Lou Gold wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 8:40 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 7:53 pm
Lou Gold wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:53 pm
I do not say, "I agree spiritual science is great" or "I disagree spiritual science is great". I say that I celebrate that there are many ways in the evolutionary process. Some are indeed better or worse, which will be born out by results in world such as reduction of suffering, increased healing, repair, renewal, etc, etc. The process involved is vast. Yes, I've seen and participated in a bit, seen glimpses, seen results. And, yes, I'm grateful for the ways I've been guided and made passages in this process.
The materialist can say the exact same thing and come up with plenty of good results which came from materialistic thinking. And when you respond to them with negative results, they can say, "yeah that's the short term cost of building a civilization with modern technology, but just wait and see how all these things are addressed by further advances in material technology". And there's not a single thing you or I could ever say to anyone who is thinking this way which would persuade them that there are cracks in the foundation which need to be paid attention to and investigated.
Eventually, they would end up like Jim, who actually comes to the idealist forum and says, "I simply can't understand what you are writing to me... it's all mostly unintelligible or irrelevant, so I won't bother". You take a similar route, Lou - "it's all philosophical stuff and I'm not a philosopher, just a storyteller who lives and lets live". Yet you continue to post your own narratives on all these topics whenever the opportunity arises. So if some are indeed better or worse than others, how do we
figure out which ones? We can't simply judge things by their surface-level results, for reasons already mentioned. Neither can we judge them by ancient results which were only possible
without supporting the institutions of modern civilization.
Our evolved logical reasoning and scientific cognition gives us the means to evaluate these things objectively in ways that were never possible even 250 years ago. It builds the optimal bridge between the perceptual world we are all familiar with and the supersensible worlds which we have only known dimly as external revelation and the abstract theories of philosophers, theologians, and psychologists. We need to sit up and take notice of that fact, that momentous transition which has occurred, and see into what future it is taking us. That is, if we are actually interested in figuring out which approaches to the higher worlds are better or worse than others.
I don't need to know the cosmology of people who believe a mountain is sacred in order to know that they will treat it better than those who believe that it is a pile of rocks. Similarly, I don't need to know the details of Spiritual Science to appreciatively receive whatever fine results it can produce. Nor, would I feel that they detracted from or derailed the results I witness along my way. All I can say to you and others is please share the practical results of your ways so that all beings may benefit.
The above basically assumes the mountains, as they appear and function now on the physical plane, are their full spiritual potential. What you are conveying is a form of spiritism which is, in fact, the
last phase of materialism. When the materialist runs out of room to explore the physical, spatially and conceptually, he must start exploring the spiritual in terms of physical processes. He must only look for the spiritual in what is already familiar to him, perceptually and conceptually, in the physical world. The spiritual scientist does not do this - he looks for the spiritual in what is unfamiliar to him,
unsuspected by his current perceptions and concepts on the physical plane. He orients towards the pole of future becoming which simply cannot be mechanically derived from past perceptions and concepts, no matter how ancient, intelligent, and wise they are. Scientific spiritual thinking has a burning desire for the world's appearances to be raised up through our own creative activity, our psychospiritual technology which can also interface with physical technology, and thereby bring about something brand new in the course of Cosmic evolution.
Now you are probably tempted here to have the thought, "ok well this has now become philosophy and science above my paygrade, and it's simply not my path." That's fine, but I would ask anyone who has such a thought to at least be honest with themselves and reflect on whether they have ever
given themselves the opportunity to integrate the spiritual thinking path, or whether such a thought closes off all such opportunities. I can think of a few times you have presumed [incorrectly] to understand what spiritual science claims, but not a single time you have asked questions about it with genuine curiosity and interest. Is this humility, curiosity, wonder, imagination, a burning interest in our future becoming? It doesn't seem like any of those things to me. Just as the materialist passively waits for physical technology to save the day, to cleanse all the oceans, rivers, forests, etc. of their impurities introduced by humanity, the spiritist passively waits for humanity to stop interfering with Nature and then expects everything will be returned to spiritual glory.
Since when did a few people treating a mountain well become a lofty goal of humanity? No matter how little we physically interfere with the mountain, that will not stop it from rigidifying and disintegrating in the course of the Earth's evolution. So how can the vast majority of people who believe it is only a pile of rocks come to
know that it is something much more noble and will be revealed as such through their own spiritual activity? Here I don't mean "activity" like ingesting substances so we are flooded with 'spiritual' perceptions, as Cleric discusses in
this post, but actually making an effort to attune our spiritual organization with the higher worlds and beings who art the natural world and all its kingdoms, including our own inner experience. It is about reaching a deeply shared understanding and harmonized goals amongst ourselves, which will only come through a shared understanding with the higher beings within whom humanity's consciousness is nested. It shouldn't be about comparing spiritual scorecards and adding up the superficial results to see who is more 'advanced' or 'virtuous' or 'spiritual' than whom.
We can point to all sorts of outward manifestations of spiritual scientific results, like biodynamic agriculture, honey bee farming with spiritual understanding, imaginative education for children, etc. But the real inner manifestations of the results, not just of Steiner's spiritual science, but of Western initiatic science in general, won't even be noticed as "results" until an inversion is reached through higher development of scientific consciousness. Then it becomes more and more clear how our
inner desires, feelings, thoughts will have the most practically beneficial results for ourselves individually, humanity as a whole, and the Earth herself. Our conscious relations with the higher worlds become the most practically important of all. All the truly lasting and significant outer, physical manifestations will only follow from the inner achievements of human scientific cognition, in concert with higher Centers of consciousness. I would much rather share a common Ideal with people on this forum to actually
live and breathe in the higher worlds, an Ideal we surely have not reached yet, than to signal our 'virtues' by endlessly reciting poetry and such which dwells on the bygone beauty of nature and other peoples' purely physical achievements.