Rudolf Steiner: Vaccines to Kill The Soul?!

[Soul_of_Shu]

This is quite pessimistic way to put it.

Not sure why it's pessimistic that freedom is not dependent upon beliefs. If freedom did depend upon beliefs, then I'd be pessimistic.

[AshvinP]

This is quite pessimistic way to put it.

Not sure why it's pessimistic that freedom is not dependent upon beliefs. If freedom did depend upon beliefs, then I'd be pessimistic.

It's very pessimistic when you equate all "thinking" and "thoughts" with "beliefs", which is what you seem to be doing once we cross the threshold into the spiritual realm. Then suddenly "thinking" becomes equated with pure fantasizing and "thoughts" with the results of those fantasies which no one can ever verify for themselves. As Cleric said, this is simply anthropormophization of the spiritual. Since our current thoughts are rigid, abstract, and fleeting for the most part, with a million different people thinking a million different things about the same event, we assume higher cognition of supersensible beings must be the same way. The practical result is that we remain immersed in that fragmented realm of everyone thinking different things about the same events because we have convinced ourselves there is no other alternative. That is extremely pessimistic.

Also, does anyone else notice how Cleric's posts get longer and more packed with meaning when responding to posts which are becoming shorter and more vague in meaning? It's a pretty good textual representation of why the physical, limited resources, zero-sum, etc. mentality is self-imposed and does not have to be that way forever.

[AshvinP]

And another thing which has been bugging me... allow me to draw attention to the "house rules":

All Topics, without exception, must first and foremost pertain to metaphysics, and directly related topics.

If posting topical news articles as the basis for a topic of discussion, the article itself should have some nuanced metaphysical focus and intention written into it, as the basis for any follow up discussion. If the link is to a site that requires a paid subscription to access and assess it, please provide a significant passage from the article that refers to its metaphysical focus and intention.

Apparently, Dana, you were the author of the house rules, or atleast transcribed them into the post and underlined the above. What exactly was the "nuanced metaphysical focus" of the 5-minute video clip about vaccines "killing the soul", which was accompanied by no more elaboration than, "OMG ! I'm vexedly vaxxxed! Bit quiet hereabouts lately, and surely a bit of a click-bait title, but this from Steiner might stir things up, if youtube doesn't shut it down"? When poor old Lou posted such things in the past, you shut him down pretty quickly. Cleric and I have tried to somehow bring a metaphysically relevant focus to this admittedly "click-bait" post, but the sheer absurdities of the responses have made even that difficult. This is just me venting... I do not propose anything should be changed at this point. I suppose we will just keep trying to make this relevant to others, as some try to make it increasingly less relevant and more confused, as always...

[Soul_of_Shu]

It's very pessimistic when you equate all "thinking" and "thoughts" with "beliefs"

Where did I say that all thoughts and thinking are equated with beliefs? Surely like a child free of being fixated on an indoctrinated mindset one is still thinking, imagining, willing, etc ... which I take to be the meaning of 'unless one becomes like a child, one does not enter the Kingdom'. What is pessimistic about this?

[Soul_of_Shu]

Apparently, Dana, you were the author of the house rules, or atleast transcribed them into the post and underlined the above. What exactly was the "nuanced metaphysical focus" of the 5-minute video clip about vaccines "killing the soul", which was accompanied by no more elaboration than, "OMG ! I'm vexedly vaxxxed! Bit quiet hereabouts lately, and surely a bit of a click-bait title, but this from Steiner might stir things up, if youtube doesn't shut it down"? When poor old Lou posted such things in the past, you shut him down pretty quickly. Cleric and I have tried to somehow bring a metaphysically relevant focus to this admittedly "click-bait" post, but the sheer absurdities of the responses have made even that difficult. This is just me venting... I do not propose anything should be changed at this point. I suppose we will just keep trying to make this relevant to others, as some try to make it increasingly less relevant and more confused, as always...

Yeah, you are venting. Go ahead if it helps. The OP is certainly metaphysical, from a youtube channel that has a lot of nuanced content. It's not a topical news story, with no actual metaphysical focus written into it. The adding of nuanced context ex post facto is what was intended here. Yes, I can seem a bit flippant at times with some attempts at humour and wordplay. But I'm not sorry about trying to add that either.

