The realm of the Demiurge

[Federica]

But once this recognition happens, it is also important to integrate back the thoughts and perceive thoughts as innate forms of thinking inseparable from thinking itself, and not just some extrinsic byproduct of it.

Absolutely - as I understand it, this is the whole point with higher cognition. However for the sake of communicating in a way that in my opinion has the best chances to be taken in, in the given context, I have chosen not to go to that extent other than very concisely, in my very last words: "From a holistic perspective, before the human nature comes in to split reality in two, it's all one unitary reality of spiritual (thinking) nature."

PS. By the way, would you please correct the quote, it is Steiner's words, not mine, that you have reported. I am quite embarassed to see them put under my name.

[Stranger]

PS. By the way, would you please correct the quote, it is Steiner's words, not mine, that you have reported. I am quite embarassed to see them put under my name.

sure, I did

[AshvinP]

Hello everyone.
I'm staying out of the discussion at the moment because I'm under a lot of stress and I can't find the time to participate, even though I really want to.
Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to reading all of your posts.
I recently came up with a certain idea and would like to introduce it with a quote.

“Introduce what is practiced as meditation exercises in various anthroposophical seminars
supernatural knowledge of a body-free consciousness, or are they merely refined ones
sensory experiences? Are, for example, the inner impressions of movement and experiences that one takes part in
Observation of sprouting and wilting plants can get, psychic, or are they into that
Consciousness brought up and aesthetically refined impressions of the 'lower' senses, the tactile, life,
sense of movement and balance?”

Shouldn't rudolf steiner's body-free-thinking imply that no measurable correlating activity should be found in a brain examination. Because otherwise one could also use the same criticism that one has against non-dual experiences, that they are certain brain states, against Steiner's higher forms of knowledge.
Kind regards

Guney,

You may be interested in this thread I just posted, which briefly summarizes the phenomenology of cognition such as we find in PoF. As Federica and Cleric noted, we shouldn't understand 'sense-free thinking' as a metaphysical statement, in which we imagine there is a world of spiritual thinking parallel to the world of sensory-brain activity. We are only safe in our concrete understanding if we proceed according to a careful phenomenology and avoid the intellectual temptation to insert metaphysical postulates along the way, which invariably create dualities and discontinuities. Then we either walk the higher thinking path with a flawed understanding of it, which will make it more and more difficult to traverse, or we reject the entire path based on our flawed understanding of it.

[Federica]

PS. By the way, would you please correct the quote, it is Steiner's words, not mine, that you have reported. I am quite embarassed to see them put under my name.

sure, I did

thank you! ...but it's still wrong

[Stranger]

thank you! ...but it's still wrong

sorry, fixed now

[Federica]

thank you! ...but it's still wrong

sorry, fixed now

No worries, thank you : )

[Federica]

Hello everyone.
I'm staying out of the discussion at the moment because I'm under a lot of stress and I can't find the time to participate, even though I really want to.
Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to reading all of your posts.
I recently came up with a certain idea and would like to introduce it with a quote.

“Introduce what is practiced as meditation exercises in various anthroposophical seminars
supernatural knowledge of a body-free consciousness, or are they merely refined ones
sensory experiences? Are, for example, the inner impressions of movement and experiences that one takes part in
Observation of sprouting and wilting plants can get, psychic, or are they into that
Consciousness brought up and aesthetically refined impressions of the 'lower' senses, the tactile, life,
sense of movement and balance?”

Shouldn't rudolf steiner's body-free-thinking imply that no measurable correlating activity should be found in a brain examination. Because otherwise one could also use the same criticism that one has against non-dual experiences, that they are certain brain states, against Steiner's higher forms of knowledge.
Kind regards

Guney,

You may be interested in this thread I just posted, which briefly summarizes the phenomenology of cognition such as we find in PoF. As Federica and Cleric noted, we shouldn't understand 'sense-free thinking' as a metaphysical statement, in which we imagine there is a world of spiritual thinking parallel to the world of sensory-brain activity. We are only safe in our concrete understanding if we proceed according to a careful phenomenology and avoid the intellectual temptation to insert metaphysical postulates along the way, which invariably create dualities and discontinuities. Then we either walk the higher thinking path with a flawed understanding of it, which will make it more and more difficult to traverse, or we reject the entire path based on our flawed understanding of it.

