Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Feb 06, 2023 11:57 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Mon Feb 06, 2023 11:14 pm
The question is how to get a clear idea of where the compulsions reside and how to differentiate from them.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 2:27 pm
All of this would be revealed to you (...) if you took even the first steps to gradually differentiate your cognitive force from the passion-fueled intellectual templates you are currently merged with. But that requires a spirit of humility and willing sacrifice for Cosmic aims.
Exactly, which brings us back to the issue so well described by St. Paul from Ep. to Romans that I quoted so many times. He described it as the "law of sin" in the "flesh", but at our current stage of knowledge what is our understanding of it, where does it resides, what are the lawful structures that support and maintain this "law of sin" running and acting? Modern psychology would say that it resides in "subconsciousness" and developed through early stages of child cognitive development, modern evolutionary biology would explain it by inheriting survival mechanisms from our ancestors. Buddhists would say that these are the karmic patterns residing in so-called "alaya-vijnana", which is a sort of collective subconsciousness giving rise to both sense perceptions of the world and our compulsive thought and feeling patterns.
But do we now know any better where these compulsive patterns reside, how they act, and what are the practical ways to deal with them as we grow towards the higher levels of cognition? The Anthroposophic perspective gives beautiful and optimistic prospects of the spiritual progress of human form laying ahead of us. But is the hope that these patterns will eventually dissolve and lower cognition will be fully harmonized with higher cognition has any factual evidences from our inner experiences, or is it only a wishful thinking? We indeed can "gradually differentiate our cognitive force from the passion-fueled intellectual templates we are currently merged with" and cease to be completely merged with them, but does it make them to completely go away? Are there any Anthroposophic practitioners who attained a full freedom from compulsive thoughts and emotional reactivity rising from our human subconsciousness?
Based on my own experience, I practiced mindfulness and nondual cognition development for years, yet I still experience these compulsive thoughts and emotional reactivity regularly, they did become weaker over time and with mindfulness I can most of the time deal with them and keep them under control, but they still persist. So, if the original intention would be to become completely free of them, then I have to admit that I failed and can only say with St. Paul "O wretched man that I am! "
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7)
I really don't want to get into any scriptural debate here, since such a thing cannot possibly be fruitful with the intellect. What follows won't be understood in any living sense until the phenomenology of real-time cognition is also experienced, because that is the key to understanding everything exoteric, let alone esoteric and occult. But since it was mentioned, I will share a
tiny morcel of the Anthroposophical perspective on that verse. Much of these deep spiritual truths are contained in one form or another right there in Steiner's first and most important work (according to his own assessment), PoF. That is the beauty of it - we can arrive at the truths of ancient spirituality completely independent of the scriptures through a phenomenology of cognition, an inner examination of our own thinking-perception hysteresis rhythm, and then we return to scripture to find these same inner truths were expressed in the richest, most heartfelt spiritual way. Owen Barfield did a similar thing through a phenomenology of language transformations, which of course reflect the evolution of cognition.
Owen Barfield, Philology and the Incarnation wrote:And so, if it were possible [and of course it is not] that a man should have pursued the kind of studies I have been speaking of, without ever having read the gospels, or the epistles of St Paul, without ever having heard of Christianity, he would nevertheless be impelled by his reason to the conclusion that a crucial moment in the evolution of humanity must have occurred certainly during the seven or eight centuries on either side of the reign of Augustus and probably somewhere near the middle of that period. This, he would feel, from the whole course of his studies, was the moment at which the flow of the spiritual tide into the individual self was exhausted and the possibility of an outward flow began. This was the moment at which there was consummated that age-long process of contraction of the immaterial qualities of the cosmos into a human center, into an inner world, which had made possible the development of an immaterial language. This, therefore, was the moment in which his true selfhood, his spiritual selfhood, entered into the body of man. Casting about for a word to denote that moment, what one would he be likely to choose? I think he would be almost obliged to choose the word incarnation, the entering into the body, the entering into the flesh.
And now let us further suppose that our imaginary student of the history of language, having had up to now that conspicuous gap in his general historical knowledge, was suddenly confronted for the first time with the Christian record; that he now learned for the first time, that at about the middle of the period which his investigation had marked off, a man was born who claimed to be the son of God, and to have come down from Heaven, that he spoke to his followers of “the Father in me and I in you,” that he told all those who stood around him that “the kingdom of God is within you,” and startled them, and strove to reverse the direction of their thought — for the word metanoia, which is translated “repentance” also means a reversal of the direction of the mind — he startled them and strove to reverse the direction of their thought by assuring them that “it is not that which cometh into a man which defileth him, but that which goeth out of him.”
Lastly, let me further suppose that, excited by what he had just heard, our student made further inquiries and learned that this man, so far from being a charlatan or lunatic, had long been acknowledged, even by those who regarded his claim to have come down from heaven as a delusion, as the nearest anyone had ever come to being a perfect man. What conclusion do you think our student would be likely to draw?