[Soul_of_Shu]

(There's description of the painting here)

Although the painting depicts things in somewhat different sense that what I've drawn, it's still indicative that the Guardian Angel stands behind the painter's head and sees through the human consciousness. We can never find the the Angel's consciousness within our mind sphere, no matter how many false beliefs we dismantle. Even when we dismantle all conscious contents and enter Adur's nothingness or Ramana's pure consciousness, the Angle's consciousness will still be behind our back. We can only experience the Angel's perspective if we let it flow in us from above. This can only be achieved through the polar soul disposition. We either open up in humility and prayer to the Angel and follow how it stirs our astral body in Imaginative consciousness, or we do that on even deeper level and we live together with the Angel's Cosmic Thoughts as they pass through us in Inspirative consciousness, or we surrender our Earthly humanity to the greatest extent and merge with the "I" perspective of the Angel in Intuitive consciousness.

In view of Cleric's sharing of the Alex Grey painting above, with its intriguingly 'blue Angel' (also wondering how Goethe's colour theory might factor in) working and viewing through the corporeal apparition of an inspired artist, and which was revisioned in last night's dreamtime, what should appear in the youtube feed this morning, but this tale of a man who went transcorporeal, and was compelled to return as such an inspired artist, even though never having exhibited such a proclivity or talent before, to convey a vital message ...

[AshvinP]

It's very pessimistic when you equate all "thinking" and "thoughts" with "beliefs"

Where did I say that all thoughts and thinking are equated with beliefs? Surely like a child free of being fixated on an indoctrinated mindset one is still thinking, imagining, willing, etc ... which I take to be the meaning of 'unless one becomes like a child, one does not enter the Kingdom'. What is pessimistic about this?

The pessimism is the incompleteness. Cleric mentioned before how many problems arise from taking something generally true or true in a specific case and applying it in specific case or universally, respectively. The same holds for proposing that which is partially true and leaving out the holistic context which makes sense of why it is true. That is how I view the OP as well. In fact, these sorts of incomplete and/or misdirected (specific to universal or vice versa) conclusions are the source of all modern dualist prejudices in Cartesian or Kantian inspired philosophies. We could get into more details and illustrations of that is necessary.

Here I think the incompleteness is from denying the integral aspect of spiritual evolution - we don't revert back to childlike consciousness, but take what is imaginative and liberating about childlike consciousness and integrate it with what is mature, precise, critically thoughtful, etc. about adult consciousness. We don't take the verse you quoted as it stands isolated from the holistic context, but also consider it with verses such as - "And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able."

As Cleric said before, the same holds for the "vaccines will be developed to kill the human soul" assertion of Steiner recounted in the video. I get what you mean in terms of using that video as a means for us to add this context in for others, so I apologize if I misjudged your intentions earlier. It's not at all the way I would go about it, as I presume many people are still confused by what exactly Steiner is talking about, and Ben and Eugene's typical projections and antipathy-fueled comments don't help clear up the confusion at all, but I suppose some helpful discussion can still come of it.

[Soul_of_Shu]

As Cleric said before, the same holds for the "vaccines will be developed to kill the human soul" assertion of Steiner recounted in the video. I get what you mean in terms of using that video as a means for us to add this context in for others, so I apologize if I misjudged your intentions earlier. It's not at all the way I would go about it, as I presume many people are still confused by what exactly Steiner is talking about, and Ben and Eugene's typical projections and antipathy-fueled comments don't help clear up the confusion at all, but I suppose some helpful discussion can still come of it.

I can concede how the OP can be taken in a problematic way, and apologize for not being more clear about the intention. So for the record, it was not the intention to be anti-Steiner—notwithstanding I don't expect that every idea he had must be right—but just a curiosity about why Steiner would envision that take on vaccines. The intention was more an epistemological inquiry into how to distinguish between false beliefs and so-called occult knowledge of spiritual forces that impact upon the corporeal construct, and no different really than curiously questioning what Steiner claimed to know about Atlantis. For that reason, any comments that want to steer the discussion into a debate to either refute or support the rationale current anti-vaxer arguments are using against vaccines, will be discouraged and/or deleted.

