The Philosophy of Freedom, Summarized

[Federica]

(...)

Thank you for your articulate answer, Mike. I appreciate that you offer such a clear state of your inner organization, and it's not off topic at all! I would like to respond, and I will. There is just so much that comes to mind, that I need a little time to see how to put it together in a way that hopefully remains readable : )

For now, I only want to add a note about Lou, because you mention him. Maybe you're right and his time on this forum will be soon over, but for the time being he seems to be hanging around! (With this, I don't intend to imply anything, Lou, if you are reading. It's simply an observation.)

[AshvinP]

Thank you Ashvin, all this is very relevant to me. It requires much more reflection than what I have given it by now. One thought that appears in the attempt to directly relate to each of the suggestions is that, in the same way we often refer to concepts for the sake of the explanation, while the reality of our thinking is much more involved in complex conceptual organisms (ideas) and their interrelations, in that same way desires are difficult to disentangle from each other and isolate in simple units. Desires seem complex and to overarch each other. It’s almost as if, pushing it to the extreme, there could be a life-desire (or even transpersonal) within which live more limited desires, both in time span and ‘bandwidth’. ‘Lower desires’ may be entangled in broader ones, or woven ‘transversally’, so that it’s arduous to unstitch them from that fabric. I am not completely confident in this sense, I will see if it survives a further reflection on the indications you have provided. Thank you.

Yes I would say that is accurate. Under monist and idealist abstract philosophy, we hear a lot about all is One, but there is no sense of what exactly is One and how. What physical, life, desire, and ego forces are One and how? Spiritual science takes us very deeply into those questions and gives us immanently logical answers, which are also connected with our qualitative experience of the world. It's interesting to consider human evolution - the physical body is oldest, the vital (etheric) body is next oldest, then the astral (desire) body, and the ego is youngest. If you are reading Theosophy, you will come across all these details. Yet the youngest member - the Ego/Spirit - is of the highest Divine order, and that which is responsible for metamorphosing the older members into their higher spiritual counterparts. It allows us to transmute the lower instincts into the highest virtues.

Sexual energy comes from very high up, but on passing through the genital organs it arouses sensations, excitement and the desire to get closer to each other. It is quite possible that with all these manifestations there may be absolutely no love. This is what happens with animals. At set periods during the year, they mate. Is it done with love? No, for they often tear each other apart, and with some insects like the praying mantis and certain spiders, the females eat the male. This is not love, but pure sexuality. Love begins when this energy touches other centres in man, such as his heart, his mind, his soul and his spirit at the same time as it touches his genitals. At this moment the attraction and the desire to draw closer to someone becomes aesthetic and is made full of light by luminous thoughts and feelings. No longer is the goal that of a purely selfish satisfaction where no account is taken of the feelings of the partner. Love is sexuality which has been enlarged, enlightened and transformed. Love possesses so many levels and manifestations that they cannot even be counted and classified.
...
Sexuality is a purely egocentric tendency which impels people to seek their own personal pleasure. This desire for personal satisfaction can lead to the greatest cruelty as the other person can be forgotten, whereas love, true love, thinks first of all of the happiness of the other person. Love is based on the sacrifice of time, energy and money to help the other one to blossom and develop all their capabilities. Spiritual qualities begin at the point where love dominates sexuality, where the lover becomes capable of giving something of himself for the good of the other.

Aïvanhov, Omraam Mikhaël. Sexual Force or the Winged Dragon (Izvor Collection) (p. 11). Editions Prosveta. Kindle Edition.

This is reversed in materialism, mysticism and several other modern outlooks. What came first in the evolutionary worldline is thought to be primary in some way, whether that is mindless matter or 'pure awareness' (which is basically a deep sleep or dreamy state of consciousness), while the inner life of desire and thinking is felt to be an ephemeral latecomer, a pesky addition with no existential significance. This also manifests in the ignoring, marginalizing, or outright disdain for human culture, especially as it emerged in the West, and the thinking individual who evolved from it. We hear a lot about how the 'self' and 'ego' are illusory and need to be done away with, even from materialists. It goes to show how dead thinking arrives at the exact opposite conclusions of what living reality discloses to us.

Instead, the 'latecomer' is precisely that mediating link which can spiritualize the lower instincts/desires. Indeed the life-desire we find in survival and sexual instincts is the lower Earthly manifestation of the highest spiritual enlightenment and Cosmic Love. We can find similar metamorphic connections between all the lower and higher desires, and all the various forces in general, which weave them into a holistic monist tapestry. And especially in Western culture we find expressions of the Hermetic maxim, "as above, so below", in so far as certain virtues have been cultivated which reflect lofty spiritual forces and will help us become ever-more conscious of them going forward. It reminds me of a medieval knight who gave a pledge, perhaps something like this.

Each day we must help our brethren for whom we are responsible, for one day God will say, ‘Where is thy Brother?’ Accept no reward, always be a pillar of the Temple, for all the Order holds for us is the opportunity to flee the sins of the world, to live charitably, to be penitent, and above all, to be the servant of Almighty God.

As true Templars, we must always be prepared for battle in either the temporal or spiritual realms. Our oaths require moral courage and our way of life demands dedication to our knightly ideals. The true knight is, of course, humble before the Lord and his fellow man. If a true Templar would boast about anything, he boasts in our Lord!

[Federica]

Yes I would say that is accurate. Under monist and idealist abstract philosophy, we hear a lot about all is One, but there is no sense of what exactly is One and how. What physical, life, desire, and ego forces are One and how? Spiritual science takes us very deeply into those questions and gives us immanently logical answers, which are also connected with our qualitative experience of the world. It's interesting to consider human evolution - the physical body is oldest, the vital (etheric) body is next oldest, then the astral (desire) body, and the ego is youngest. If you are reading Theosophy, you will come across all these details. Yet the youngest member - the Ego/Spirit - is of the highest Divine order, and that which is responsible for metamorphosing the older members into their higher spiritual counterparts. It allows us to transmute the lower instincts into the highest virtues.

Sexual energy comes from very high up, but on passing through the genital organs it arouses sensations, excitement and the desire to get closer to each other. It is quite possible that with all these manifestations there may be absolutely no love. This is what happens with animals. At set periods during the year, they mate. Is it done with love? No, for they often tear each other apart, and with some insects like the praying mantis and certain spiders, the females eat the male. This is not love, but pure sexuality. Love begins when this energy touches other centres in man, such as his heart, his mind, his soul and his spirit at the same time as it touches his genitals. At this moment the attraction and the desire to draw closer to someone becomes aesthetic and is made full of light by luminous thoughts and feelings. No longer is the goal that of a purely selfish satisfaction where no account is taken of the feelings of the partner. Love is sexuality which has been enlarged, enlightened and transformed. Love possesses so many levels and manifestations that they cannot even be counted and classified.
...
Sexuality is a purely egocentric tendency which impels people to seek their own personal pleasure. This desire for personal satisfaction can lead to the greatest cruelty as the other person can be forgotten, whereas love, true love, thinks first of all of the happiness of the other person. Love is based on the sacrifice of time, energy and money to help the other one to blossom and develop all their capabilities. Spiritual qualities begin at the point where love dominates sexuality, where the lover becomes capable of giving something of himself for the good of the other.

Aïvanhov, Omraam Mikhaël. Sexual Force or the Winged Dragon (Izvor Collection) (p. 11). Editions Prosveta. Kindle Edition.

This is reversed in materialism, mysticism and several other modern outlooks. What came first in the evolutionary worldline is thought to be primary in some way, whether that is mindless matter or 'pure awareness' (which is basically a deep sleep or dreamy state of consciousness), while the inner life of desire and thinking is felt to be an ephemeral latecomer, a pesky addition with no existential significance. This also manifests in the ignoring, marginalizing, or outright disdain for human culture, especially as it emerged in the West, and the thinking individual who evolved from it. We hear a lot about how the 'self' and 'ego' are illusory and need to be done away with, even from materialists. It goes to show how dead thinking arrives at the exact opposite conclusions of what living reality discloses to us.

Instead, the 'latecomer' is precisely that mediating link which can spiritualize the lower instincts/desires. Indeed the life-desire we find in survival and sexual instincts is the lower Earthly manifestation of the highest spiritual enlightenment and Cosmic Love. We can find similar metamorphic connections between all the lower and higher desires, and all the various forces in general, which weave them into a holistic monist tapestry. And especially in Western culture we find expressions of the Hermetic maxim, "as above, so below", in so far as certain virtues have been cultivated which reflect lofty spiritual forces and will help us become ever-more conscious of them going forward. It reminds me of a medieval knight who gave a pledge, perhaps something like this.

Each day we must help our brethren for whom we are responsible, for one day God will say, ‘Where is thy Brother?’ Accept no reward, always be a pillar of the Temple, for all the Order holds for us is the opportunity to flee the sins of the world, to live charitably, to be penitent, and above all, to be the servant of Almighty God.

