A Polar Comparison of the Buddha and the Christ

[AshvinP]

Ok, now I’m serious again. I still feel the liability-asset metaphor for polarity is a very general one, moreover not as fruitful as your insightful introduction to this thread, and with the additional negative that it could keep one stuck in the polarized idea that one pole is bad (just as liabilities are bad) and the other one is good.

Federica,

I think we should be clear, the liability-asset angle on the polar relation is not mine or some modern invention. It is found implicitly through the Old Testament and much more explicitly through the NT, particularly St. Paul's epistles. When you say it is unhelpful and possibly misleading, I can only imagine this means you are either unfamiliar with that aspect of scripture, and/or you are only referring to my short one paragraph 'addition' which mentioned it on this thread. In the latter case, I take full responsibility for presenting the liability-asset angle in an unhelpful way, and should have elaborated its meaning more before presenting it. The Lucifer-Ahriman synopsis you presented shows clearly why these influences can be viewed as liabilities from one-sided perspectives, but how they can become assets from the Christ-balanced perspective.

I think the liability-asset angle on the polar relation is very helpful because it highlights how all those things we generally consider evil, negative, or otherwise chaining us to the Earthly realm, weighing us down or hanging over our head like the sword of Damocles, has been redeemed through the blood of Christ.

Yeah, the point is exactly this: I don’t think it highlights that redemption. What it says is simply “let’s switch positions for a while and see that liabilities can become assets”. To be honest (and also a little provocative, of course) this reminds me of the self-proclaimed feminists (men and women) whom I’m seeing a lot of, who basically state that everything suppressing that’s been done to women’s disadvantage is now OK to reinstate to men’s disadvantage. They say “what we most strongly want to oppose is actually in itself only fair, as long as it is reoriented in its target. Let’s enforce a switch of positions for a while”. Obviously in so doing they are keeping alive the very essence of the problem, that is to say a polarized (in this case gender-polarized) approach. Similarly, the liability-asset approach - on top of not being anywhere specific to the polarities of human evolution which are in question in this thread - is also maintaining the focus on the extremes. It says that what appears as liability can actually be transmuted into asset, without providing any insights of redemption, I would argue. Because in a balance sheet there’s no real transmutation, there’s no redemption. There is only a matching of opposites (liabilities and assets) that ends up not in a higher-level resolution, or redemption, but in a gap (profit or loss) that remains in itself polarized, like literally - there is still a plus or a minus sign characterizing the final result of a balance sheet, be it a profit or a loss. So this metaphor presents a same-level game that is not elevating, as I feel it. Keeping in mind the otherwise mind-boggling level of insight usually present in your illustrations, I can only make sense of this one in some of the following ways:

- You were trying not to be too ambitious (in the sense you have referred to above)
- You were trying to guard against the risk that one would interpret your words as diminishing of the Buddhist teachings
- You were having your clients too much top of mind

I think the above characterization forgets about the actual living person who has their debts redeemed (transmuted into assets), instead focusing only on the impersonal numbers and calculations involved. In the bankruptcy system, which is rooted in the OT system of debt jubilee, we speak of the 'fresh start' once someone's liabilities have been discharged through the structured process. Ideally, they have a new lease on life. The spiritual burden of conceiving oneself a financial failure is relieved, the psychic burden of feeling constantly pursued by creditors is relieved, the physical burden of working two jobs just to pay the bills, etc. People no longer feel they are unable to provide for themselves and for their families, to struggle to pay rent or mortgage, as they are constantly making payments only towards the interest and penalties which have accrued on their debt, never lowering the principal balance. They can start reorienting themselves towards their higher life goals and ideals, making concrete plans and taking concrete steps for their attainment.

Obviously this is a lower-order example of debt redemption than that which comes from properly trained stages of spiritual awakening, yet it is the same exact underlying principle at work. There will develop a moral hazard in the bankruptcy system when people abuse its offering of a fresh start, treating it as 'get out of jail free' and never learning anything from the experience, but that happens when the spirit of the institution is undermined or circumvented in some way. It is all structured, ideally, to be a harmonious balancing between the needs of the debtors and the needs of the creditors, the needs of the individual and those of society. I tried to elaborate on how this is applicable to the MoG in my previous post. All these modern day cultural institutions only exist because they are (as of yet) dim embodiments of esoteric Christian impulses which have unfolded over the last 2,000 years through the deed of MoG, which are gradually spiritualizing human relations and can gradually radiate into Earthly relations as a whole.