[Cleric K]

Such is the power of belief that some will risk the death of the corporeal form for some random one found on the internet of beliefs. And once locked in to that extent, undoing it seems a huge challenge. And when has any locked-in believer ever freed another locked-in believer? All that can happen is to convince some other to exchange one prison for another. And while no doubt one may be less restrictive and/or less suffering prone than another, none of them are actual freedom. Actual freedom has nothing to do with beliefs. What it has to do with Angels, well, one may yet be won over.

My apologies if I've misunderstood the above post. My remark about pessimism was in relation to the bolded text. I've read that as "The only certain thing is that conscious existence exists (Realization). Other than that it's all a matter of intellectual speculations/beliefs.

It is true that we attain to a certain degree of freedom once we recognize that our conscious life is shaped by beliefs. But it's pessimistic to believe (and it's still a belief) that the most we can attain to is a kind of dual existence - a world of beliefs on one side and a small island of certainty called 'conscious existence exists' on the other.

I've given this example few times already. If we take the contents of consciousness (including beliefs) as pixel patterns on a computer screen, the above sounds like: "The only certain thing is that we experience the screen. The contents themselves are all relative and provisional." To this I say that here one is still operating under a belief - that the screen itself is the ultimate nature of consciousness. Through specific methods it's possible that consciousness experience itself within the electric currents that lie behind the screen in the hardware and software. The latter represents a higher world, where the true causes of the patterns on the screen can be found. We find them not as theories and beliefs on the screen but through the actual experience of the shape and dynamics that our spiritual-electrical activity takes in the depth of hardware. We experience the currents from within. As these currents energize the pixels, we already know from direct experience a higher order of reality standing behind the screen. Of course, even though we experience the currents in the higher world, they still can be projected as pixel shapes on the screen. These can be communicated. For another being which receives copies of these shapes, they are no different from any other pixel shape that we can put together completely through consciousness operating at the screen level (corresponding to the intellect which mechanically patches concepts). Yet those who comprehend that these communicated shapes are not simply screen-bound speculation but depth-projections of higher activity, and they try to assume the position from which these pattern truly are understood as depth-projections, they already begin to feel tiny sparks of this depth.

This is a terrible metaphor. It simply doesn't do justice to the real fluid and freer nature of the higher cognition. It makes it look like a rigid system, yet it could still be useful because it is approachable by modern man. This metaphor can be further adapted as another way of stating the analogy between instinctive -> intellectual consciousness and intellectual -> higher. Probably 70% of the basic questions that emerge in relation to higher cognition can be directly explain through these analogies. Just as an example, we immediately see how groundless it is to call the conscious penetration into the inner hardware, narrow or one-dimensional. No matter how many pixel patterns we experience on the screen, the kind of consciousness will still be the same. It's OK to call the exploration of patterns 'multi-dimensional' but to call the higher perspective which lives in the currents responsible for the pixels, narrow, is simply nonsensical. It's actually the only thing that can bring deeper meaning to the whole multi-directional exploration of screen-shapes.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Such is the power of belief that some will risk the death of the corporeal form for some random one found on the internet of beliefs. And once locked in to that extent, undoing it seems a huge challenge. And when has any locked-in believer ever freed another locked-in believer? All that can happen is to convince some other to exchange one prison for another. And while no doubt one may be less restrictive and/or less suffering prone than another, none of them are actual freedom. Actual freedom has nothing to do with beliefs. What it has to do with Angels, well, one may yet be won over.

My apologies if I've misunderstood the above post. My remark about pessimism was in relation to the bolded text. I've read that as "The only certain thing is that conscious existence exists (Realization). Other than that it's all a matter of intellectual speculations/beliefs.

Granted, I'm not optimistic that once locked into a belief system, one can be freed from it by someone else locked into some other belief system. However, that doesn't mean that one can't be freed from it. But again, unless one is ripe for it, in this experience, one might as well be hoping an apple tree will blossom in the dead of winter.