As true Templars, we must always be prepared for battle in either the temporal or spiritual realms. Our oaths require moral courage and our way of life demands dedication to our knightly ideals. The true knight is, of course, humble before the Lord and his fellow man. If a true Templar would boast about anything, he boasts in our Lord!

Ashvin,

A further reflection on this question of moral conduct has first made clear to me that I have to, and want to, make amends to you for how, in our recent exchanges on the PoF summary, I left myself drift away in an uninspired and detrimental direction that I was only able to quit when you offered a way out. Ironically, that was not a great example of moral direction.


After that, I haven’t had much heart left to reflect on sexual energy and its transformation, but of course I will, coming across these details in Theosophy. I am currently ‘stuck’ at the introduction, not because it’s difficult, but because I have liked it so much that I have arbitrarily not resisted reading it again. For now, from the Aïvanhov quote - without the least intention to judge an author I’m not familiar with by a few words - I don’t get much more than the standard, common sense belief, or rule of conduct “sex is ok if there’s love”.


Now, in the continuation of your thoughts about materialism (where I wonder if the conversation with Mike is part of the background for both of us) I remember when I came to listen to Rupert Spira and through him, to BK, I was finding some relief in their systems, where materialism was openly opposed, not in a ‘new age’, unscientific way but in a ‘serious’, elaborated way. I had previously explored Indian and Eastern traditions that also offered a non-materialistic outlook, but with RS and BK it was happening at the core of the same Western culture that gave rise to materialism. That was the catalyst for me. Soon after first contact with their worldviews, though, I did start feeling the lack of substance right at the center of that oneness - or lack of details, as BK calls them, admitting it’s the weak part of his idealism. But naively, or wishfully, I was thinking “There is more, for sure, the details will come. There are more books to read, more debates to listen to, let’s get very clear on the framework first.” But no matter how familiar one becomes with the outlook, the details remain ever evanescent. The substance of universal consciousness remains something to intuitively rest in, or honor, or venerate, or something one can get flashes of through activities, but not something to precisely inquire, because we are veiled.


Maybe a way to emphasize an evolving continuity in these current expressions of spiritual quest that push materialism to its last stage, could be this. In the long-haul transition from unconscious oneness within Nature (before Christ) to conscious oneness from without it (future) the intermediary stages are materialism - Nature is the veil - and now modern mysticism in its various forms - we are the veil. We need to look closer at the veil, we take it closer to us, until the veil will eventually melt, so as to unify the field where conscious oneness will grow and thrive in freedom, in conscious awareness. At that point, the switch will be completed: Nature will be in us, and not we in it.


I will take the risk to share a thought that has just come. I was recently having an exchange about cesarean birth and the troubles that it may express and cause for a soul to feel wholly grounded in life. It made me think that it’s as if Christ gave humanity two things: a cesarean, abrupt birth out of Nature - which burdened humanity with the task of willingly re-act its own birth through conscious action - and the Love through which this re-birth of the Self can be accomplished. Now we are at the stage where we are pulling the cover - the veil - over our head. We are becoming one with the veil. We seek protection, we want to reconnect with Nature and rest as irresponsible, unconscious, unborn children of Nature/MAL, cradled in its mystery. In modern mysticism and analytical idealism we have found our way back to it, and some relief from stage-one materialism. From there, the task to undertake our re-birth is now at hand, and that oath can be striven for and kept, only with enough moral courage. Since you brought him to the battle of ever-more, and here, I've known of the medieval knight who is doing it.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

A further reflection on this question of moral conduct has first made clear to me that I have to, and want to, make amends to you for how, in our recent exchanges on the PoF summary, I left myself drift away in an uninspired and detrimental direction that I was only able to quit when you offered a way out. Ironically, that was not a great example of moral direction.


After that, I haven’t had much heart left to reflect on sexual energy and its transformation, but of course I will, coming across these details in Theosophy. I am currently ‘stuck’ at the introduction, not because it’s difficult, but because I have liked it so much that I have arbitrarily not resisted reading it again. For now, from the Aïvanhov quote - without the least intention to judge an author I’m not familiar with by a few words - I don’t get much more than the standard, common sense belief, or rule of conduct “sex is ok if there’s love”.


Now, in the continuation of your thoughts about materialism (where I wonder if the conversation with Mike is part of the background for both of us) I remember when I came to listen to Rupert Spira and through him, to BK, I was finding some relief in their systems, where materialism was openly opposed, not in a ‘new age’, unscientific way but in a ‘serious’, elaborated way. I had previously explored Indian and Eastern traditions that also offered a non-materialistic outlook, but with RS and BK it was happening at the core of the same Western culture that gave rise to materialism. That was the catalyst for me. Soon after first contact with their worldviews, though, I did start feeling the lack of substance right at the center of that oneness - or lack of details, as BK calls them, admitting it’s the weak part of his idealism. But naively, or wishfully, I was thinking “There is more, for sure, the details will come. There are more books to read, more debates to listen to, let’s get very clear on the framework first.” But no matter how familiar one becomes with the outlook, the details remain ever evanescent. The substance of universal consciousness remains something to intuitively rest in, or honor, or venerate, or something one can get flashes of through activities, but not something to precisely inquire, because we are veiled.


Maybe a way to emphasize an evolving continuity in these current expressions of spiritual quest that push materialism to its last stage, could be this. In the long-haul transition from unconscious oneness within Nature (before Christ) to conscious oneness from without it (future) the intermediary stages are materialism - Nature is the veil - and now modern mysticism in its various forms - we are the veil. We need to look closer at the veil, we take it closer to us, until the veil will eventually melt, so as to unify the field where conscious oneness will grow and thrive in freedom, in conscious awareness. At that point, the switch will be completed: Nature will be in us, and not we in it.


I will take the risk to share a thought that has just come. I was recently having an exchange about cesarean birth and the troubles that it may express and cause for a soul to feel wholly grounded in life. It made me think that it’s as if Christ gave humanity two things: a cesarean, abrupt birth out of Nature - which burdened humanity with the task of willingly re-act its own birth through conscious action - and the Love through which this re-birth of the Self can be accomplished. Now we are at the stage where we are pulling the cover - the veil - over our head. We are becoming one with the veil. We seek protection, we want to reconnect with Nature and rest as irresponsible, unconscious, unborn children of Nature/MAL, cradled in its mystery. In modern mysticism and analytical idealism we have found our way back to it, and some relief from stage-one materialism. From there, the task to undertake our re-birth is now at hand, and that oath can be striven for and kept, only with enough moral courage. Since you brought him to the battle of ever-more, and here, I've known of the medieval knight who is doing it.

Federica,

Thanks for offering the amends. We all have many, many of them to make going forward.

Your comments on the 'veil', which I wholly agree with, in connection with modern outlooks, reminded me of the one and only 'original' metaphors I came up with here, in a short essay. It was prompted by some comments on the first TCT thread. Since it's short, I will post the whole thing below.

re: the OAM quote - it was simply to point to this principle you referenced, where all desires (or ideal forces in general) are nested within overarching forces at ever-higher stages. When religious people say 'God is Love', or the 'Universe is Love', etc. they are dimly pointing to a reality that we can know in very precise evolutionary detail. Some day soon I am sure you will come across occult research which elaborates on how exactly the Love force has manifested itself through human involution until it came to expression in the Mystery of Golgotha.

_____________________________________________





"Owe no one anything except to love one another,
for he who loves another has fulfilled the law."
(Romans 13:8)

There is a great legal concept which comes into play when an individual starts a corporate entity. In our financial consumerist economy, many individuals take out large loans and revolving lines of credit under the name of a corporate entity. The endeavor typically starts out innocently enough - the individual is working for him or herself and wants to do everything properly, i.e. set up the proper entity, file all the proper paperwork with the state, keep the business and personal finances separate, etc. But our Western economies have been characterized by regular asset inflations and deflations over the last 120 years, and especially the last 50 years. These "boom-bust" cycles have been getting worse and worse. Inevitably, the small business owner gets caught up in the boom and does not prepare whatsoever for the bust. When it finally dawns on him that the business can no longer turn a profit (if it ever did) and his hard work is only going to pay the costs of operating and servicing debt (interest), he gets 'clever' ideas. Or, only one 'clever' idea - stop paying debts for the business, use business credit for his personal investments and expenses, and siphon off any revenues into his own "salary" from the business.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "

When the creditors inevitably descend on the business to collect what is owed, the owner simply walks away or files for business bankruptcy protection. That's where our great legal concept comes in. Creditors who are paying attention can then seek to "pierce the corporate veil" in state or bankruptcy courts. The legal theory here is that the individual began using the corporate body as an "alter-ego" for the individual and therefore should be obligated to all the business debts accrued only for personal gain. In nearly every case, the business owner has no defense here, because financial statements tell the tale. We will now perceive how this entire structure is a cultural analogy for the modern individual relationship with the corporate body of the Cosmos, i.e. the Cosmic organism to which we all belong, This connection with underlying spiritual principles is not arbitrary, but is the basis for the English common law system which undergirds our current system of financial rights and obligations. The financial economies of the world, with their respective rights for debtors and investors/creditors, is actually rooted in the Old Testament scripture (Leviticus 25).

‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me... If one of your brethren becomes poor, and has sold some of his possession, and if his redeeming relative comes to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother sold. Or if the man has no one to redeem it, but he himself becomes able to redeem it, then let him count the years since its sale, and restore the remainder to the man to whom he sold it, that he may return to his possession. But if he is not able to have it restored to himself, then what was sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the Year of Jubilee; and in the Jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his possession...

If one of your brethren becomes poor, and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. Take no usury or interest from him; but fear your God, that your brother may live with you. You shall not lend him your money for usury, nor lend him your food at a profit...

And if one of your brethren who dwells by you becomes poor, and sells himself to you, you shall not compel him to serve as a slave. As a hired servant and a sojourner he shall be with you, and shall serve you until the Year of Jubilee. And then he shall depart from you—he and his children with him—and shall return to his own family. He shall return to the possession of his fathers. For they are My servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves.'

We can see in our current financial system many reflections of the spiritual principles above, which have been preserved rather well despite the elapse of several millennia since. The basis for these principles was the fact that the land and resources were not permanently owned by any given individual, but only by God through his collective corporeal body. That is, the land and resources belonged, first and foremost, to the Cosmic organism as a whole. Every individual residing on or utilizing them only did so as "strangers and sojourners", not as permanent owners. As Goethe put it, "we are but dreary guests on the dark Earth...". So what gives us the right to claim the 'collective commons' all for ourselves? In the present day, these sorts of disputes over ownership, debts, rights, and obligations are still rampant in novel forms. But what is truly at stake here are our inner desires, feelings, and thoughts. We should perceive this analogy of socioeconomic relations to the deep spiritual realities they reflect; an analogy which marries corporeal matter and mind (psyche) through our own mediating Reason.

A "debt" is simply an obligation taken on in exchange for present goods or services to be repaid at a later date with some interest (the prohibitions against usurious interest still remain with us today, at least in theory). What does this mean in terms of the human psyche (soul-spirit)? Many spiritual traditions recognize what is called the "laws of Karma" and "karmic debt". These are naturally ordered consequences resulting from an individual's interactions with others in one lifetime, which only unfold in one of their subsequent lifetimes. An image frequently used is that of a Karmic account, ledger, or register, where all of the individual's transgressions against his fellow humans have been imprinted. One could say the human soul's incarnations, governed through the laws of Karma, serve as a school for the individual Ego's inner impulses of thoughts, feelings, and desires, so that the latter may be tamed by Thinking and motivated by conscious moral intuitions. The latter then integrate our innermost experiences with the interests of the corporate body of the Cosmos.

"Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body."

That is the individual soul's jubilee after seven times seven years, after which he can return to his rightful possession, with his karmic register perfectly balanced out. In our current age, the individual ego is veiled heavily from the Cosmic whole, as if shrouded in a thick smog of chaotic inner experiences and thoughts which cannot find their way back to a stable home. Since the dawn of the modern age in the 15th century, and especially after the proliferation of Descartes' subject/object division and Kant's corresponding noumenon/phenomenon division, the veil between the Cosmic Body and the individual's corporeal ego was reified through the modern intellect into one which is seemingly impenetrable. The modern corporeal ego then says to itself, "if the veil concealing the spiritual meaning of the world is impenetrable, then I must create a new corporate entity to hold all my karmic debt". What could be a more pleasing solution than this one for the karmic debtor who no longer perceives any Cosmic lessons to be learned in his corporeal existence?

It is no coincidence that this happens to be the solution we are actually given to every economic crisis in recent decades - shift all of your private debts to central governments and taxpayers at large. Dozens of new public agencies have arisen to backstop or otherwise hold the liability for these private debts which are completely "underwater", i.e. abstracted from the value of any underlying assets. These developments are the socioeconomic reflections of what is occurring in the relation between each individual's ego and the Cosmic body. The individual ego erects a dummy corporation to act as his alter-ego and shift all of his karmic debt burden onto this entity. In modern philosophies, this alter-ego corporation takes on many forms. Some register it with the name, "Transcendent God, LLC". Others with the name, "Blind Will, Inc." Yet others use the name, "Empty Void of Nothingness, P.C." These entities are all D/B/A's - they are individuals doing their egoic business as fictitious entities. They are heavily aliased names for the corporeal individual's own desires, feelings, and thoughts, projected into the Cosmic Body which he has cut off with an 'impenetrable' veil.

But our Cosmic and Karmic 'creditors' are paying attention to what we are doing, even if we are not paying attention to them. They will pierce our corporeal veil and hold us liable for the debts we rightfully owe to others in our Cosmic Body. We cannot simply spend and consume endlessly during the boom times and expect to walk away from the inevitable bust, hands washed of all the karmic debts we have accrued. This reality of our situation should not be frightening to us, but liberating. It means that the veil we have erected for our alter-ego is only temporary, and the Light of higher Cosmic laws than our own can still shine through our corporeal existence into the world at large. Our karmic creditors only appear to be 'chasing' us for the debts owed because we have blocked out their activity with our 'impenetrable' veils. If, instead of trying to defraud these karmic creditors, we choose to confront them openly and honestly - to thoughtfully negotiate a reasonable settlement with them - then we will find our debts will be forgiven as we have also forgiven our debtors.

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself."

[Federica]

(...)
Of course a new word/idea needs to be experienced, and to be experienced it needs to be explained. And language is part of the medium we use. So take science as an example. Paradigm shifting scientific discoveries always involves a new language. That's because the current language just doesn't have the ability to express new concepts. "Quantum", "quarks", and "quasars" for example. These new words/concepts/laws need to be explained, formalised, and understood. New math has to be created, new equipment designed and built to test the hypotheses.

Of course, you have to start with where you are in science. You have to intimately know the science up until the shift. But then, the only way forward in a paradigm shift is to leave the old behind and start thinking in a totally new way. So afterwards, the scientist's whole worldview changes. The old way of seeing things is gone. Once it is understood and accepted and seen, i.e. lived, you are in a new world.

And the inevitable resistance to the new paradigm by the establishment, as is well documented in the history of science, is precisely what we are discussing here: you can't turn the old into the new. You can't get to the new by developing the old. You have to throw away the old and embrace the new. And most people, even scientists, are not prepared to do that.

Leaving science aside and returning to metaphysics, for want of a better word, we're even more in need of new concepts. For here, we are also dealing with a paradigm change, not only in how we see the world, but also how we see ourselves. We are trying to understand the very tools we use for understanding. Ordinary language won't cut it, just as earlier scientific language is inadequate to describe quantum theory.

Most eastern spiritual systems have loads of words and concepts for what in English we just call mind. Just like scientists, these systems have created new words for a much more detailed and finer understanding about consciousness and thinking. When you learn these words and the ideas behind them, and verify them in your own experience, you are paradigm-shifting.

So I said above that language is part of the way we get to new things. It's not the only way.

Firstly, everyone has experiences that are not language-based but are experiential, such as beauty, love, the peace that passeth understanding. These words are just placeholders so that we can talk. They are experiences more than they are words. In fact I'd characterise them as experiences that happen precisely when we drop all words and worldviews. They are experiences that bring us back to who we really are. Meditation is another one of these.

These non-verbal experiences are essential to me. They ground me - well, me goes away actually. This is what vertical is for me. It's what really counts.

Secondly, there's the concept of instruction. Perhaps we are all marvellously gifted, and we could learn anything we put our minds to, but it usually doesn't work that way. You're not going to learn how to be a surgeon by reading books and then doing a bit of practice on your own. To be a good surgeon, you need to have someone to show you how it's done. Five minutes watching an expert work is better than anything you can read. On a simpler level, you show your child how to ride a bike. They just need the basics, and then they can practice themselves and get good at it. Same with driving.

And it's the same for paradigm-shifting spiritual work that takes you into the vertical. Someone, somehow, has to help you get started. They need to help you develop a sense of how unreal normal life is, at least a glimmering of what a vertical life feels like, and the ability to discriminate what works for you and what doesn't. In short, how to stop wandering in the desert and come to the land of milk and honey.

And, not to ruffle too many feathers, this is why I'm here so seldom. A forum like this is mostly just language and mind work. I admire Cleric's efforts to present exercises, but without instruction, follow-up, and feedback, it doesn't lead anywhere, at least for me. And as much as Cleric and Ashvin will tell everyone not to be lazy and do the work, I respectfully disagree. It may be different for you, but for me, consciousness is primary. My work is to rest in the Consciousness we all share. It's to remove, not to add. The ego does not really exist, but it doesn't know that. So it produces fascinating thoughts and distractions to keep itself on centre stage.

I know Lou understands this, and a few others. Like them, I think my time here on this forum will be over soon. Not because there's anything wrong with it, it's just wrong for me. And my posts seem to irritate, which is understandable - they are inappropriate / incompatible with what the forum is for.

Addition
I'd like to add that for me a spiritual system is a means to an end. That end is to develop one's consciousness. So if, for example, I managed to absorb wholly and fully everything Steiner says, and I can hold that whole system in my mind, that's not the aim. The aim is to develop that which is perceiving the whole system. As the Zen koan says, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!"