Actually the quote above from Heindel basically outlines various ways in which the MoG gave us the capacity to transmute the liabilities of our instinctive animal life, our habitual tendencies and character flaws, our physical flaws/limitations, etc. into the assets of the purified sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls, which then become fit vehicles into which the higher spiritual members can incarnate (Manas, Buddhi, Atma). Obviously this will be a gradual and ongoing work for some time to come, but every individual now has the potential to start that work and begin realizing the fruits in their current Earthly life. As Heindel said, we can start putting the desire body to work for our physical stream of becoming, instead of against it (through destructive sensuous desires and dry intellectual thinking), while we are awake and fully conscious. These are ways in which we take conscious hold of the new evolutionary phase Cleric wrote about above, gradually spiritualizing society and the World through our Earthly form.

[Stranger]

Eugene,

In the Steiner Archive, I liked this short intro by Thomas Poplawski to the lecture series on Luci-fer, the bearer of light, and Ahriman. I thought about you while reading it (the indigo notes are mine of course):

Thanks, that's a good read. I agree that earthly and heavenly gravitational poles are one example of the polarities fueling the evolution of humanity. But notice that they both exist withing the framework of the dualistic state of consciousness.

THE INFLUENCES OF LUCIFER AND AHRIMAN
In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, a strong figure stands with one clenched hand upraised to the beautiful Lucifer, the other hand stretched downward to the twisted and sclerotic Ahriman. The Representative of Humanity stands heroically, holding at bay and in balance the two opposing forces, centered within the “Third Force,” that force which we recognize in ourselves in the word ‘I’.

Tha's right. These polarities drive the evolution of souls while they exist in the dualistic state up to the point when they become ready and mature to transcend it and realize themselves as the Cosmic "I". And it is the "Third Force" that is actually curving the evolution towards such realization. The "I"-realization transcends the earth-heaven polarity and has no particular bias towards one or the other pole.

You are right that my interpretation of Lucifer and Ahriman is somewhat different. I agree that they represent a polarity, but IMO Ahriman and Lucifer are two "faces" or "personifications" of the same force-being, the force of duality (whatever we call him, the name does not matter, I call him "Demiurge"). Greeks intuitively knew that and depicted him as a "Two-faced Janus" deity who is a mythical metaphor of any polarity being two "faces" of the same essence. It is like the same electromagnetic force acting through two opposite positive and negative charges. Note that I'm not suggesting that the Demiurgic force is "evil", it represents an inevitable but temporary stage in the evolution of souls, it promotes evolution at certain developmental stages but becomes an impediment at further transitory stages until it becomes fully transcended at more mature stages.

[Stranger]

I am not a theologian . . . but it appears Christ and Buddha suggested different paths, but I don't think it's worthy of a 'polar comparison'.
A major difference is that if it was revealed the Buddha never actually existed, Buddhism as a practice would not change.
If it was revealed that Christ never actually lived, then Christianity would collapse as Christianity is based on believing the actual words of Jesus, and the good news those specific words imparted. Also it's significant that Jesus died for the sins of believers . . . and . . . no resurrection no Christianity.
---
Christianity is based on devotion to Christ and Gospels.
Buddhism is based on self-realization thru various means . . . not including devotion to Buddha.
--
A really big difference-> Christianity suggests awakening and fulfillment occurs after death, while Buddhism suggests awakening and fulfillment occurs during our living years, and Buddhism provides guideposts to evaluate one's progress.
--
However there are so many sects and versions of each religion it's really difficult to list specific differences and commonalities.

Note that Jesus never asked people to worship him, and said that the worshipping of the Divine is the same as the knowledge of Spirit and Truth. "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth" (John 4:23)

And Jesus also never suggested that awakening occurs after death, on the opposite, pointed to the possibility of realizing the Kingdom of God here and now during the human life. "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke.17)

Unfortunately, Christ's message was grossly misinterpreted in the later development of Christianity, so what you said is correct with respect to Christianity, but not with respect to the original Christ's message and mission.

[Stranger]

If we look at concrete historical development of Buddhism and Christianity, we see somewhat different flows. Christ's message and teachings were grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted in the early Christian Church and never recovered from that within the framework of the Church. Buddha's teaching was also misunderstood and misinterpreted during the first centuries after his death, but then Buddhism gradually developed towards deeper and deeper understanding of it, even though it took about two millennia and is still happening.

