Shaibei wrote: ↑Mon Feb 21, 2022 5:45 pm I would happily bring you the article in English but I do not find it in the archive
. I recommend that you use Google Translate for the article in German:
http://anthroposophie.byu.edu/aufsaetze/l219.pdf
I may do that. But the problem, as usual, is I have no idea whether you are genuinely trying to understand what Steiner is claiming or not... if anything I write about his claims will be read fairly. For ex., are you willing to accept, for the sake of argument, and for the sake of understanding Steiner's claims (not accepting them as correct), that Christ incarnate actually 'fulfilled the law and the prophets'? If that central claim of esoteric Christianity cannot even be adopted for the sake of understanding, then I must conclude the critiques are only motivated by sympathies for Jewish mysticism over and above what you feel to be an intrusive force of esoteric Christianity.
I notice you asked Cleric about Kabbalah before, he responded, and I don't see a response from you. Perhaps you want to revisit that now. First he addressed the accusation that Steiner claims to "know everything" and there is "nowhere left to go" for him, which was brought up again by you on this thread.
Steiner wrote:It would be well, if especially from our Anthroposophical standpoint, as I have often told you, if it were recognised consciously and thoroughly, that even what is said now, even what we acquire as ever such advanced knowledge about Spiritual things, that must not be grasped as a sum of absolute dogmas. We must be quite clear that those who come after us, in future times, will see greater than we ourselves can. On this rests the true Spiritual evolution of mankind, and everything of a hindering nature in the Spiritual progress of mankind rests finally on the fact that human beings will not admit this. They like to have truths presented to them, not as the truths for one definite epoch of time, but as absolute timeless dogmas.
Then Kabbalah:
Cleric wrote:You are correct. I have very general idea of Kabbalah. I can say that I've learned enough to see how in its depths it is in complete harmony with what we can experience today through the higher stages of consciousness. I emphasize on the depths because unfortunately the Kabbalah is very misused today. Just as Astrology, in the wider circles, it is largely reduced to purely intellectual framework for divination. One can read whole books on Kabbalah today that speak in purely psychological manner without a single word of the fact the Sephiroth are actual domains of the Spiritual World.
For me it is enough to feel the deep reverence for this ancient knowledge of the Hebrew sages and see how they developed it as prophetic science of what today can be experienced in full consciousness. My diagrams in the Deep M@L post practically contain hidden in themselves the Tree of Life. It's the same Depth structure.
The four eons correspond to the four Worlds, which are connected with 9 hierarchies (man being the tenth) of spiritual beings.
Yesod is related to the Astral world, the world of Imaginative consciousness, the Moon sphere (mentioned here). Tiphereth is the Sun sphere, the Spiritual World, Devachan - world of Inspirative consciousness. Kether encompasses the outer spheres, world of Intuitive consciousness.
I've absorbed from the Kabbalah just enough for myself. As said, especially the modern treatments easily become lost in intellectual abstractions. It's very difficult to make transition to higher consciousness in meditation while holding these dead structures. It's still possible to meditate deeply on the Sephiroth because they point at spiritual realities. But the truth is that most of what we see in our age as Kabbalah is the product of entirely intellectual fabrications.