above but it was modified as such:

Putting that aside, Acts 2 is normally understood to be the answer to the questions you pose. The Spirit came and men began to speak in other tongues. Peter stood up and preached and drew together various threads of scripture and the life of Jesus. The story came together as to how Jesus fitted in the out-flowing of redemptive history. In hearing this, "men were cut to the heart" and asked what should they do. The response - repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As a result they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Up to that point, things were quite veiled. Again if we believe the gospel writings, Jesus was quite cryptic about what he was about. The teaching that illuminated in the minds of the apostles, the further revelation alluded to in John, was that the death and resurrection of Jesus had salvific significance, not only for the Jews but for all mankind. The vehicle by which this salvation was made effective was through faith demonstrated through repentance and baptism.

It was a simple message once the threads had come together. At least this is the story of the religion for the masses.

What I struck through was somewhat arbitrary and that is also the point. Wouldn't you agree this arbitrary sampling of your post reduces the meaning in some way, flattens it out, and renders 'the answer to the questions you pose' quite a bit less elucidating than you intended? Even though something of that holistic essence you intended is still there in the remaining words, that essence has been decohered and you, as the author, know that a lot of significant meaning is aliased from the reader's perception.

Couldn't a similar thing be happening with the 'story of the religion for the masses', which has become a somewhat arbitrary sampling of the holistic intuition of the significance of the Christ events, such as Pentecost? Could not evolution be the very process of restoring more and more of the struck-through words of that story?

Of course what we have the in scriptures/traditions may represent a "sampling" of the information available. The question is whether that sampling fulfills the conditions of the "Nyquist frequency" whereby the original signal can be reconstructed from the samples (using signal processing metaphor). Appeals might be made to 2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." This text is a favorite among evangelicals in arguing the sufficiency of scripture. I have always thought its use overstates the case.

The texts from John that Cleric cited are suggestive of under-sampling. So are the texts where Jesus is suggestive of a secret knowledge, for example Mark 4. See the interview with Elaine Pagels at:

In short, I think I'm comfortable with the under sampling thesis. I'm still working through finding the connection between the old faith and what is proposed here, particularly when there are points of apparent contradiction, c.f. repeated earth lives vs Hebrews 9:27, "And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment..."

I should have been more clear that the 'sampling' is not a function of the text or traditions, but of our level of cognitive attunement. In that sense, yes the original signal can always be reconstructed from the textual forms no matter how distorted they appear to us. In fact, meditation for higher cognition rests on the reality that a single thought-perception can lead our consciousness into broader and broader contextual layers of meaning with the proper attunement.

The proof of this, as usual, can come in no other way than experiencing it for ourselves. We could cite innumerable examples of how outer natural and cultural forms begin revealing more and more of their embedded meaning as we enliven and strengthen cognition. I will give a more trivial example related to textual forms, specifically. As I have continued my studies and practices, Cleric's old posts on this forum have continually revealed deeper meaning to me. Even though I was reading those posts very carefully and intently a few years ago, much of that meaning simply passed right through my consciousness and I was none the wiser. It was significantly aliased from my intellectual perception and there was no possible way for me to suspect it at the time. This isn't just a one-time thing, either, but quite literally occurs each time I go back to them. It's conceivable that I am even perceiving some meaning within the forms that Cleric himself was not quite conscious of when writing them.

Again, that's one of the most trivial examples I could use but also the most relevant for people at the initial stages of inner development, such as myself. I have experienced the same thing with scripture and practically all other cultural forms, including church dogmas and traditions. There is no simple way to convey to others the additional meaning perceived with our verbal concepts here because that meaning is the 'wavefunction' from which our verbal concepts collapse into sequential thought-trains. And that's also the issue with Elaine Pagels - she simply doesn't conceive that the 'secret teachings' can only be understood through inner development, not by adding more intellectual concepts born of the same cognitive mode. In other words, she feels the 'secret teachings' are parallel historical narratives that aren't in the Gospels rather than deeper meaning embedded within the narratives and parables of the Gospels, brought forth by our effortful cognitive attunement.

Consider this from Steiner:

All the parables founded on numbers are profoundly illuminating as regards the impulse brought by Christ to men.