[Lou Gold]

Eugene,

In the Steiner Archive, I liked this short intro by Thomas Poplawski to the lecture series on Luci-fer, the bearer of light, and Ahriman. I thought about you while reading it (the indigo notes are mine of course):

THE INFLUENCES OF LUCIFER AND AHRIMAN

GA 191 - Introduction

Human beings are dwellers in two worlds. Our uniqueness amongst the creatures of the earth lies in this role that we have as half beast and half angel. A dynamic tension exists because of the contrary demands which living in each of these realms places on us. We experience this on a daily basis, an internal tug-of-war, pulling first in one direction, then to the opposite pole. Whenever we are called upon to make a choice, a decision, the earthly egoic and the heavenly draw us one way or the other and often both at once!

A long held view has been that, of course, one should always give way to the heavenly or spiritual; the alternative is to succumb to the earthly, the fallen, to evil. The struggle has been portrayed as white versus black, as good versus evil. The enduring legacy of this attitude has been to deem the earthly, the bodily nature of the human being as soiled, unclean, corrupt, shameful. With this view the spiritual aspirant of the past had no choice but to reject the body, the earth. In India incarnating into a physical body has long been considered a curse, you also feel this way! the entering into the “veil of tears” which constitutes life.

The physical body was especially singled out for punishment, to be starved and tortured, purged and scourged. St. Francis derided his body as his “donkey,” but reluctantly acknowledged that he must give it some care if it was to continue carrying him about. The medieval Cathars saw the human body as a pit into which the devil had lured the souls of weakened angels. Procreation was thus looked upon with horror as an act of unwitting cruelty — each new birth dragged a heavenly soul into the fallen world of matter the realm of the Demiurge, bringing another diabolically corrupt angel into the flesh. Even to study the physical body too closely was suspect, hence Leonardo's need for secrecy in dissection of corpses. The accumulation of an inordinate amount of the material realm in the form of wealth has also been rather suspect.

Such views have persisted on varying levels into modern times, and not just amongst the puritanical or the late Victorian. Sigmund Freud had difficulty, as a scientist, in acknowledging an angelic side in his patients. He reframed the conflict as one involving human bodily nature and the probably superstitious religious and moral beliefs they maintain. This wrestling match between the instinctual id and the moralistic superego was refereed by the central ego.

Later psychologists have continued to use this framework of two opposing forces moderated by the central force of an ego (though they all interpret the ego somewhat differently). Gestalt psychologists very pragmatically focus on how an individual becomes caught in this struggle between the two poles, without worrying about the relative merits of either pole — what is important is to get the individual “unstuck,” to empower the central ego to again be able to choose, to act more decisively through becoming conscious of its dilemma. The Italian psychiatrist, Robert Assagioli, wrote of the pull between the lower and higher unconscious, once again recognizing an earth/heaven dichotomy. He developed a therapy that sought a “psychosynthesis” of the two opposing forces, paving the way for the discovery of one's unifying center. Similarly, Carl Jung described the marriage of Eros and Logos within the soul, with the sometimes alchemical participation of the ego.

Some of these more spiritually inclined psychologists share with Rudolf Steiner the recognition that it is a synthesis of the two poles and not the choosing of one over the other that frees us for self-development. Humanity has both an earthly and a heavenly mission, tasks in the outer world as well as the inner, necessitating an acceptance, an embracing of both our natures. This sounds somewhat flattened to me, but can't be said to be wrong!

In examining this predicament of living in two worlds, Rudolf Steiner, by virtue of his capacity for spiritual research, went much further than previous researchers. Steiner was able not merely to speak of opposing psychological forces, but to relate these specifically to the influence of mighty spiritual beings, Lucifer and Ahriman. The influence of these beings is not to be thought of as limited to the realm of the soul but rather taken in the widest context as encompassing human evolution, history, and almost every aspect of our existence.

The name Lucifer comes from the Latin meaning “bearer of the Light.” Check out this different from your own understanding of Lucifer! One's childhood picture of Lucifer as a slithering manifestation of evil is difficult to reconcile with the beauty of this name. Lucifer, however, represents a force that paradoxically can combine beauty and if you will, beauty gone too far, to the extreme of decadence, hence to evil.