I found that essay particularly insightful. Its value for me has been beyond that of a summary. Maybe I'll comment on the other thread. Thanks for opening it.

[AshvinP]

Christ descended onto the Earthly plane precisely to raise our consciousness so that we begin to perceive the World Process from the inside-out (the Heliocentric perspective), through imaginative cognition.

I agree with that, I always point to the key significance of approaching reality from experiential "inside-out" first-person perspective (where at a certain stage even any distinction between inside and outside disappears). I also think that the evolutionary "OT" stage of the dualistic state is necessary and unavoidable and follows the natural lawful curvatures of development, so describing it as "evil" or "wrong" is inappropriate. But likewise, the transition to the next stages, trough transition from dualistic to nondual states, are also natural/lawful. In spite of being natural, this transition needed facilitation from higher order beings like Christ and other messengers in other traditions. This transition is metamorphic in a sense that it goes through radical transformation of cognitive structures into different forms (similar to transformation from chrysalis to butterfly), and I guess it is still an open question how the human form and humanity as a whole will go through this process. Definitely the process is fueled by esoteric inward ascending through the Holy Spirit into the state of Oneness with the Father, but as you rightly said, it should be followed by an exoteric process of transforming the material human form to be feasible for the new state of consciousness. This has not happened yet and we do not know at this point how it is going to unfold, and for those few individuals that have been able to advance into the state of Oneness esoterically, the disconnect/dissonance between the esoteric state and exoteric human form currently still exists. According to the Christian tradition, this exoteric transition needs to be so radical that it will require another direct involvement and facilitation from higher order levels ("second coming of Christ"), but we will see how it is going to unfold.

Alright, so we have arrived from a different angle at the same place at which you arrived with Cleric from the more phenomenological angle. It is the question of how the natural lawfulness, reflected in the OT pole of evolution, can be increasingly united with the lawfulness of higher cognitive modes, reflected in the NT pole, through our thinking consciousness. How can the caterpillar metamorphose through the chrysalis into the butterfly, from within us? Since reality is unified in its essence, the lawful domains are already intertwined (our experience wouldn't be coherent if they weren't) and the metamorphosis can therefore be described as the act of us becoming more inwardly conscious of how they are intertwined. We cannot rightly call ourselves 'God' in our innermost nature unless we can also be creative like the Gods are. An engineer cannot build a new bridge unless he learns how previous bridges were built.

Now, assuming there is an answer to this question of reconciling the natural and spiritual, the exoteric human form and the esoteric state (and why wouldn't there be?), the key consideration is as follows - can you imagine that this answer has already been found (through the Mystery of Golgotha)? Or, at least, the answer has already been pursued and fleshed out in significant detail? Of course we don't mean in some abstract theoretical way, but in a completely inward experiential way.

That brings us to Cleric's last questions to you as well:

Hopefully we have pinpointed something very important – how should we innerly relate to that part of the Divine which is not yet manifested within our perspective?
1/ Do we expect that manifestation as a kind of thickening of our conscious state, since we already are the Source but we just miss some of the details?
2/ Do we realize that it’s not only about filling gaps but that the geometry of our own sense of being has to be continually sacrificed, such that something of the Divine can inflow into us, which presently can’t even fit the geometry of our intuition?
...
Does it make sense to you to see prayer in this way – as continuous sacrifice of the geometry of our intuition of self, such that new levels of consciousness can manifest, which can’t presently be even conceived (by purifying our present forms of spiritual activity and intuition of self)?