Further, He makes it clear to those who regard His teaching outwardly, that many external thing must not be considered merely in a material sense, or in the most obvious way, but rather as symbols for something else. He wishes to point out to them the nature of their own thoughts. He asks for a coin, and showing them the likeness of Caesar imprinted on it, points out that something more is expressed by the coin than is merely contained in the metal, namely, its connection with a certain ruler, with a certain Empire. ‘What in this belongs to Caesar, render to him; it is his, and is contained in his likeness on the coin, not in the metal itself.’ ‘But learn,’ He also wished to teach them, ‘to regard men, and what is in them, in a like manner, for they are the temples of the living God. Look on men as you would look on a coin, learn, that in them you see the image of God; you will then know that they belong to God.’

All these parables have a much deeper meaning than the trivial one generally accepted. We learn this when we know that Christ did not make use of parables as is customary in the literature of the day. In making use of them He directs them to the whole nature of man, obliging people when they think them out to apply them to their whole nature, not to its separate parts. In this way He shows how, if they are to be shown that something is irrational, they must learn to pass with their thoughts from one realm to another.

Again, the above will make little sense to us, and will sound quite arbitrary, until we have liberated our spiritual activity from its materialized constraints to some significant extent and we have moved that activity through the archetypal phases and living details of spiritual evolution, viewing the facts of that evolution through the prism of higher ideas to test whether the latter have practical value or not. It always comes back to the same issue of people wanting to attain deeper meaning with minimal effort, simply running the familiar intellect through more and more iterations. We won't reconcile the 'contradictions' by being provided some convenient external explanation. We reconcile them by first reconciling the contradictions within ourselves. What are the various assumptions, expectations, prejudices, etc. that we are clinging to out of sheer habit and applying to the texts we encounter? If anything should be apparent from the life, teachings, and death of Christ, even to the intellect, it is the fact that indolence is not the path to genuine understanding of deeper spiritual truth and is not rewarded, but rather sacrificial effort.

[AshvinP]

Anthony,

I started a very interesting book on early Biblical history and the scripture, and given your background and interest, thought you may be interested in checking it out. Especially given our discussions surrounding the evidence of esoteric and initiatic wisdom in the scriptures. Here is a quote:


https://a.co/1xNGJPo

It led to the fact that we, who read the Bible today in an intellectual and materialistic consciousness, have great difficulty in penetrating into its esoteric mysteries. The Bible was written as a basis for the education of a future, human-worldly consciousness, to be served by the Talmud and the Mishnah, which would lead Judaism throughout the Middle Ages. Behind what is described in the scenes of the Bible, the initiation processes into the ancient Hebrew mysteries were still practised in a living manner. It was there that the patriarchs, Joseph, Moses, judges, kings and prophets underwent their initiation, and from there they drew the content which would later be processed and adapted for external publication in the stories of the Bible. Such stories were suited to the consciousness of a humanity who were becoming increasingly earthly, self-conscious and gradually developing logical and rational thinking during the coming mind soul period. Esoteric wisdom (this should not be understood yet in its medieval sense, as Kabbalah, a tradition already passed from generation to generation in the physical world, but rather in its original, spiritual-cosmic sense) was real as long as the ancient mysteries could provide true initiation in the temples. When Abraham leaves Ur of the Chaldeans in the early second millennium BC, the decline of the ancient mysteries had already begun (it was to be a long decline, lasting about two thousand years). Note how, starting with Abraham, everything becomes much more personal, human, earthly. This is the mission of the biblical education of humanity for earthly life. Each person has a name and each person acts, and bears the consequences of his actions, as an individual. This is portrayed in almost modern terms, as if he is a modern person like us, with his own personal life, presented as an example and as a guide to the coming ages. Only the esoterically schooled person would know that the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs, their sons and daughters, in each word and sentence, represent–in external language–the sublime experiences of true initiation; that they are describing initiation dramas which were known in all the ancient mysteries, and were conducted only in secret, far from the consciousness of the ordinary person. But the Bible transforms the stories of initiation into those told as human stories, which any person could understand, imagine and identify with in personal, earthly consciousness; a consciousness which took its first steps with the Hebrew people, and which today is the given consciousness, taken for granted by every one of us.

YESHAYAHU (JESAIAH) BEN-AHARON, Jerusalem: The Role of the Hebrew People in the Spiritual Biography of Humanity