In the Greek legend, Icarus and his father Daedalus escape from the tower of their island prison with wings fashioned of wax. Despite his father's warning, Icarus becomes enamored of his newfound power and of the beauty of the Sun; he flies up to the light (and heat), his wings melt, and he falls to his death. The wiser and more restrained Daedalus keeps his flight balanced between heaven and earth, thus succeeding in his escape from bondage. The Greeks were very aware of the temptation of Lucifer — in most of their tales of tragedy, “hubris” or overweening pride was the source of a hero's downfall.

In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, the Representative of Humanity, Lucifer is portrayed as an exceedingly handsome and powerful winged form. Despite his having fallen from Heaven, he was nevertheless, an angel, a leader of angels. As the Light Bearer he has particular gifts for humankind, especially that of wisdom, the gift he first offered to Adam and Eve. By their eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Lucifer promised that they would “be as gods.” Like Icarus, they were not yet prepared for such a gift and ignoring warnings to the contrary, they accepted it and fell from Paradise. In this example it should be noted that the gift in and of itself is not evil. As in our earlier psychological examples, neither the heavenly nor the earthly is of itself to be seen as either absolutely desirable or absolutely forbidden (again this flattened vision, but it's ok, let's go on). The beings of the polarities actually have something of value to offer to humanity. This is very different from the traditional view of the Devil's offerings! However, an individual must be inwardly prepared for the reception of these gifts if they are to be of any value. The hallucinogenic drug user is open to receiving Luciferic light and often feels quite wise when in the midst of the drug experience. Without the meditative discipline of the serious student of the spirit, however, the contact with those realms is rarely beneficial and, in fact, is often quite harmful. let's disregard this drug aside!

In this century, society has especially interested itself in the material. Partially in response to the excessive rejection of the earth and the body, and of the authoritarianism which maintained this position, we have now fully entered the realm of matter, with head, heart, and soul. Whereas in former times humankind was more dreamy in its consciousness and thus more prone to the Luciferic realm of fantasy, illusion, and superstitious thinking, modern consciousness tends to the concrete, to materialism. The belief only in what can be ascertained by the physical senses (and the instruments which extend those senses) binds us to the earth and to the influence of the being named Ahriman. here you can see how much more sense it all makes when these tendencies, or polarities, are understood as ingrained in the various stages of evolution of human consciousness, rather than as abstract, forever existing, and binary evil. In this way we get these tendencies closer, we understand them from within, we integrate them, and become ready to turn them inside out

Aingra Mainu, or Ahriman, was first spoken of in the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia. He was the evil god, the lord of lies who tempted men and women to believe that they were solely earthly beings. At a time in history when the clairvoyance which had once been common was becoming rare, the ethical teachings of Zarathustra sought to remind the people of their divine origin and to teach through the revelation he had received of the Lord of the Sun, Ahura Mazda.

The influence of Ahriman has grown through the centuries, quietly gaining respectability in the age of the Renaissance and flourishing in our own century as the predominant worldview. Only in the last years has there been any serious questioning of the notion that the only reality is the physical one. For the most part the realm of soul and spirit has been dismissed. The prevailing scientific view has been that only what can be weighed, measured, or quantified should merit serious attention. Ahriman has welcomed statistics as his handmaid.

At the beginning of the century, the Russian philosopher, Vladimir Soloviev, warned of this danger in his “A Short Narrative about Anti-Christ.” In this fictional essay Soloviev described the appearance of a great individual who taught world peace and became first the World Leader, and later the reuniter of the world's religions. He is a vegetarian and anti-vivisectionist and brings great material prosperity and physical comfort to all who acknowledge his authority, all of this without effort on the people's part. The world becomes peaceful, even docile, for the minor sacrifice of individuality and freedom.

The influence of Ahriman is seen in the generous gifts that he has bestowed on humankind in the past centuries and for which we must feel very grateful. All of the technological marvels which science has made possible have given many of us relative freedom from all manner of drudgery while maintaining a high standard of living, freeing us to pursue other interests, giving us more time ... or do we have more time? The great difficulty with our acceptance of Ahriman's bounty has been our relative blindness and lack of foresight as we have lost ourselves in its enjoyment. The birth of the ecology movement and discussion of the reductionist nature of science has wakened some consciousness of the danger into which we have strayed. Some awareness has arisen as to what we are sacrificing in the Faustian bargain which society has struck, a sacrifice which involves our very humanity.

