AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Sep 20, 2022 1:32 am
Part of the problem is that, until we delve into the spiritual science, which is quite complex itself, we can only remain with vague exoteric explanations. Your intuition that the space-based relations, such as that of nations and geographical regions and their specialized economies, is inextricably linked with evolutionary Time-rhythms is correct. The latter are superimposed and the former could be thought of as how they are perceived in a decohered way by the intellect. These topics can get quite sensitive in our day, since they necessarily imply that we are dealing with less or more advanced evolutionary streams in various regions, serving different purposes in the holistic tapestry. But, regardless, sound logical reasoning can reach no other conclusion. The problem is when the people crying foul project
their notions of moral superiority onto these naturally differentiated phenomena of the evolutionary process. But I don't want to get too far afield with this topic, since it requires a lot of spiritual scientific background and I don't feel well-versed enough to tackle it yet.
But I am more comfortable if we narrow down on only the consumer debt issue. From what I understand, the credit-debt polarity, in terms of monetary systems which evolved in the last few millennia, is an echo of the more ancient involution into the life-death cycle, which was also the origin of Karma. That is when we began accumulating debts from our attachment to the sensory world at the expense of the spiritual world and the Gods, i.e. our creditors. Due to our deep descent born of sensuous and, later, intellectual desire, the Gods had to continue lending us their uplifting spiritual activity so we didn't harden our consciousness too far and fall out of the human evolutionary stream altogether. Since at least the time of the Old Testament, this credit-debt dynamic has become more and more conscious over the epochs. The Karmic laws previously influencing humanity from without, incarnated in human legal systems and cultural institutions in the form of financial economies.
It is no coincidence that the metaphor of debt forgiveness/redemption is so central in the scriptures, especially the NT. It speaks to something deep within the core of our being. At first, monetary systems were still tied to hard assets like gold and silver, and various other commodities, so the amount of credit-debt which could be generated was naturally capped. In the modern age, we get fractional reserve banking and 'fiat' money abstracted from all underlying assets. The U.S. dollar becomes the world's reserve currency and detaches from the gold standard. Now we have all sorts of complex credit and debt instruments which have been packaged, re-packaged, securitized, sold and resold, etc. So we are acting more consciously within the sphere of credit-debt relations, and the ideal purpose of establishing these relations would be for people to lift themselves beyond where they are at any given time, using the debt for productive ventures, so they can free up time for spiritual contemplation.
But due to our materialistic desires and thinking, the debt is mostly used to expand the consumer lifestyle more and more (it's always a little shocking to see how often my supposedly 'broke' clients drive around in super expensive cars and continue buying other luxury items). The global debt economy has exploded into unfathomable proportions. No one really knows how much 'shadow debt' is out there lurking in the depths of the global economy. We certainly cannot rely on the official numbers published by governments and central banks. They have every corrupted incentive to underreport such numbers and pretend that the current debt is serviceable, it's no big deal. I will admit that, for a while, I thought that ball of yarn would have already unraveled after the 2008 financial crisis, but 10+ years later, they managed to kick the can down the road much further than I suspected. It seems now that, especially after the pandemic, the seams are busting again and we could be in for a very rough road ahead, and it's not clear how much more private-to-public debt shifting can occur without severe inflation taking hold. We'll see what happens there.
Anyway, the connection between our rabid consumer debt spending, fueled by greed, envy, avarice, etc., and the growing Karmic debt balance of humanity and individuals is pretty clear. It is yet again a tool for awakening, which could potentially propel our thought into the spiritual heights, which goes unused, because it has been idolized into a thing-itself. All our contractual activity, our lending institutions, the courts which enforce financial rights between parties, etc. are copies of higher spiritual governance which we have dimly awakened to in human culture and therefore incarnated in these Earthly forms. And we have certainly awakened to its moral valence, as there are few things which elicit more outrage than people being cheated out of their hard-earned money. But people aren't interested in using their intelligence to dig any deeper and learn any spiritual lessons from the lending and spending habits, only using that intelligence to find ways of perpetuating it, against all odds and at great long-term cost, towards pursuing more worldly desires and accumulating more worldly treasure. People hardly have any idea that there are spiritual debts to begin with.
Before we, as individuals and collectives, have any chance of ascending into the higher worlds in full consciousness, we must make good on our spiritual debts, through creative thinking activity which can contribute to the further evolution of the Earth-organism. Yet, if one takes this view seriously and examines just how long we have been incurring these Karmic debts, it's also clear that we can never work it off with only our own localized efforts. That is where the MoG and the Christ impulse come in. He has taken the self-conscious ego-hood born of those debts and given it the capacity to become a force for selflessly creative spiritual activity, thereby redeeming them. This is why it is such an error for the 'non-dualist', mystical, 'rest in consciousness' types to forsake Western culture and its institutions, which are practically synonymous with evolving thinking, as even Mike's various illustrations unwittingly showed. What they perceive as the greatest obstacle to reunion with the Divine will actually be the greatest boon, if we make the creative effort, in humility and devotion, to bear our Cross and participate in the redemption of Thinking.
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA074/En ... index.html
Steiner wrote:This question lives as it were in the depths of the souls until Albert and Thomas: did we not take up the original sin also in our thinking? Does the intellect lead us to believe other truth contents than the real truth because the intellect has defected from spirituality? — If we take up Christ in our intellect, if we take up something in our intellect that transforms this intellect, then only it consorts with the truth, with the religious contents. The thinkers before Thomas wanted to take the doctrine of the original sin and the doctrine of the redemption seriously. They did not yet have the power of thought, the logicality for that, but they wanted to make this seriously. They presented the question to themselves: how does Christ redeem the truth of the intellect that is contradictory to the spiritually revealed truth in us? How do we become Christians to the core? Since the original sin lives in our intellect, hence, the intellect is contradictory to the pure religious truth.
Then Albert and Thomas appeared and supposed that it is wrong that we indulge in sinfulness of the world if we delve purely logically into the universalia in rebus if we take up that which is real in the things. The usual intellect must not be sinful. The question of Christology is contained in this question of High Scholasticism. High Scholasticism could not solve the problem: how can the human thinking be Christianised? How does Christ lead the human thinking to the sphere where it can grow together with the spiritual religious contents?
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In the thirteenth century, one could not yet find the Christian principle of redemption in the world of ideas; therefore, one set it against the world of revelation. This must become the progress of humanity for the future that not only for the outer world the redemption principle is found, but also for the human intellect. The unreleased human reason only could not rise in the spiritual world. The released human intellect that has the real relationship to Christ penetrates into the spiritual world.