I wish everyone Love and Light.

Hey Mike,

I hope you don't mind if I add one more reply to your comments. Before I come to that, I wanted to mention that I am also (somewhat) acquainted with the teachings of Rupert Spira. For some time I have found value in them. As a side note, it’s his older videos and writings in particular that caught my attention. I think he was more authentic and consistent in those, while in recent ones he has diluted and sweetened his message, trying to make it more appealing to the many. I mention that, only to say that I can understand the value you find in that message, expressed as it is with great mastery of language. The reasons why I am not anymore following the Spira+BK worldview, are some inconsistencies and a certain lack of substance within the one consciousness. My skepticism started with some questions their system couldn’t answer coherently, and it later expanded through the conversations, reflections and experiences made possible on this forum.

Now, coming to your position and knowing what you shared about your interest in Gurdjieff, I wonder if you consider the two approaches compatible, because I think they are not, and in your views there seems to be elements of both. Or do you think, as Lou, that diversity and inclusivity of views are the ways to go? More specifically, you say:

Of course a new word/idea needs to be experienced, and to be experienced it needs to be explained.

First, I notice that you equate words and concepts, words and ideas. I think something very important is contained in this assumption or conclusion. I don’t know which one it is for you, but I just want to underscore that, if it’s an assumption, it’s really not a neutral one. For my part I have realized that there is a full vertical dimension tearing apart words on one side from concepts and ideas on the other. But it’s easy to miss it, and to consider that words and ideas are basically the same thing. I would leave on the side here the question whether new words are necessary or not in case of paradigm shift. In fact, it's not the key question. I can agree with you that in case of paradigm shifts, old words often don’t cut it and new language can help, just as new barrels are nicer for new wine. In the wine-intensive cultures I am familiar with, the sayings state exactly the opposite, but let’s drop those, let’s agree on new barrels : )

What I’d like to ask is if your idea that new barrels are like new words/concepts, comes from the view that words, concepts and ideas are the containers created by the mind, parallel to reality, to explain reality, the means by which our mind reads reality and makes sense of it. Do you mean that there is a reality (wine) and we elaborate a new conceptual paradigm, in form of new ideas/words (new barrels) that contain and organize the wine content differently than the old ones, to better make sense of it? Because if you do mean that, it’s materialism (the world on one side, and words/concepts/ideas go altogether in the mind bag, waiting be explained in terms of the world) or at the very least it's dualism (the world is the object of knowledge and we are the subject who knows it). By the when you say:

The aim is to develop that which is perceiving the whole system

you also seem to assume a dualistic perspective. But the thing is, both Spira and Gurdjieff are at odds with dualism. Therefore, if that is how you intend the barrel metaphor, some type of shift seems necessary. Either towards Rupert, and you can keep your barrels equal to both words and concepts (it’s all ego-mind stuff) but you have to abandon the subject - object distinction, and so you have to drop your idea that

in metaphysics we are also dealing with a paradigm change, not only in how we see the world, but also how we see ourselves

because for Rupert, both ourselves and the world are made of the same pure awareness-stuff.
Or you approach things more similarly to Gurdjieff and Steiner - admitting that I got a correct sense of Gurdjieff’s views. Here the dualism must go as well (the separation between us and the world is an illusion that we can unmask if we wake up) but thinking, and the Ego are not the problem, as they are for Rupert. On the contrary, thinking is the spiritual activity that brings about the reality of anything, us included. Reality and understanding are the same thing. This thing emerges continually at the conjunction of percepts and concepts, operated by thinking. Concepts are parts of the ideal fabric of reality just as much as percepts are. It’s as if we experience wine and barrels as intertwined, in a fluid and ever-changing way. Imagine a futuristic technique that, applied to any quantity and variety of wine, allows it to remain self-contained in a form that morphs continually in the shape and consistency we want it to assume. It sounds super-sensible, but actually such is the quality of thinking (not subject to sensory perception). In this scenario, words - old or new it doesn’t matter - are not the barrels, but only name tags we can put as we like on any bits of the 'morphing wine experience'. It also becomes evident that in this scenario, statements like the following make no sense:

spiritual systems have created new words for a much more detailed and finer understanding about consciousness and thinking

To summarize, my point is that, no matter which outlook we assume, there seems to be some level of unnoticed contradiction in your position, as described in your comments. Your picture contains elements of both materialism/dualism and idealism. Some adjustment seems necessary. Either you prefer to move toward Spira, or towards Gurdjieff, as described. Speaking from personal experience, it’s very easy to put all the focus on making a paradigm shift, leaving in the blind spot what we are doing with thinking along that process. In my case, only by discussions here on the forum and by carefully reading PoF, I could realize that. Otherwise, I would have probably agreed with you on most of what you are saying, about the illusory nature of the ego, and the misleading effects of egoic thinking. But to remove contradictions and confusions - as you said - someone, somehow, has to help you get started. I got, and am still getting such help here.


Another source of questions in your explanation is how you look at experience. For example there seems to be contradiction, or at least need for clarification in a statment such as:

everyone has experiences that are not language-based but are experiential

But I guess this post is already way too long as it is. I will not make it worse by elaborating on experience now. Thank you for you kind wishes! I sincerely wish you the same!

[Federica]

Mike,

Yesterday I was thief-reading (as we say in Swedish) in the Steiner archive and came across this. I wanted to include it in the post above, but I forgot. If we didn’t know they were spoken in 1917, we could think that these are today’s words.

It is dawning on many people today that materialism will not do. But what I have often referred to as man's love of ease prevents them from committing themselves to spiritual science. Yet nothing else can save human civilization from plunging into disaster. There are people who are often quite near the point of crossing the threshold into spiritual science; that they do not is basically due to indolence. It is love of ease that prevents them from making their soul receptive and pliable enough to grasp ideas that quite concretely explain the spiritual world. There are many today who enthuse in general about the mystical unity of worlds, vaguely declaring that science alone does not explain everything; faith must come to its aid. But the courage to penetrate earnestly into the descriptions and explanations of the spiritual world that lies at the foundation of the sense world, that courage is greatly lacking.

https://steinerlibrary.org/Lectures/176 ... re_04.html


Not at all suggesting that you are lazy (I don’t think you are, if you went to find and meet the pupils of Gurdjieff’s pupils) but I certainly am, and I understand the appeal of thoughts like: “I want to remove, not add”, “searching for the purest and most simple teaching” “I want to rest in consciousness, beauty, and peace”. But just as our body is made for movement and we should move it, our thinking cannot thrive in peaceful rest and deprivation of meaningful activity. This may be counter-intuitive. In my case for example, once I realized I was being turned inside-out by ‘thinking’ (negative thinking, loop thinking and the like) the idea of resting it in awareness was so welcome, and it made so much sense. But the solution to that kind of exhausting ‘thinking’ is not to put it on hold and rest it, but to make it purposeful, intentional, and aware of what it's doing through us, so that we turn it inside out, insead of getting exhausted by being turned inside out through it. At least that’s what I realized for myself.

[Federica]

Federica,

Thanks for offering the amends. We all have many, many of them to make going forward.

Your comments on the 'veil', which I wholly agree with, in connection with modern outlooks, reminded me of the one and only 'original' metaphors I came up with here, in a short essay. It was prompted by some comments on the first TCT thread. Since it's short, I will post the whole thing below.

re: the OAM quote - it was simply to point to this principle you referenced, where all desires (or ideal forces in general) are nested within overarching forces at ever-higher stages. When religious people say 'God is Love', or the 'Universe is Love', etc. they are dimly pointing to a reality that we can know in very precise evolutionary detail. Some day soon I am sure you will come across occult research which elaborates on how exactly the Love force has manifested itself through human involution until it came to expression in the Mystery of Golgotha.

_____________________________________________





"Owe no one anything except to love one another,
for he who loves another has fulfilled the law."
(Romans 13:8)

There is a great legal concept which comes into play when an individual starts a corporate entity. In our financial consumerist economy, many individuals take out large loans and revolving lines of credit under the name of a corporate entity. The endeavor typically starts out innocently enough - the individual is working for him or herself and wants to do everything properly, i.e. set up the proper entity, file all the proper paperwork with the state, keep the business and personal finances separate, etc. But our Western economies have been characterized by regular asset inflations and deflations over the last 120 years, and especially the last 50 years. These "boom-bust" cycles have been getting worse and worse. Inevitably, the small business owner gets caught up in the boom and does not prepare whatsoever for the bust. When it finally dawns on him that the business can no longer turn a profit (if it ever did) and his hard work is only going to pay the costs of operating and servicing debt (interest), he gets 'clever' ideas. Or, only one 'clever' idea - stop paying debts for the business, use business credit for his personal investments and expenses, and siphon off any revenues into his own "salary" from the business.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "

When the creditors inevitably descend on the business to collect what is owed, the owner simply walks away or files for business bankruptcy protection. That's where our great legal concept comes in. Creditors who are paying attention can then seek to "pierce the corporate veil" in state or bankruptcy courts. The legal theory here is that the individual began using the corporate body as an "alter-ego" for the individual and therefore should be obligated to all the business debts accrued only for personal gain. In nearly every case, the business owner has no defense here, because financial statements tell the tale. We will now perceive how this entire structure is a cultural analogy for the modern individual relationship with the corporate body of the Cosmos, i.e. the Cosmic organism to which we all belong, This connection with underlying spiritual principles is not arbitrary, but is the basis for the English common law system which undergirds our current system of financial rights and obligations. The financial economies of the world, with their respective rights for debtors and investors/creditors, is actually rooted in the Old Testament scripture (Leviticus 25).

‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me... If one of your brethren becomes poor, and has sold some of his possession, and if his redeeming relative comes to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother sold. Or if the man has no one to redeem it, but he himself becomes able to redeem it, then let him count the years since its sale, and restore the remainder to the man to whom he sold it, that he may return to his possession. But if he is not able to have it restored to himself, then what was sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the Year of Jubilee; and in the Jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his possession...

If one of your brethren becomes poor, and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. Take no usury or interest from him; but fear your God, that your brother may live with you. You shall not lend him your money for usury, nor lend him your food at a profit...

And if one of your brethren who dwells by you becomes poor, and sells himself to you, you shall not compel him to serve as a slave. As a hired servant and a sojourner he shall be with you, and shall serve you until the Year of Jubilee. And then he shall depart from you—he and his children with him—and shall return to his own family. He shall return to the possession of his fathers. For they are My servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves.'

We can see in our current financial system many reflections of the spiritual principles above, which have been preserved rather well despite the elapse of several millennia since. The basis for these principles was the fact that the land and resources were not permanently owned by any given individual, but only by God through his collective corporeal body. That is, the land and resources belonged, first and foremost, to the Cosmic organism as a whole. Every individual residing on or utilizing them only did so as "strangers and sojourners", not as permanent owners. As Goethe put it, "we are but dreary guests on the dark Earth...". So what gives us the right to claim the 'collective commons' all for ourselves? In the present day, these sorts of disputes over ownership, debts, rights, and obligations are still rampant in novel forms. But what is truly at stake here are our inner desires, feelings, and thoughts. We should perceive this analogy of socioeconomic relations to the deep spiritual realities they reflect; an analogy which marries corporeal matter and mind (psyche) through our own mediating Reason.

A "debt" is simply an obligation taken on in exchange for present goods or services to be repaid at a later date with some interest (the prohibitions against usurious interest still remain with us today, at least in theory). What does this mean in terms of the human psyche (soul-spirit)? Many spiritual traditions recognize what is called the "laws of Karma" and "karmic debt". These are naturally ordered consequences resulting from an individual's interactions with others in one lifetime, which only unfold in one of their subsequent lifetimes. An image frequently used is that of a Karmic account, ledger, or register, where all of the individual's transgressions against his fellow humans have been imprinted. One could say the human soul's incarnations, governed through the laws of Karma, serve as a school for the individual Ego's inner impulses of thoughts, feelings, and desires, so that the latter may be tamed by Thinking and motivated by conscious moral intuitions. The latter then integrate our innermost experiences with the interests of the corporate body of the Cosmos.

"Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body."

That is the individual soul's jubilee after seven times seven years, after which he can return to his rightful possession, with his karmic register perfectly balanced out. In our current age, the individual ego is veiled heavily from the Cosmic whole, as if shrouded in a thick smog of chaotic inner experiences and thoughts which cannot find their way back to a stable home. Since the dawn of the modern age in the 15th century, and especially after the proliferation of Descartes' subject/object division and Kant's corresponding noumenon/phenomenon division, the veil between the Cosmic Body and the individual's corporeal ego was reified through the modern intellect into one which is seemingly impenetrable. The modern corporeal ego then says to itself, "if the veil concealing the spiritual meaning of the world is impenetrable, then I must create a new corporate entity to hold all my karmic debt". What could be a more pleasing solution than this one for the karmic debtor who no longer perceives any Cosmic lessons to be learned in his corporeal existence?

It is no coincidence that this happens to be the solution we are actually given to every economic crisis in recent decades - shift all of your private debts to central governments and taxpayers at large. Dozens of new public agencies have arisen to backstop or otherwise hold the liability for these private debts which are completely "underwater", i.e. abstracted from the value of any underlying assets. These developments are the socioeconomic reflections of what is occurring in the relation between each individual's ego and the Cosmic body. The individual ego erects a dummy corporation to act as his alter-ego and shift all of his karmic debt burden onto this entity. In modern philosophies, this alter-ego corporation takes on many forms. Some register it with the name, "Transcendent God, LLC". Others with the name, "Blind Will, Inc." Yet others use the name, "Empty Void of Nothingness, P.C." These entities are all D/B/A's - they are individuals doing their egoic business as fictitious entities. They are heavily aliased names for the corporeal individual's own desires, feelings, and thoughts, projected into the Cosmic Body which he has cut off with an 'impenetrable' veil.

But our Cosmic and Karmic 'creditors' are paying attention to what we are doing, even if we are not paying attention to them. They will pierce our corporeal veil and hold us liable for the debts we rightfully owe to others in our Cosmic Body. We cannot simply spend and consume endlessly during the boom times and expect to walk away from the inevitable bust, hands washed of all the karmic debts we have accrued. This reality of our situation should not be frightening to us, but liberating. It means that the veil we have erected for our alter-ego is only temporary, and the Light of higher Cosmic laws than our own can still shine through our corporeal existence into the world at large. Our karmic creditors only appear to be 'chasing' us for the debts owed because we have blocked out their activity with our 'impenetrable' veils. If, instead of trying to defraud these karmic creditors, we choose to confront them openly and honestly - to thoughtfully negotiate a reasonable settlement with them - then we will find our debts will be forgiven as we have also forgiven our debtors.

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself."

Thanks Ashvin, interesting read, and original metaphor indeed! I don't remember other metaphors of such complexity, usually we search for them in simple objects or simple individual behaviors. This one is close to the threshold between metaphor and overarching historical idea, as in "The esoteric spaces of evolution".
I wonder how it could be interpreted from the viewpoint of other legal systems, where the creditor cannot pierce the veil with much effect, or the veil is pierced by default and the rule of law is set to exclude such unfortunate proceedings. In particular in continental Europe, the issue you describe would not work out in the same way, and even here in Scandinavia - supposed to lie midway between the Anglo Saxon and the European systems - the creditor does not take much risk in the first place, while the business owner would be much more protected in case of trial. Here DBAs would neither have much fictitious character, nor would they effectively screen uncautious or negligent business owners, because transparency is a main principle and risky business is prevented as much as possible, in various ways (banks don’t open credit lines, don't grant loans without solid securities, equity is mandatory to incorporate a business, etc.) So the individual is prevented from the risk of unduly accumulating much debt, the creditor is prevented from taking big risks, and the collective would be more lenient with the individual in the unfortunate case some debt is accrued nonetheless. Even the taxman would be benevolent. If there is a pandemic for example, it would decide not to exert certain prerogatives against failing taxpayers (businesses) in certain situations. Would there be any spiritual parallel to draw, or reflection to make with regard to this alternative approach to freedom, risk, responsibility?

[AshvinP]

Federica,

Thanks for offering the amends. We all have many, many of them to make going forward.

Your comments on the 'veil', which I wholly agree with, in connection with modern outlooks, reminded me of the one and only 'original' metaphors I came up with here, in a short essay. It was prompted by some comments on the first TCT thread. Since it's short, I will post the whole thing below.

re: the OAM quote - it was simply to point to this principle you referenced, where all desires (or ideal forces in general) are nested within overarching forces at ever-higher stages. When religious people say 'God is Love', or the 'Universe is Love', etc. they are dimly pointing to a reality that we can know in very precise evolutionary detail. Some day soon I am sure you will come across occult research which elaborates on how exactly the Love force has manifested itself through human involution until it came to expression in the Mystery of Golgotha.

_____________________________________________





"Owe no one anything except to love one another,
for he who loves another has fulfilled the law."
(Romans 13:8)

There is a great legal concept which comes into play when an individual starts a corporate entity. In our financial consumerist economy, many individuals take out large loans and revolving lines of credit under the name of a corporate entity. The endeavor typically starts out innocently enough - the individual is working for him or herself and wants to do everything properly, i.e. set up the proper entity, file all the proper paperwork with the state, keep the business and personal finances separate, etc. But our Western economies have been characterized by regular asset inflations and deflations over the last 120 years, and especially the last 50 years. These "boom-bust" cycles have been getting worse and worse. Inevitably, the small business owner gets caught up in the boom and does not prepare whatsoever for the bust. When it finally dawns on him that the business can no longer turn a profit (if it ever did) and his hard work is only going to pay the costs of operating and servicing debt (interest), he gets 'clever' ideas. Or, only one 'clever' idea - stop paying debts for the business, use business credit for his personal investments and expenses, and siphon off any revenues into his own "salary" from the business.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "

When the creditors inevitably descend on the business to collect what is owed, the owner simply walks away or files for business bankruptcy protection. That's where our great legal concept comes in. Creditors who are paying attention can then seek to "pierce the corporate veil" in state or bankruptcy courts. The legal theory here is that the individual began using the corporate body as an "alter-ego" for the individual and therefore should be obligated to all the business debts accrued only for personal gain. In nearly every case, the business owner has no defense here, because financial statements tell the tale. We will now perceive how this entire structure is a cultural analogy for the modern individual relationship with the corporate body of the Cosmos, i.e. the Cosmic organism to which we all belong, This connection with underlying spiritual principles is not arbitrary, but is the basis for the English common law system which undergirds our current system of financial rights and obligations. The financial economies of the world, with their respective rights for debtors and investors/creditors, is actually rooted in the Old Testament scripture (Leviticus 25).

‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me... If one of your brethren becomes poor, and has sold some of his possession, and if his redeeming relative comes to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother sold. Or if the man has no one to redeem it, but he himself becomes able to redeem it, then let him count the years since its sale, and restore the remainder to the man to whom he sold it, that he may return to his possession. But if he is not able to have it restored to himself, then what was sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the Year of Jubilee; and in the Jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his possession...

If one of your brethren becomes poor, and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. Take no usury or interest from him; but fear your God, that your brother may live with you. You shall not lend him your money for usury, nor lend him your food at a profit...

And if one of your brethren who dwells by you becomes poor, and sells himself to you, you shall not compel him to serve as a slave. As a hired servant and a sojourner he shall be with you, and shall serve you until the Year of Jubilee. And then he shall depart from you—he and his children with him—and shall return to his own family. He shall return to the possession of his fathers. For they are My servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves.'

We can see in our current financial system many reflections of the spiritual principles above, which have been preserved rather well despite the elapse of several millennia since. The basis for these principles was the fact that the land and resources were not permanently owned by any given individual, but only by God through his collective corporeal body. That is, the land and resources belonged, first and foremost, to the Cosmic organism as a whole. Every individual residing on or utilizing them only did so as "strangers and sojourners", not as permanent owners. As Goethe put it, "we are but dreary guests on the dark Earth...". So what gives us the right to claim the 'collective commons' all for ourselves? In the present day, these sorts of disputes over ownership, debts, rights, and obligations are still rampant in novel forms. But what is truly at stake here are our inner desires, feelings, and thoughts. We should perceive this analogy of socioeconomic relations to the deep spiritual realities they reflect; an analogy which marries corporeal matter and mind (psyche) through our own mediating Reason.

A "debt" is simply an obligation taken on in exchange for present goods or services to be repaid at a later date with some interest (the prohibitions against usurious interest still remain with us today, at least in theory). What does this mean in terms of the human psyche (soul-spirit)? Many spiritual traditions recognize what is called the "laws of Karma" and "karmic debt". These are naturally ordered consequences resulting from an individual's interactions with others in one lifetime, which only unfold in one of their subsequent lifetimes. An image frequently used is that of a Karmic account, ledger, or register, where all of the individual's transgressions against his fellow humans have been imprinted. One could say the human soul's incarnations, governed through the laws of Karma, serve as a school for the individual Ego's inner impulses of thoughts, feelings, and desires, so that the latter may be tamed by Thinking and motivated by conscious moral intuitions. The latter then integrate our innermost experiences with the interests of the corporate body of the Cosmos.

"Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body."

That is the individual soul's jubilee after seven times seven years, after which he can return to his rightful possession, with his karmic register perfectly balanced out. In our current age, the individual ego is veiled heavily from the Cosmic whole, as if shrouded in a thick smog of chaotic inner experiences and thoughts which cannot find their way back to a stable home. Since the dawn of the modern age in the 15th century, and especially after the proliferation of Descartes' subject/object division and Kant's corresponding noumenon/phenomenon division, the veil between the Cosmic Body and the individual's corporeal ego was reified through the modern intellect into one which is seemingly impenetrable. The modern corporeal ego then says to itself, "if the veil concealing the spiritual meaning of the world is impenetrable, then I must create a new corporate entity to hold all my karmic debt". What could be a more pleasing solution than this one for the karmic debtor who no longer perceives any Cosmic lessons to be learned in his corporeal existence?

It is no coincidence that this happens to be the solution we are actually given to every economic crisis in recent decades - shift all of your private debts to central governments and taxpayers at large. Dozens of new public agencies have arisen to backstop or otherwise hold the liability for these private debts which are completely "underwater", i.e. abstracted from the value of any underlying assets. These developments are the socioeconomic reflections of what is occurring in the relation between each individual's ego and the Cosmic body. The individual ego erects a dummy corporation to act as his alter-ego and shift all of his karmic debt burden onto this entity. In modern philosophies, this alter-ego corporation takes on many forms. Some register it with the name, "Transcendent God, LLC". Others with the name, "Blind Will, Inc." Yet others use the name, "Empty Void of Nothingness, P.C." These entities are all D/B/A's - they are individuals doing their egoic business as fictitious entities. They are heavily aliased names for the corporeal individual's own desires, feelings, and thoughts, projected into the Cosmic Body which he has cut off with an 'impenetrable' veil.

But our Cosmic and Karmic 'creditors' are paying attention to what we are doing, even if we are not paying attention to them. They will pierce our corporeal veil and hold us liable for the debts we rightfully owe to others in our Cosmic Body. We cannot simply spend and consume endlessly during the boom times and expect to walk away from the inevitable bust, hands washed of all the karmic debts we have accrued. This reality of our situation should not be frightening to us, but liberating. It means that the veil we have erected for our alter-ego is only temporary, and the Light of higher Cosmic laws than our own can still shine through our corporeal existence into the world at large. Our karmic creditors only appear to be 'chasing' us for the debts owed because we have blocked out their activity with our 'impenetrable' veils. If, instead of trying to defraud these karmic creditors, we choose to confront them openly and honestly - to thoughtfully negotiate a reasonable settlement with them - then we will find our debts will be forgiven as we have also forgiven our debtors.

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself."

Thanks Ashvin, interesting read, and original metaphor indeed! I don't remember other metaphors of such complexity, usually we search for them in simple objects or simple individual behaviors. This one is close to the threshold between metaphor and overarching historical idea, as in "The esoteric spaces of evolution".
I wonder how it could be interpreted from the viewpoint of other legal systems, where the creditor cannot pierce the veil with much effect, or the veil is pierced by default and the rule of law is set to exclude such unfortunate proceedings. In particular in continental Europe, the issue you describe would not work out in the same way, and even here in Scandinavia - supposed to lie midway between the Anglo Saxon and the European systems - the creditor does not take much risk in the first place, while the business owner would be much more protected in case of trial. Here DBAs would neither have much fictitious character, nor would they effectively screen uncautious or negligent business owners, because transparency is a main principle and risky business is prevented as much as possible, in various ways (banks don’t open credit lines, don't grant loans without solid securities, equity is mandatory to incorporate a business, etc.) So the individual is prevented from the risk of unduly accumulating much debt, the creditor is prevented from taking big risks, and the collective would be more lenient with the individual in the unfortunate case some debt is accrued nonetheless. Even the taxman would be benevolent. If there is a pandemic for example, it would decide not to exert certain prerogatives against failing taxpayers (businesses) in certain situations. Would there be any spiritual parallel to draw, or reflection to make with regard to this alternative approach to freedom, risk, responsibility?

These are good points. Scandinavia does appear, on the surface, to have struck a finer balance on the credit-debt polarity which permeates and fuels modern economic systems. But perhaps the imbalances are more deeply buried beneath the surface. Maybe the 'alter-ego' has been put in place beforehand in the form of a large, taxing central government to which, what would normally be large consumer debt burdens, are shifted? What sort of income and capital gains tax rates do people and businesses pay? What incentives are there for continual, freely pursued innovation? There is also the question of how dependent these countries are on the global financial system, i.e. the consumer debt habits of other nations. Systems can appear healthy in relative isolation, but they are still susceptible to the underlying consumerist cancer which is spreading, due to the fact that it is all a unified living organism. Perhaps the same risks are still there, buried deeper beneath the surface, and when the going gets tougher on the global financial stage, as it is bound to continue doing, they will become more manifest.

Overall, the holistic financial and legal system has worked towards balance, mostly despite of our own conscious efforts. It can continue to do so provided we become more self-conscious of what spiritual reality it is reflecting, i.e. the laws of Karma which overarch all laws of Nature and Culture. With knowledge of the spiritual forces at work, we can become more responsible for adapting these systems to the changing conditions, i.e. the individual progression towards inner freedom and the collective progression towards greater harmonized interests and goals, through ascent into higher worlds, thereby also bringing those conditions to greater completion. In our current state of consciousness, the global economic system is much like our life of deep sleep (will) - we have very little clue where the impulses are coming from, how they work through us, and we simply follow our worldly desires wherever they lead. It all comes down to what individuals are willing to do in terms of deepening their own Self-knowledge, which also entails the material/consumptive sacrifices we are willing to make. As long as the 'solutions' are felt to be external re-orderings of economic and social relations, which somehow alleviate the Karmic debts of their own accord, the corporeal veil remains in place.


https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/SoEcRe_index.html

In the social movement of the present day there is a great deal of talk about social organization but very little about social and unsocial human beings. Little regard is paid to that ‘social question’ which arises when one considers that the arrangements of society take their social or antisocial stamp from the people who work in them. Socialist thinkers expect to see in the control of the means of production by the community what will satisfy the needs of the wider population. They take for granted that under such control the co-operation between people must take a social form. They have seen that the industrial system of private capitalism has led to unsocial conditions. They think that if this industrial system were to disappear, the antisocial effects must also end.