Through Darwin's theory of evolution as well as through Freud's positing of the sexual as the primary motive of humankind, the idea that we are no more than “naked apes” has become quite accepted. To this instinctual or animalistic picture of the human, science has added the model of the human being as machine, with the brain as computer. With such a confining definition of humanity, is it any wonder that we have increasingly come to act and to see ourselves as just machines, or just animals?

The challenge for the individual is often not how to face either Ahriman or Lucifer, but how not to be torn asunder in the encounter with both forces. In T.S. Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, is conducted to an examination of himself and his past by a succession of four Tempters. The first three attempt to win him with the Ahrimanic enticements of pleasures of the senses, good fellowship, and temporal power for himself and for his Church. Becket turns away from these three only to be approached by a fourth Tempter, clad like himself as a priest and tonsured. The Luciferic temptation now offered is the most dangerous and difficult for Becket, the whisper of spiritual pride — to die in order to attain immortality on earth, to envisage the saint's tomb being visited by pilgrims for centuries, to stand high within the ranks in heaven. Only with difficulty does Becket turn away from these “higher vices.”

In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, a strong figure stands with one clenched hand upraised to the beautiful Lucifer, the other hand stretched downward to the twisted and sclerotic Ahriman. The Representative of Humanity stands heroically, holding at bay and in balance the two opposing forces, centered within the “Third Force,” that force which we recognize in ourselves in the word ‘I’.

In this series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner strives to deepen our understanding of the two opposing forces, to alert us especially to the dangers of Ahriman, whose wiles have lulled us into a soporific state. The intent, however, is not to drive us to obsession over Luciferic or Ahrimanic demons, but rather to remind us, to reawaken us to our true center. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical means, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep.” We recognize that dawn in the figure of the risen Christ who stands for all of us as the “Representative of Humanity” in the modern struggle for the kernel or fulcrum of our being.

Federica, thanks for posting this Poplawski intro.

I view Lucifer as a highly evolved light-bearing being performing the dirty but necessary job of delivering the temptation, which carries the opportunity for transformation. Example: A person vows to break his smoking habit. Lucifer places a cigarette before her/him presenting the opportunity to form a new habit of not smoking. Choices bear fruits.

I'm glad to see you disregard the "drug comment" as there exist highly disciplined spiritual practices with entheogens.

The "veil of tears" stuff is surely complicated. I prefer the expression "valley of tears" simply pointing at the fact that there is no bodily birth without bodily death; that survival-based attachment is hard to let go and can call forth valid feelings of grief; and (with Goethe) that "death is Nature's ingenious device to guarantee more life."

[Federica]

Ok, now I’m serious again. I still feel the liability-asset metaphor for polarity is a very general one, moreover not as fruitful as your insightful introduction to this thread, and with the additional negative that it could keep one stuck in the polarized idea that one pole is bad (just as liabilities are bad) and the other one is good.

Federica,

I think we should be clear, the liability-asset angle on the polar relation is not mine or some modern invention. It is found implicitly through the Old Testament and much more explicitly through the NT, particularly St. Paul's epistles. When you say it is unhelpful and possibly misleading, I can only imagine this means you are either unfamiliar with that aspect of scripture, and/or you are only referring to my short one paragraph 'addition' which mentioned it on this thread. In the latter case, I take full responsibility for presenting the liability-asset angle in an unhelpful way, and should have elaborated its meaning more before presenting it. The Lucifer-Ahriman synopsis you presented shows clearly why these influences can be viewed as liabilities from one-sided perspectives, but how they can become assets from the Christ-balanced perspective.

I think the liability-asset angle on the polar relation is very helpful because it highlights how all those things we generally consider evil, negative, or otherwise chaining us to the Earthly realm, weighing us down or hanging over our head like the sword of Damocles, has been redeemed through the blood of Christ.

