AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 9:13 pm
Great reflections! The above is a critical point to consider. This faith-based approach to our modern 'scientific' understanding becomes crystal clear as we cross the inversion horizon of the outer-inner threshold. There is the positive faith in all the shallow theoretical 'explanations' for various phenomena, and also the negative faith in the dogma that 99.9% of all phenomena we experience simply have no lawful explanation, will be explained in some indefinite future time (even though we can't currently imagine how this physical explanation may arise and are not making any progress towards it), or can only be explained vaguely with concepts such as, "it helped us survive millions of years of ago". We are all familiar with the big ones like the negative faith in the origin of life or consciousness, but we will also find this extends to practically every aspect of our soul experience. Most of that experience is simply felt as not needing any scientific explanation, for ex. how do we meet people and form various social relationships in life? It's really remarkable how little wonder and curiosity is left for these sorts of relationships which structure vast amounts of our daily experience.
Related to this faith-based approach to secular science, I was trying to remember where I had seen the Bayesian probability analysis employed before. Then it occurred to me that the religious fundamentalists also use it to 'prove' the historical events of the Gospels, such as the existence, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ Jesus! They use it to say that the most probable explanation for various isolated historical facts - like the women at the tomb, the conversion of Saul to Paul, the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to various people, etc. - is that they actually happened. So we see, inquiry into the Christ events has been sucked into the materialistic habit of thinking which cuts itself off from the depth structure of spiritual activity, just like the rest of modern world-conceptions. The only option is to then bring down Cosmic realities to the shape and size of intellectual thoughts and historical probability 'proofs', i.e. to recapitulate the Fall, rather than to lay hold of the Christ impulse towards the rebirth and ascension of intellectual thinking into its Cosmic reality, thereby redeeming and inverting the Fall.
Just as Federica said, often we locate the dogmatic, faith-based thinking in everyone else but we never think to look for it in ourselves. We end up criticizing others as an unconscious means of expressing what we don't like about our own horizontal thinking and our own soul tendencies which reinforce it. These are very important soul dynamics for us to pay attention to and can really help develop our living thinking. We then realize that the atheists/skeptics/mystics criticize the fundamentalists and similar spiritualists when they are both playing the exact same dogmatic game by the same horizontal thinking rules. This was already happening in Steiner's day and he could anticipate how it must continue to develop further in times to come, especially within the sphere of Christianity. The below passage could have just as well been written by Anthony!
Steiner wrote:Because men are becoming more and more individual, an attempt should be made for anyone to describe his inner experiences completely freed from dogma to another, in such a way that the latter might also be able to develop his own free life of religious thought as an individual. It is a fact that dogmatic religion, the fixed dogmas of the religious confessions, will kill the religious life of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. So that a fresh start from this age must consist in making it clear that in the first centuries of the Christian era this or that may have been adapted to man's development at the time, and that in the following centuries something different is needed. Also that there are different religions. We must try to make the essential nature of the different religions intelligible, to make clear different aspects of the Christ-conception. In this way we bring to every soul what it requires for its particular deepening. But we do not ourselves intervene in the moulding of the soul; we leave the soul, especially in the sphere of religion, its own liberty of thinking and scope to unfold this liberty.
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So we find the clash of sharp conflict between germinating liberty of thought and the principle of authority which works into our times like a hang-over from the past. And there is a passion for dulling the consciousness and for self-deception where belief in authority is concerned. In our time putting faith in authority has become so great and so intensified that under its influence people are losing their power of judgment. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch they were endowed by nature with sound understanding; now they must acquire it, develop it, and their belief in authority holds them back from doing so. We are becoming bound hand and foot to our belief in authority. Only think how helpless human beings appear when compared to the unreasoning animal creation! How completely the animal is guided by instincts which lead it in a sound way even from sickness back to health; whereas modern man fights against sound judgment in this respect and submits himself entirely to authority. He has very little wish to acquire discernment for healthy conditions of living, although it is true that praiseworthy efforts are made in this direction by various societies and institutions. But these efforts need to be very much intensified; above all we must realise that we have increasingly to contend with our own trust in authority, and that whole theories are being built up which in their turn will become the basis of convictions only serving to uphold belief in authority.
In medicine, in law and in every other sphere people declare themselves from the outset incompetent to judge, and accept what science tells them. The complications of modern life make this understandable. But under the pressure of authority we shall become more and more helpless. And systematically to build up this force of authority, this habit of authority, is actually the principle of Jesuitism. And Jesuitism in the Catholic religion is only a special instance of other less noticeable performances in other directions. It begins in the sphere of ecclesiastical dogma with the tendency to uphold papal authority projected over from the fourth post-Atlantean period into the fifth where it can do no good. But the same Jesuitical principle will gradually transfer itself to other spheres of life. In a form hardly differing from the Jesuitism of dogmatic religion, we already find it in medical circles where a certain dogmatism strives after more power for the medical profession. This is typical of Jesuitical aspiration everywhere; and it will grow stronger and stronger. People will find themselves more and more tied down by what authority imposes upon them.
Except Steiner doesn't only criticize dogmatic thinking but also illustrates methods to us by which we can liberate ourselves from dogma of all sorts, secular and religious, and start swimming with our thinking to the Center of the pool, where our innermost individuality can shine through our spiritual activity. Then we are not only on a path to liberation from the dogma which serves to justify our lower conditioning, but on a path of liberating the Christ within from that dogmatic conditioning as well.
Ashvin, it's hard to believe how you always manage to find not just a relevant quote, but one that speaks exactly to the ongoing discussion, bringing it a step further!
Indeed, this growing dependence on authority that Steiner mentions is an observable phenomenon in our societies. I think it's an attempt to alleviate responsibility, in every aspect of life. We are challenged by the anxiety of diminishing control over our thinking (we don’t understand) feeling (we’re victims of our sense-life and soul-life) and will (“things just exist around us, independently of our own activity” as you earlier said) and so we welcome authoritarian dogmatic profession and/or initiative to come to our rescue and relieve us from the pressure of our human responsibilities.
A linguistic example that reflects this tendency comes to mind. It might be limited to Swedish, not sure, however instead of saying “I have a condition, or illness” I am hearing people say more and more commonly: “I have a diagnosis”. This one refers to medical authority, but we can find equivalents in every domain of life, science at large, politics, law, finance, religion, education, grocery shopping...