You somewhat indicated a partiality for #1 above - the reconciliaton hasn't happened yet, we don't know how it will happen, and we just need to wait in expectation and see how it will unfold. But this expectation misses the crucial fact that the NT metamorphosis was one in which we become responsible for spinning our own chrysalis (or ark) - as individuals and collectives - and bringing about the unfoldment. Or, perhaps more accurately, attuning ourselves to the higher spheres in which the reconciliation has already taken place. Again, it is a matter of becoming more inwardly conscious of the way in which the levels of lawfulness already overlap and interweave. That is why the Christ impulse is synonmyous with the impulse towards greater Self-consciousness or Self-knowledge. We shouldn't assume the last 2,000 years of human civilization were a huge gap where spiritual evolution was put on pause. The esoteric has already started unfolding in exoteric forms through human culture - modern philosophy, aesthetics, and science are all ways in which the interweaving lawfulness has been progressively unveiled, albeit only in the dimmest possible way by the intellect, so far looking from the outside-in. So, with that further context, what do you make of the questions above?

[Stranger]

Alright, so we have arrived from a different angle at the same place at which you arrived with Cleric from the more phenomenological angle. It is the question of how the natural lawfulness, reflected in the OT pole of evolution, can be increasingly united with the lawfulness of higher cognitive modes, reflected in the NT pole, through our thinking consciousness. How can the caterpillar metamorphose through the chrysalis into the butterfly, from within us? Since reality is unified in its essence, the lawful domains are already intertwined (our experience wouldn't be coherent if they weren't) and the metamorphosis can therefore be described as the act of us becoming more inwardly conscious of how they are intertwined. We cannot rightly call ourselves 'God' in our innermost nature unless we can also be creative like the Gods are. An engineer cannot build a new bridge unless he learns how previous bridges were built.

Now, assuming there is an answer to this question of reconciling the natural and spiritual, the exoteric human form and the esoteric state (and why wouldn't there be?), the key consideration is as follows - can you imagine that this answer has already been found (through the Mystery of Golgotha)? Or, at least, the answer has already been pursued and fleshed out in significant detail? Of course we don't mean in some abstract theoretical way, but in a completely inward experiential way.

That brings us to Cleric's last questions to you as well:

Hopefully we have pinpointed something very important – how should we innerly relate to that part of the Divine which is not yet manifested within our perspective?
1/ Do we expect that manifestation as a kind of thickening of our conscious state, since we already are the Source but we just miss some of the details?
2/ Do we realize that it’s not only about filling gaps but that the geometry of our own sense of being has to be continually sacrificed, such that something of the Divine can inflow into us, which presently can’t even fit the geometry of our intuition?
...
Does it make sense to you to see prayer in this way – as continuous sacrifice of the geometry of our intuition of self, such that new levels of consciousness can manifest, which can’t presently be even conceived (by purifying our present forms of spiritual activity and intuition of self)?

You somewhat indicated a partiality for #1 above - the reconciliaton hasn't happened yet, we don't know how it will happen, and we just need to wait in expectation and see how it will unfold. But this expectation misses the crucial fact that the NT metamorphosis was one in which we become responsible for spinning our own chrysalis (or ark) - as individuals and collectives - and bringing about the unfoldment. Or, perhaps more accurately, attuning ourselves to the higher spheres in which the reconciliation has already taken place. Again, it is a matter of becoming more inwardly conscious of the way in which the levels of lawfulness already overlap and interweave. That is why the Christ impulse is synonmyous with the impulse towards greater Self-consciousness or Self-knowledge. We shouldn't assume the last 2,000 years of human civilization were a huge gap where spiritual evolution was put on pause. The esoteric has already started unfolding in exoteric forms through human culture - modern philosophy, aesthetics, and science are all ways in which the interweaving lawfulness has been progressively unveiled, albeit only in the dimmest possible way by the intellect, so far looking from the outside-in. So, with that further context, what do you make of the questions above?

Well, I think I already commented on this, so we go in circles.