Yeah, the point is exactly this: I don’t think it highlights that redemption. What it says is simply “let’s switch positions for a while and see that liabilities can become assets”. To be honest (and also a little provocative, of course) this reminds me of the self-proclaimed feminists (men and women) whom I’m seeing a lot of, who basically state that everything suppressing that’s been done to women’s disadvantage is now OK to reinstate to men’s disadvantage. They say “what we most strongly want to oppose is actually in itself only fair, as long as it is reoriented in its target. Let’s enforce a switch of positions for a while”. Obviously in so doing they are keeping alive the very essence of the problem, that is to say a polarized (in this case gender-polarized) approach. Similarly, the liability-asset approach - on top of not being anywhere specific to the polarities of human evolution which are in question in this thread - is also maintaining the focus on the extremes. It says that what appears as liability can actually be transmuted into asset, without providing any insights of redemption, I would argue. Because in a balance sheet there’s no real transmutation, there’s no redemption. There is only a matching of opposites (liabilities and assets) that ends up not in a higher-level resolution, or redemption, but in a gap (profit or loss) that remains in itself polarized, like literally - there is still a plus or a minus sign characterizing the final result of a balance sheet, be it a profit or a loss. So this metaphor presents a same-level game that is not elevating, as I feel it. Keeping in mind the otherwise mind-boggling level of insight usually present in your illustrations, I can only make sense of this one in some of the following ways:

- You were trying not to be too ambitious (in the sense you have referred to above)
- You were trying to guard against the risk that one would interpret your words as diminishing of the Buddhist teachings
- You were having your clients too much top of mind

I think the above characterization forgets about the actual living person who has their debts redeemed (transmuted into assets), instead focusing only on the impersonal numbers and calculations involved. In the bankruptcy system, which is rooted in the OT system of debt jubilee, we speak of the 'fresh start' once someone's liabilities have been discharged through the structured process. Ideally, they have a new lease on life. The spiritual burden of conceiving oneself a financial failure is relieved, the psychic burden of feeling constantly pursued by creditors is relieved, the physical burden of working two jobs just to pay the bills, etc. People no longer feel they are unable to provide for themselves and for their families, to struggle to pay rent or mortgage, as they are constantly making payments only towards the interest and penalties which have accrued on their debt, never lowering the principal balance. They can start reorienting themselves towards their higher life goals and ideals, making concrete plans and taking concrete steps for their attainment.

Obviously this is a lower-order example of debt redemption than that which comes from properly trained stages of spiritual awakening, yet it is the same exact underlying principle at work. There will develop a moral hazard in the bankruptcy system when people abuse its offering of a fresh start, treating it as 'get out of jail free' and never learning anything from the experience, but that happens when the spirit of the institution is undermined or circumvented in some way. It is all structured, ideally, to be a harmonious balancing between the needs of the debtors and the needs of the creditors, the needs of the individual and those of society. I tried to elaborate on how this is applicable to the MoG in my previous post. All these modern day cultural institutions only exist because they are (as of yet) dim embodiments of esoteric Christian impulses which have unfolded over the last 2,000 years through the deed of MoG, which are gradually spiritualizing human relations and can gradually radiate into Earthly relations as a whole.

Actually the quote above from Heindel basically outlines various ways in which the MoG gave us the capacity to transmute the liabilities of our instinctive animal life, our habitual tendencies and character flaws, our physical flaws/limitations, etc. into the assets of the purified sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls, which then become fit vehicles into which the higher spiritual members can incarnate (Manas, Buddhi, Atma). Obviously this will be a gradual and ongoing work for some time to come, but every individual now has the potential to start that work and begin realizing the fruits in their current Earthly life. As Heindel said, we can start putting the desire body to work for our physical stream of becoming, instead of against it (through destructive sensuous desires and dry intellectual thinking), while we are awake and fully conscious. These are ways in which we take conscious hold of the new evolutionary phase Cleric wrote about above, gradually spiritualizing society and the World through our Earthly form.

*******

I can only imagine this means you are either unfamiliar with that aspect of scripture, and/or you are only referring to my short one paragraph 'addition' which mentioned it on this thread.

Ashvin, yes! I am defintely ignorant of scriptures in general, unfortunately. I am sorry for the extra explanations this major lack requires. And yes, I was referring to that "I want to add" paragraph you wrote.

In the latter case, I take full responsibility for presenting the liability-asset angle in an unhelpful way

The responsibility is not yours - as we often say, the meaning is only pointed to in the the words themselves, and the reader is responsible of the meaning-making gestures.

I think the above characterization forgets about the actual living person who has their debts redeemed

That’s true, but the point is: most people would have this same problem, including (paradoxically) those who indeed experienced their liabilities being redeemed, and the relief, or fresh start, that comes with it.

They can start reorienting themselves towards their higher life goals and ideals, making concrete plans and taking concrete steps for their attainment.

