Ratatoskr wrote: ↑Mon May 03, 2021 1:04 am
Interesting. I always thought that the essence of Christianity was :
"(...) unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." But maybe that's just my improper cognitive perception.
When taken in isolation, it's common to project interpretations to words that best suit our own inclinations. A very sweet tasting interpretation of the above is that the Christ was suggesting we should be ignorant as children, mood-swinging, erratic, carefree and occupied entirely with play. The scriptures only make sense if we can encompass them as something whole. Otherwise what do we do with other verses such as
"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect"? Was the Christ contradicting himself? Or there are other qualities of a child which he was referring to? If we consider the purity of a child, innocence, openness, eagerness to learn and develop, humility and reverence towards what's wiser and more loving than it, we arrive at something which is in complete harmony, and is actually the prerequisite, for entering the Kingdom of Heaven and its coming to Earth.
Ratatoskr wrote: ↑Mon May 03, 2021 1:09 am
What is difficult to digest is that it seems that you consider other people's experiences of higher order realities (which doesn't resemble anthroposophical model) as "flaws on the mirror" which need to be removed in order for an individual to properly cognize the correct model of "spiritual structure of man".
Let's consider something more concrete in order not to be lost in generalities. The concept for the soul organs (the so called chakras) is known from the most ancient times. It has been largely lost for a long time but it's now reemerging. Unfortunately most of what we find in popular literature today (primarily New Age-like materials) is quite abstract. The organs are described as colorful blobs along the length of the body, some characteristics are given but all this remains very abstract. In the very similar way Astrology has become something utterly abstract. It's spoken about planets, constellations and their influence on soul life but there's no clear experience how exactly is this possible.
Real experience of the soul organs has little to do with pleasantly felt blobs of light along the spine. As long as the soul organs are thought of as something that influences us in some unknown way, similar to planets and constellations, we have only very dim intellectual notion of them. We approach real understanding of the organs when we can attain to proper inner perception of the way our spiritual, cognitive activity is being shaped and restricted by our organization. For example, as long as our head organ is not tuned we are lost in dual reflections that we grasp intellectually. When the larynx organ is tuned our whole thinking life becomes a panoramic experience of the way our spiritual activity works through the hierarchy of concepts on the world of perceptions. When the workings of the heart organ are tuned a whole domain opens up which relates us with the soul world. Our living relations with family, friends, the social organism and higher beings is unveiled.
This is not some simple linear progression. It's because of the limitations of language that we have no choice but describe things sequentially. These organs work together at all times, as if one within the other. Like strings of a musical instrument they must be attuned and brought into harmony from within. This is a never ending process achieved only gradually. The more we do this, the more our inner life expands as if in a completely new dimension, a new axis of depth of consciousness. If the message in the essay in the beginning of this thread is grasped, one can already get some intuition about the direction of this axis. In what is considered 'normal' inner life of today, we're practically being tossed and thrown around by the events of the sensory world. Our soul life is to a large extent simply a semi-automatic
reaction to the sensory flow. How many people today can concentrate their thinking on a single image and quietly hold on in perfect stillness for at least a minute? It's not that this is so hard - it's simply not being sought after. Our external civilization values other things much more highly. Riding a bicycle is also something that may look impossible initially, yet we have motivation to learn that skill and we keep exerting effort until we succeed.
Through inner transformation, our soul life metamorphoses from erratic buzzing of thought, tossed around by perceptions and ripped apart by conflicting desires, into an orderly hierarchical spiritual organism where personal, social and Cosmic spiritual life flow together.
I would agree with the accusations of superiority if the schools of higher development were saying "We are God-chosen, we have the power, we hold the truth, you should believe it and obey it." But there's nothing of this sort today (please don't bring dark ages Christianity into the picture). What we are speaking here is something the logic of which can be perfectly well understood by unprejudiced thinking. Not only that but methods are freely given for the tuning and development of our inner nature. The logic of these methods can also be perfectly well understood by thinking even before attempting them.
Why are things like the above seen as totalitarian, demeaning, offending? Isn't it completely obvious that man's disorderly life is at the root of all suffering? He has found how to satisfy the tastes of the physical body to excess but has never cared to learn what kind of nourishment the soul and the spirit require. While man is preoccupied with his physical pleasures, his soul and spirit are deprived, hungry, thirsty, ripped apart by foreign forces. Man is not only a body with flat mind. His being is much deeper and in direct interrelation with the forces of the Cosmos. We need to get to work and refine, tune, perfect this deep structure because all problems stem from the fact that man is a
slave to the unknown, contradictory and often hostile forces within his depths. If things like these are rejected, seen as offending, it's only because one still clings to the utopian dream that everything will be fine if they simply follow their desires in peace. And what have been people doing for so many thousands of years? Haven't they done exactly that - allowing free reign of their desires without any question for their origins?
Things are very simple actually. They are as simple as the fact that obesity is overcome through proper nutrition and exercise. Things become difficult and complicated only when people want to eat to excess and lay around all day, while staying fit and healthy. As trivial as it seems, it's the actual state of affairs of humanity. People don't want to question, let alone sacrifice, their destructive habits. They want to keep them and this forces them to project the blame for the pity state of humanity to all kinds of external causes. This forces them to search for philosophies (and there's no shortage of them) that lull them to sleep and explain how one can do whatever they want, how the truth is whatever one wants it to be and so on. In other words they offer the next sweet tasting pill for losing weight, the next hi-tech exercise belt that is supposed to melt away the fat around the waist while we watch TV and so on.