The sacrificial process that Christ accomplished opening for us the venue of further progress, when approached from esoteric perspective, is to "crucify" our mind structures where the dualistic delusion and egoic separate self resides. This is, according to the Christian understanding, the corrupted human nature that we inherited from our ancestors since the fall of Adam. In the modern language, we inherit the corrupted dualistic mind structure genetically. That is the nature that prevents us from uniting with the Father through the Son and Spirit, so it needs to be sacrificed and transformed into a new structure of consciousness feasible for dwelling of the Trinity in us, which is a nondual cognition. "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20) This transformation is possible during our human life, but only to a certain extent, because the corrupted mind structures extend to material brain levels of our body that are very resilient and resistant to such transformation. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:40) It is only a new material human form, a new incorruptible flesh that Christ revealed in his resurrected body after full death of his human body that can fully become a dwelling and fit vessel of the Divine, a body where the nondual structure of consciousness can flourish without any resistance from the dualistic bodily mind structures. Also, Gospels do not predict any positive progress of humanity as a whole until the second coming of Christ, and on the opposite, predict degradation of humanity to the point of Antichrist taking power. They also predict that exoteric Kingdom of Heaven on Earth will only be established by Christ himself returning to Earth and resurrecting humans in new incorruptible bodies.

I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7)

"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power." (2 Timothy 3 )

"Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, 2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. 3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

5 Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? 6 And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. 7 For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness." (2 Thessalonians 2)

I already outlined my interpretation of the above Christian view based on my own spiritual experience of the resilient resistance of the egoic and dualistic subconscious mind structures to the nondual transformation, and my conclusion that human body in its current composition is not fit for the nondual state of consciousness. So, at this point, we remain in divergence. I do not believe in the possibility of exoteric transformation of human body and mind accompanied by or/and accomplished by the progress of humanity, at least not in any near future. According to my inner experience and to the Christian views, the historical process of humanity will not be a path of continuous progress, but it will go through a disruptive crisis point leading to radical exoteric transformation of the human nature that will make it fit for the egoless nondual mode of consciousness and unroot "the law of sin" from the human flesh.

So yes, in our higher cognition we can attune ourselves to the higher spheres in which the reconciliation has already taken place, and we should do it by all means during our current human life. But our corrupted body-mind structures will remain alien to such reconciliation until they will be radically transformed by a disruptive Divine intervention.

The esoteric has already started unfolding in exoteric forms through human culture - modern philosophy, aesthetics, and science are all ways in which the interweaving lawfulness has been progressively unveiled

When I say I don't believe in human progress, I meant the progress on the large scale. There definitely has been some progress in human culture, however, its effect on the human society at large has been virtually nonexistent. We can see many examples of that in history: the rich German culture created by some outstanding German individuals in science, art and philosophy did not prevent the German society from falling into the worst forms of fascism. Same process is happening now in Russia where the rich Russian culture of 19th century did not prevent the country from slipping into Putin's fascist dictatorship. Culture is a product of only advanced human individuals that constitute a small percentage of population while the rest majority remains largely unaffected and under the influence and control of government propaganda and mass culture.

[Stranger]

PS:

“Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains. ... Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold ... At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.... So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ... Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
Matthew 24

We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
1 John 5

St. John wrote that after the resurrection of Christ, so apparently, the Christ's resurrection did not release the human world as a whole from the control of the "evil one". So, how can there possibly be a progress in the world that is under the control of the "evil one"? The "evil one" of course does not want us to know that and want us to believe that the progress is possible, but that is not what the Gospels tell us.

And the Matthew 24 are the words of Christ himself. Cherry-picking some quotes from Gospels to support a certain view that contradicts with other statements in the Gospels does not work. The message in Gospels is self-consistent. Christ and the apostles never promised any progress of humanity and, on the opposite, predicted degradation of the human society at large leading to quite dramatic events at the "end of times".

We can interpret the "evil one" exoterically as a discarnate being (Demiurge, Satan) controlling the ill-minded hierarchy of discarnate and human beings, or esoterically as a force or archetype of duality in human collective subconsciousness, but either way the fact remains that the human material composition and subconscious structures remain under its complete control and will resist the spirit of the Divine Oneness until some future times. It is only high levels of human cognition that can open to the Divine Spirit, whether during human life or in its discarnate state.