They can, but because of the moral hazard you speak of, they don’t, and they undermine or circumvent the spirit of the institution, as you described it happens to many of your clients. What I mean is, I have no doubt the institution of bankruptcy has been created as a harmonious balancing of the needs of all involved stakeholders. From here, stating that the balance sheet is the real polarity, by likening desires, passions, attachments and Karmic debt to monetary liabilities feels like a severe reduction to me, and that the object ‘balance sheet’, with its flat minus-plus character, is not able to inspire transmutation and redemption of those desires and passions. Otherwise I appreciated your post, beyond its first two lines:

I want to add, the real polarity of importance to consider here is that between liabilities and assets. Through the Earthly involution, we accumulated many entries on the liability side of our balance sheet. These are the attachments to material desires, which were (and still continue to be) the source of so much sickness and suffering. Buddha's pre-Christian teachings rightly emphasized that we must let go of these attachments if we are to overcome suffering on the Earthly plane and to prepare our soul for higher impulses. Through the MoG, however, the new possibility arose - that the liabilities would be transmuted-redeemed and become our greatest assets. The teachings of Buddha still remain as valuable preparation for many people - the material attachements should still be sacrificed, but now within the overarching context of bringing out a higher potential which resides dormant within them. Of course that potential is brought out through our energetic, living thinking. We begin to discern the more holistic context in which our desires, passions, attachments, suffering takes place, particularly the pre-birth realms from which they are seeded, and they now become critical feedback for how to more optimally steer our stream of Earthly becoming, and that of human civilization as a whole, towards the high spiritual ideals.

This said, I realize the scriptures use this image, you use it, and so it must be a preference I’m expressing here, probably rooted somehow in my own 'karmic balance sheet'. (I will now read your Heindel quote).

[lorenzop]

Note that Jesus never asked people to worship him, and said that the worshipping of the Divine is the same as the knowledge of Spirit and Truth. "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth" (John 4:23)

And Jesus also never suggested that awakening occurs after death, on the opposite, pointed to the possibility of realizing the Kingdom of God here and now during the human life. "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke.17)

Unfortunately, Christ's message was grossly misinterpreted in the later development of Christianity, so what you said is correct with respect to Christianity, but not with respect to the original Christ's message and mission.

I'd agree that before any kind of comparison between the teachings of Christ and Buddha could be proposed - we'd have to first agree on what their respective teachings were.
If someone would like to make this effort . . .
--
If we were to do this - to effectively 'steelman' their teachings; we'd find them to be nearly identical but with differences in emphasis.
For example - Jesus did emphasive the after-life.
Jesus did preach a salvation message . . . He died for our sins. While Buddha placed the 'spiritual growth' responsibility more on the individual.
Jesus did emphasise a more 'Bhakti' or devotional message.

[Federica]

It's interesting because Steiner speaks of how Lucifer incarnated around 3,000 BC and Ahriman will incarnate around 3,000 AD, with of course Christ incarnate in the middle. Within this span, I think we can say the oscillations between historical periods, events, and personalities inspired by the Luciferic impulse and those imagined by the Ahrimanic are the most extreme.

What you mention certainly fits with that, since the Christian teachings were crafted initially to place more emphasis on how the Spirit must develop itself through Earthly capacities and tasks.

Ashvin,

I've now read through a few Steiner's lectures on Lucifer and Ahriman, which I think provide an explicit argument for an East-West, Lucifer-Ahriman polarity, rather than one having the teachings of Buddha and those of Christ at its poles. So I am confused about your expressions above. It's not that what I mention is interesting and certainly fits. It's rather that Steiner simply states it! So I would say that an example of polarized opposite to the teachings of Buddha, that we are witnessing today, as we are moving towards the Ahrimanic pole, is visible right here right now in this forum, in the form of the use of ChatGPT as kind of a super-partes reference, representing what Steiner refers to as the Ahrimanic "preserving jars":

But now that we are facing an incarnation of Ahriman in the third millennium after Christ, Lucifer's tracks are becoming less visible, and Ahriman's activities in such trends as I have indicated are coming into prominence. Ahriman has made a kind of pact with Lucifer, the import of which may be expressed in the following way. Ahriman, speaking to Lucifer, says: “I, Ahriman, find it advantageous to make use of ‘preserving jars.’ To you I will leave people's stomachs, if you will leave it to me to lull them to sleep — that is to say to lull their consciousness to sleep where their stomachs are concerned.”