Undoubtedly along with the modern capitalistic form of economy there have arisen social ills to the widest extent; but is this any proof that they are a necessary consequence of this economic system? An industrial system can of its own nature do nothing but put men into situations in life that enable them to produce goods for themselves or for others in a useful or a useless manner. The modern industrial system has brought the means of production into the power of individuals or groups of persons. The technical achievements could best be exploited by a concentration of economic power. So long as this power is employed only in the production of goods, its social effect is essentially different from when it trespasses on the fields of civil rights or spiritual culture. And it is this trespassing which in the course of the last few centuries has led to those social ills for whose abolition the modern social movement is pressing. He who is in possession of the means of production acquires economic domination over others. This has resulted in his allying himself with the forces helpful to him in administration and parliaments, through which he was able to procure positions of social advantage over those who were economically dependent on him; and which even in a democratic state bear in practice the character of rights. Similarly this economic domination has led to a monopolizing of the life of spiritual culture by those who held economic power.

Now the simplest thing seems to be to get rid of this economic predominance of individuals, and thereby to do away with their predominance in rights and spiritual culture as well. One arrives at this ‘simplicity’ of social conception when one fails to remember that the combination of technical and economic activity which modern life demands necessitates allowing the most fruitful expansion possible to individual initiative and personal worth within the business of economic life. The form which production must take under modern conditions makes this a necessity. The individual cannot make his abilities effective in business, if he is tied down in his work and decisions to the will of the community. However dazzling the thought of the individual producing not for himself but for society collectively, yet its justice within certain bounds should not hinder one from also recognizing the other truth, that society collectively is incapable of originating economic decisions that permit of being realized through individuals in the desirable way. Really practical thought, therefore, will not look to find the cure for social ills in a reshaping of economic life that would substitute communal for private management of the means of production. The endeavour should rather be to forestall the ills that can arise through management by individual initiative and personal worth, without impairing this management itself. This is only possible if the relations of civil rights amongst those engaged in industry are not influenced by the interests of economic life, and if that which should be done for people through the spiritual life is also independent of these interests.
...
But a spiritual life that has to develop apart from civil and industrial realities loses touch with life. It is forced to draw its content from sources that are not in live connection with these realities; and in course of time it works this substance up into a shape which runs on like a sort of animated abstraction along side the actual realities, without having any practical effect on them. And so two different currents arise in spiritual life ... Consider what conceptions of the mind, what religious ideals, what artistic interests form the inner life of the shopkeeper, the manufacturer, or the government official, apart from his daily practical life; and then consider what ideas are contained in those activities expressed in his bookkeeping, or for which he is trained by the education and instruction that prepares him for his profession. A gulf lies between the two currents of spiritual life. The gulf has grown all the wider in recent years because the mode of conception which in natural science is quite justified has become the standard of man's relation to reality. This mode of conception proceeds from the knowledge of laws in things and processes lying outside the field of human activity and influence, so that man is as it were a mere spectator of that which he grasps in the laws of nature ...

A spiritual conception that penetrates to the being of man finds there motives for action which ethically are directly good; for the impulse to evil arises in man only because in his thoughts and sensations he silences the depths of his own nature. Hence social ideas arrived at through the spiritual conception here meant must by their very nature be ethical ideas as well. And not being drawn from thought alone but experienced in life, they have the strength to lay hold on the will and live on in action. For true spiritual conception, social thought and ethical thought flow into one.

[Federica]

These are good points. Scandinavia does appear, on the surface, to have struck a finer balance on the credit-debt polarity which permeates and fuels modern economic systems. But perhaps the imbalances are more deeply buried beneath the surface. Maybe the 'alter-ego' has been put in place beforehand in the form of a large, taxing central government to which, what would normally be large consumer debt burdens, are shifted? What sort of income and capital gains tax rates do people and businesses pay? What incentives are there for continual, freely pursued innovation? There is also the question of how dependent these countries are on the global financial system, i.e. the consumer debt habits of other nations. Systems can appear healthy in relative isolation, but they are still susceptible to the underlying consumerist cancer which is spreading, due to the fact that it is all a unified living organism. Perhaps the same risks are still there, buried deeper beneath the surface, and when the going gets tougher on the global financial stage, as it is bound to continue doing, they will become more manifest.

Overall, the holistic financial and legal system has worked towards balance, mostly despite of our own conscious efforts. It can continue to do so provided we become more self-conscious of what spiritual reality it is reflecting, i.e. the laws of Karma which overarch all laws of Nature and Culture. With knowledge of the spiritual forces at work, we can become more responsible for adapting these systems to the changing conditions, i.e. the individual progression towards inner freedom and the collective progression towards greater harmonized interests and goals, through ascent into higher worlds, thereby also bringing those conditions to greater completion. In our current state of consciousness, the global economic system is much like our life of deep sleep (will) - we have very little clue where the impulses are coming from, how they work through us, and we simply follow our worldly desires wherever they lead. It all comes down to what individuals are willing to do in terms of deepening their own Self-knowledge, which also entails the material/consumptive sacrifices we are willing to make. As long as the 'solutions' are felt to be external re-orderings of economic and social relations, which somehow alleviate the Karmic debts of their own accord, the corporeal veil remains in place.


https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/SoEcRe_index.html

In the social movement of the present day there is a great deal of talk about social organization but very little about social and unsocial human beings. Little regard is paid to that ‘social question’ which arises when one considers that the arrangements of society take their social or antisocial stamp from the people who work in them. Socialist thinkers expect to see in the control of the means of production by the community what will satisfy the needs of the wider population. They take for granted that under such control the co-operation between people must take a social form. They have seen that the industrial system of private capitalism has led to unsocial conditions. They think that if this industrial system were to disappear, the antisocial effects must also end.

Undoubtedly along with the modern capitalistic form of economy there have arisen social ills to the widest extent; but is this any proof that they are a necessary consequence of this economic system? An industrial system can of its own nature do nothing but put men into situations in life that enable them to produce goods for themselves or for others in a useful or a useless manner. The modern industrial system has brought the means of production into the power of individuals or groups of persons. The technical achievements could best be exploited by a concentration of economic power. So long as this power is employed only in the production of goods, its social effect is essentially different from when it trespasses on the fields of civil rights or spiritual culture. And it is this trespassing which in the course of the last few centuries has led to those social ills for whose abolition the modern social movement is pressing. He who is in possession of the means of production acquires economic domination over others. This has resulted in his allying himself with the forces helpful to him in administration and parliaments, through which he was able to procure positions of social advantage over those who were economically dependent on him; and which even in a democratic state bear in practice the character of rights. Similarly this economic domination has led to a monopolizing of the life of spiritual culture by those who held economic power.

Now the simplest thing seems to be to get rid of this economic predominance of individuals, and thereby to do away with their predominance in rights and spiritual culture as well. One arrives at this ‘simplicity’ of social conception when one fails to remember that the combination of technical and economic activity which modern life demands necessitates allowing the most fruitful expansion possible to individual initiative and personal worth within the business of economic life. The form which production must take under modern conditions makes this a necessity. The individual cannot make his abilities effective in business, if he is tied down in his work and decisions to the will of the community. However dazzling the thought of the individual producing not for himself but for society collectively, yet its justice within certain bounds should not hinder one from also recognizing the other truth, that society collectively is incapable of originating economic decisions that permit of being realized through individuals in the desirable way. Really practical thought, therefore, will not look to find the cure for social ills in a reshaping of economic life that would substitute communal for private management of the means of production. The endeavour should rather be to forestall the ills that can arise through management by individual initiative and personal worth, without impairing this management itself. This is only possible if the relations of civil rights amongst those engaged in industry are not influenced by the interests of economic life, and if that which should be done for people through the spiritual life is also independent of these interests.
...
But a spiritual life that has to develop apart from civil and industrial realities loses touch with life. It is forced to draw its content from sources that are not in live connection with these realities; and in course of time it works this substance up into a shape which runs on like a sort of animated abstraction along side the actual realities, without having any practical effect on them. And so two different currents arise in spiritual life ... Consider what conceptions of the mind, what religious ideals, what artistic interests form the inner life of the shopkeeper, the manufacturer, or the government official, apart from his daily practical life; and then consider what ideas are contained in those activities expressed in his bookkeeping, or for which he is trained by the education and instruction that prepares him for his profession. A gulf lies between the two currents of spiritual life. The gulf has grown all the wider in recent years because the mode of conception which in natural science is quite justified has become the standard of man's relation to reality. This mode of conception proceeds from the knowledge of laws in things and processes lying outside the field of human activity and influence, so that man is as it were a mere spectator of that which he grasps in the laws of nature ...