Well, as I say, the supposition is an impossible one, but it is possible — I know because it happened in my own case — for a man to have been brought up in the belief, and to have taken it for granted, that the account given in the gospels of the birth and the resurrection of Christ is a noble fairy story with no more claim to historical accuracy than any other myth; and it is possible for such a man, after studying in depth the history of the growth of language, to look again at the New Testament and the literature and tradition that has grown up around it, and to accept [if you like, to be obliged to accept] the record as an historical fact, not because of the authority of the Church nor by any process of ratiocination such as C. S. Lewis has recorded in his own case, but rather because it fitted so inevitably with the other facts as he had already found them. Rather because he felt, in the utmost humility, that if he had never heard of it through the Scriptures, he would have been obliged to try his best to invent something like it as an hypothesis to save the appearances.
And that is at the very heart of the Christian telos -
saving the appearances, in a literal sense. As St. Paul says, "
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body." These esoteric truths are hiding in plain sight, as it were, but the intellect will continue to selectively ignore what doesn't already fit into its prepackaged narrative and only pay attention to that which does.
So back to PoF - through a careful phenomenology of thinking-perception, Steiner sets out how our intuitive thinking activity, working through the instrumental constraints of the psycho-physical organization, allows for our ego-consciousness to express its will in response to concepts-ideas which serve as the motives for our moral action. That is, it is precisely through the reciprocal
cooperation of essential thinking activity and the psycho-physical organism that we are able to become spiritually free beings, as the latter allows the former to become conscious of itself. Again, none of this is abstract conjecture or faith-based arguments - it only takes a careful look at the phenomenology of our most intimate thinking activity. We saw how Max and Federica performed this same phenomenology in their own way on the other thread. I think it's safe to say Federica did not even know of Anthroposophy or esoteric Christianity even a year ago, but she has no trouble reasoning this out for herself in freedom.
But what should humans do prior to embodying their ego-consciousness, i.e. before the incarnation of Christ when the ego-consciousness descended completely onto the physical plane?
That is where the Law came in, embodied in such cultural institutions as outlined in the OT. It was all preparation for us to
responsibly take hold of our capacity for spiritual freedom when it arrived, without tearing each other to shreds in the meantime. If it were possible for people back then to ascend into the spiritual worlds without continuing their moral development on Earth (it wasn't), then it would have been complete chaos. The same holds true even now to a certain extent. We still find it difficult to properly run our own businesses, families, communities, and nations, so what makes us think we are fit to be World-creating entities in the higher planes? Unearned pride, and nothing else. Yet, through many ages of incarnational development, we have progressed to the point where we can at least begin participating in the higher worlds
step by step. All development proceeds through gradual stages, which is also clear from any phenomenological investigation of our living experience.
Now, at this stage of our evolution, we cannot rely on the old institutions which embodied the Law (or any external authority), which will only act as a compulsion on our inner spirit, breeding resentment and rebellion (although our weaning off them is obviously a gradual process as well). That is the (partial) meaning of what St. Paul wrote - sin came through the Law because, as long as we were dependent on coercive external authorities for our moral action, we remain enslaved to our psycho-physical sin nature. The external Law could only serve as a temporary crutch, a dressing for our spirituals wounds, until we have written the Law on our hearts through the ego-conscious (willing) development of higher cognition, i.e. Thinking of the Heart. The Pharisees of the NT were still idolizing that temporary crutch to the point where the inner spirit had been lost alotgether. That is what
changes through the deed of Christ, who delivers us from this 'body of death' through the full incarnation of the Ego. Now we can spiral the Will into our Thinking, to purify the former and vivify the latter, thereby ascending through the Spirit and the Son to the Father.
As we also find in PoF:
Steiner wrote:Among the levels of characterological disposition, we have singled out as the highest the one that works as pure thinking or practical reason. Among the motives, we have just singled out conceptual intuition as the highest. On closer inspection it will at once be seen that at this level of morality driving force and motive coincide; that is, neither a predetermined characterological disposition nor the external authority of an accepted moral principle influences our conduct. The action is therefore neither a stereotyped one which merely follows certain rules, nor is it one which we automatically perform in response to an external impulse, but it is an action determined purely and simply by its own ideal content.
Such an action presupposes the capacity for moral intuitions. Whoever lacks the capacity to experience for himself the particular moral principle for each single situation, will never achieve truly individual willing.
By the grace of Christ's sacrificial acts, we now have the capacity to develop our feeling-imbued thinking, through which the Law can be written on our hearts and emanate from within, outwards. There is no discontinuity here - it's not about eradicating the old moral principles (which are, in fact, spiritual beings), but imaginatively and intuitively discovering the inner
reasons why they are justified, in each and every individual instance which calls for a moral decision, and thereby deserving of our loyalty, our faith.
"
And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed."
Of course there is infinite depth which can be explored here. What I wrote is not so much an answer to the question, 'what does St. Paul's verses mean?', but a pointer towards the manner in which we can realize that
we are being asked the question and being asked to
become the answer through our thought-full lives. These are not matters for the intellect to discursively analyze. They are deeply moral tasks to fulfill for the Earth evolution if we choose to, in complete freedom, through our ceaseless spiritual evolution.