Stranger wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 8:23 pmYes, I can see your inspiration, and I understand that your faith is not blind.Federica wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:30 pm Yes, it wouldn't be wrong to say that I have faith in the path. True, also, that without this 'faith' I couldn't move on for very long. However it must be immediately added that this faith has very little to do with blind religious faith (we could equally say, it has very little to do with the grace of faith). My approach is very different. A gross analogy could be a financial one. I am investing my assets in this path and I expect a very high return. Not because I have clairvoyance, not because I bet on it based on what others say, but because it proves to me, month after month, that the payouts are there. First I got into it 'by chance' because it effectively addressed (in the first insights then provided by Cleric and Ashvin) some dissatisfaction I had with BKs philosophy. Then the only "risk" I took - you could say based on faith, other would say based on affinity, or gut feeling - was to spend some time at the beginning, getting familiar with the spirit of the path. All that has happened afterward has not been faith-based, in the sense that I constantly get returns for the efforts I put in. Sure, I could still abandon the path and pursue other promising investments. The reason I am not doing it is that I have certain faith that what's been happening so far, will continue to unfold and bear fruits. I have a vague sense of the extension of the long way ahead. As I said, this is not only a tough task, it's also super exciting, and I couldn't accomplish it without the faith that the little that has unfolded (and is unfolding) is not just an incredibly bizarre coincidence, rather it is a solid proof that there is logic and lawfulness to this path, which is getting integrated, though in modest and vastly incomplete ways so far.
IMO all teachings and practices are incomplete but many have good practices and insights into the facets of the truth, and Anthroposophy is certainly one of them. It is sad to see how some people turn it into a sectarian and rigid closed system of beliefs and practices that does not tolerate any deviations or extensions, something I do not think Steiner would appreciate.That's right, the inner experience of another person is not verifiable, but we can still consider it as an evidence providing that we can trust a person who tells us about it. For example here you answered honestly and I appreciate you honesty (and even the fact that you actually answered, which I could not get from Cleric) and I trust you:I think the way the question is turned, makes it inherently unsolvable, and ultimately, unhelpful.
Unsolvable because, even if we imagine it was possible to somehow demonstrate that some did, how would this make sense with the inherent living thinking, first-person nature of this path? If it was possible, it would be a logical absurdity for the living thinking path to be both living and "demonstrated". The word “demonstration” would lose significance. Demonstrated how, based on what self invalidating methods? Or methods that are completely at odds with the higher cognition they should demonstrate.
The question is also unhelpful, because a demonstration (whatever it might mean) would not help us in the least, with our individual progression, because progression needs to be directly experienced.
One would receive much more encouragement and confirmation from 'investing' some initial efforts and watch the results (but eagerness and excitement are required, that's the thing) rather than speculating around impossible demonstrated cases of living thinking. I do think this is the true spirit of your question: "How can I find the motivation to seriously dive into this inquiry?"For my part, certainly not. As I see it, there are many many milestones on the way, before that realization.
Eugene,
Since you have not yet officially closed this other entrance, I will quote the following about the risks of not being interested in the hows of the sensory/dual world:
https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/Engli ... 0_c10.htmlSteiner wrote:From this standpoint it will also be readily understood why the Threshold to the supersensible world is watched over by a Guardian. In no case may real insight into those regions be permitted to anyone lacking the requisite faculties; therefore, when at the hour of death anyone enters the other world while still incompetent to work in it, the higher experiences are shrouded from him until he is fit to behold them.
When the student enters the supersensible world, life acquires quite a new meaning for him; he discerns in the physical world the seed-ground of a higher world, so that in a certain sense the higher will appear defective without the lower. Two outlooks are opened before him; the first into the past and the second into the future. His vision extends to a past in which this physical world was not yet existent; for he has long since discarded the prejudice that the supersensible world was developed out of the sense-world. He knows that the former existed first, and that out of it everything physical was evolved. He sees that he himself belonged to a supersensible world before coming for the first time into this sense-world. But this pristine supersensible world needed to pass through the sense-world, for without this passage its further evolution would not have been possible. It can only pursue its course when certain things will have developed requisite faculties within the realm of the senses.