A spiritual conception that penetrates to the being of man finds there motives for action which ethically are directly good; for the impulse to evil arises in man only because in his thoughts and sensations he silences the depths of his own nature. Hence social ideas arrived at through the spiritual conception here meant must by their very nature be ethical ideas as well. And not being drawn from thought alone but experienced in life, they have the strength to lay hold on the will and live on in action. For true spiritual conception, social thought and ethical thought flow into one.

I understand that the ‘stamp of a societal arrangement’ depends on the attitudes of the individuals that constitute it, rather than on its objective organization. But because these attitudes have evolved towards quite differentiated socio-economic systems, I was trying to understand, starting from the individual level, what spiritual forces are at play in this respect that would affect the balance of the debt-credit polarity, for instance. In the Scandinavian model, government debt is low, free innovation and tax are both very high, and interdependence used to be moderate, now increasing. In general, many more variables should be at play with their individual significance. I would imagine, saving and amassing, relation to time, to resources, to comfort and luxury, and many more.

But rather than to focus on one system in particular, my purpose was to gain some insights in the socio-economic outlook evoked through the metaphor, that looks so overwhelmingly complex. For example, I would see the time-based debit-credit polarity inextricably entangled with the one of space-based specialization of labor. Specialization has been gradually taken to extremes in quite univocal ways. What spiritual direction does it express, and is it unequivocally related to debt? I realize I am lacking confidence to complete any of these insights and get a unitary sense of the question of cultures and societies for the moment. Also I fail to get in which sense you state that financial systems have been working to an overall balance. Monetary economics could be seen as the major arbitrary element of imbalance that can make real economy totally decohere. But I can live with these questions a little longer, probably other topics are more beneficial for me at this point, thanks for the overview!

[AshvinP]

These are good points. Scandinavia does appear, on the surface, to have struck a finer balance on the credit-debt polarity which permeates and fuels modern economic systems. But perhaps the imbalances are more deeply buried beneath the surface. Maybe the 'alter-ego' has been put in place beforehand in the form of a large, taxing central government to which, what would normally be large consumer debt burdens, are shifted? What sort of income and capital gains tax rates do people and businesses pay? What incentives are there for continual, freely pursued innovation? There is also the question of how dependent these countries are on the global financial system, i.e. the consumer debt habits of other nations. Systems can appear healthy in relative isolation, but they are still susceptible to the underlying consumerist cancer which is spreading, due to the fact that it is all a unified living organism. Perhaps the same risks are still there, buried deeper beneath the surface, and when the going gets tougher on the global financial stage, as it is bound to continue doing, they will become more manifest.

Overall, the holistic financial and legal system has worked towards balance, mostly despite of our own conscious efforts. It can continue to do so provided we become more self-conscious of what spiritual reality it is reflecting, i.e. the laws of Karma which overarch all laws of Nature and Culture. With knowledge of the spiritual forces at work, we can become more responsible for adapting these systems to the changing conditions, i.e. the individual progression towards inner freedom and the collective progression towards greater harmonized interests and goals, through ascent into higher worlds, thereby also bringing those conditions to greater completion. In our current state of consciousness, the global economic system is much like our life of deep sleep (will) - we have very little clue where the impulses are coming from, how they work through us, and we simply follow our worldly desires wherever they lead. It all comes down to what individuals are willing to do in terms of deepening their own Self-knowledge, which also entails the material/consumptive sacrifices we are willing to make. As long as the 'solutions' are felt to be external re-orderings of economic and social relations, which somehow alleviate the Karmic debts of their own accord, the corporeal veil remains in place.


https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/SoEcRe_index.html

In the social movement of the present day there is a great deal of talk about social organization but very little about social and unsocial human beings. Little regard is paid to that ‘social question’ which arises when one considers that the arrangements of society take their social or antisocial stamp from the people who work in them. Socialist thinkers expect to see in the control of the means of production by the community what will satisfy the needs of the wider population. They take for granted that under such control the co-operation between people must take a social form. They have seen that the industrial system of private capitalism has led to unsocial conditions. They think that if this industrial system were to disappear, the antisocial effects must also end.

Undoubtedly along with the modern capitalistic form of economy there have arisen social ills to the widest extent; but is this any proof that they are a necessary consequence of this economic system? An industrial system can of its own nature do nothing but put men into situations in life that enable them to produce goods for themselves or for others in a useful or a useless manner. The modern industrial system has brought the means of production into the power of individuals or groups of persons. The technical achievements could best be exploited by a concentration of economic power. So long as this power is employed only in the production of goods, its social effect is essentially different from when it trespasses on the fields of civil rights or spiritual culture. And it is this trespassing which in the course of the last few centuries has led to those social ills for whose abolition the modern social movement is pressing. He who is in possession of the means of production acquires economic domination over others. This has resulted in his allying himself with the forces helpful to him in administration and parliaments, through which he was able to procure positions of social advantage over those who were economically dependent on him; and which even in a democratic state bear in practice the character of rights. Similarly this economic domination has led to a monopolizing of the life of spiritual culture by those who held economic power.

Now the simplest thing seems to be to get rid of this economic predominance of individuals, and thereby to do away with their predominance in rights and spiritual culture as well. One arrives at this ‘simplicity’ of social conception when one fails to remember that the combination of technical and economic activity which modern life demands necessitates allowing the most fruitful expansion possible to individual initiative and personal worth within the business of economic life. The form which production must take under modern conditions makes this a necessity. The individual cannot make his abilities effective in business, if he is tied down in his work and decisions to the will of the community. However dazzling the thought of the individual producing not for himself but for society collectively, yet its justice within certain bounds should not hinder one from also recognizing the other truth, that society collectively is incapable of originating economic decisions that permit of being realized through individuals in the desirable way. Really practical thought, therefore, will not look to find the cure for social ills in a reshaping of economic life that would substitute communal for private management of the means of production. The endeavour should rather be to forestall the ills that can arise through management by individual initiative and personal worth, without impairing this management itself. This is only possible if the relations of civil rights amongst those engaged in industry are not influenced by the interests of economic life, and if that which should be done for people through the spiritual life is also independent of these interests.
...
But a spiritual life that has to develop apart from civil and industrial realities loses touch with life. It is forced to draw its content from sources that are not in live connection with these realities; and in course of time it works this substance up into a shape which runs on like a sort of animated abstraction along side the actual realities, without having any practical effect on them. And so two different currents arise in spiritual life ... Consider what conceptions of the mind, what religious ideals, what artistic interests form the inner life of the shopkeeper, the manufacturer, or the government official, apart from his daily practical life; and then consider what ideas are contained in those activities expressed in his bookkeeping, or for which he is trained by the education and instruction that prepares him for his profession. A gulf lies between the two currents of spiritual life. The gulf has grown all the wider in recent years because the mode of conception which in natural science is quite justified has become the standard of man's relation to reality. This mode of conception proceeds from the knowledge of laws in things and processes lying outside the field of human activity and influence, so that man is as it were a mere spectator of that which he grasps in the laws of nature ...

A spiritual conception that penetrates to the being of man finds there motives for action which ethically are directly good; for the impulse to evil arises in man only because in his thoughts and sensations he silences the depths of his own nature. Hence social ideas arrived at through the spiritual conception here meant must by their very nature be ethical ideas as well. And not being drawn from thought alone but experienced in life, they have the strength to lay hold on the will and live on in action. For true spiritual conception, social thought and ethical thought flow into one.

I understand that the ‘stamp of a societal arrangement’ depends on the attitudes of the individuals that constitute it, rather than on its objective organization. But because these attitudes have evolved towards quite differentiated socio-economic systems, I was trying to understand, starting from the individual level, what spiritual forces are at play in this respect that would affect the balance of the debt-credit polarity, for instance. In the Scandinavian model, government debt is low, free innovation and tax are both very high, and interdependence used to be moderate, now increasing. In general, many more variables should be at play with their individual significance. I would imagine, saving and amassing, relation to time, to resources, to comfort and luxury, and many more.

But rather than to focus on one system in particular, my purpose was to gain some insights in the socio-economic outlook evoked through the metaphor, that looks so overwhelmingly complex. For example, I would see the time-based debit-credit polarity inextricably entangled with the one of space-based specialization of labor. Specialization has been gradually taken to extremes in quite univocal ways. What spiritual direction does it express, and is it unequivocally related to debt? I realize I am lacking confidence to complete any of these insights and get a unitary sense of the question of cultures and societies for the moment. Also I fail to get in which sense you state that financial systems have been working to an overall balance. Monetary economics could be seen as the major arbitrary element of imbalance that can make real economy totally decohere. But I can live with these questions a little longer, probably other topics are more beneficial for me at this point, thanks for the overview!

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

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?
...
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.