You must understand what I mean by this. The consciousness of those human beings whom I have called devourers of soul and spirit is in a condition of dimness so far as their stomachs are concerned; for, by not accepting the spiritual into their human nature, they drive straight into the Luciferic stream everything they introduce into their stomachs. What people eat and drink without spirituality goes straight to Lucifer!

And what do I mean by “preserving jars?” I mean libraries and institutions of a similar kind, where the various sciences pursued by human beings without really stirring their interest are preserved; these sciences are not really alive in them but are simply preserved in the books on the shelves of libraries. All this knowledge has been separated from human beings. Everywhere there are books, books, books! Themselves students, when they take their doctor's degree, have to write a learned thesis which is then put into as many libraries as possible. When the students want to take up some particular post, again they must write a thesis! In addition to this, people are forever writing, although only a very small proportion of what they write is ever read. Only when some special preparation has to be made do people resort to what is moldering away in libraries. These “preserving jars” of wisdom are a particularly favorable means of furthering Ahriman's aims.

The ChatGPT is the jar of jars, itself preserving all the various preserving jars. It's like a wild-fire spreading of Ahrimanic impulse. I should immediately add that I recognize this same impulse in myself, and my tendency to preserve information and save documents that would probably never come to use again. But there is this urge to isolate knowledge, or should I say information, trying to preserve it, as if it could work as a substitute for living understanding...


Another example that comes to mind, that we see happening in the consumerist society is hoarding, at its various levels of severity. And obviously the more Luciferic-oriented person (but we most likely have both impulses playing in us) would be more of a minimalist, as a reaction, which I also recognize in myself to some extent. Less today, but I certainly had such impulse in connection with my initial spiritual explorations. It's all so clear...

[Stranger]

I'd agree that before any kind of comparison between the teachings of Christ and Buddha could be proposed - we'd have to first agree on what their respective teachings were.
If someone would like to make this effort . . .
--
If we were to do this - to effectively 'steelman' their teachings; we'd find them to be nearly identical but with differences in emphasis.
For example - Jesus did emphasive the after-life.
Jesus did preach a salvation message . . . He died for our sins. While Buddha placed the 'spiritual growth' responsibility more on the individual.
Jesus did emphasise a more 'Bhakti' or devotional message.

There are definitely some differences. IMO they rather represent a variety of evolutionary spiritual paths rather than any polarity.

What this variety of paths is showing us is that the manifested reality evades any mono-structures and monocultures. The structures are needed to provide the framework for evolution and create the moving forces, however, when the structures become too rigid, too singular and too much idolized, they become impediments rather than evolutionary forces. The Oneness in Essence is in perfect harmony with a diversity of forms and paths that this essence manifests through its free will and creative potential.

[AshvinP]

It's interesting because Steiner speaks of how Lucifer incarnated around 3,000 BC and Ahriman will incarnate around 3,000 AD, with of course Christ incarnate in the middle. Within this span, I think we can say the oscillations between historical periods, events, and personalities inspired by the Luciferic impulse and those imagined by the Ahrimanic are the most extreme.

What you mention certainly fits with that, since the Christian teachings were crafted initially to place more emphasis on how the Spirit must develop itself through Earthly capacities and tasks.

Ashvin,

I've now read through a few Steiner's lectures on Lucifer and Ahriman, which I think provide an explicit argument for an East-West, Lucifer-Ahriman polarity, rather than one having the teachings of Buddha and those of Christ at its poles. So I am confused about your expressions above. It's not that what I mention is interesting and certainly fits. It's rather that Steiner simply states it! So I would say that an example of polarized opposite to the teachings of Buddha, that we are witnessing today, as we are moving towards the Ahrimanic pole, is visible right here right now in this forum, in the form of the use of ChatGPT as kind of a super-partes reference, representing what Steiner refers to as the Ahrimanic "preserving jars":

But now that we are facing an incarnation of Ahriman in the third millennium after Christ, Lucifer's tracks are becoming less visible, and Ahriman's activities in such trends as I have indicated are coming into prominence. Ahriman has made a kind of pact with Lucifer, the import of which may be expressed in the following way. Ahriman, speaking to Lucifer, says: “I, Ahriman, find it advantageous to make use of ‘preserving jars.’ To you I will leave people's stomachs, if you will leave it to me to lull them to sleep — that is to say to lull their consciousness to sleep where their stomachs are concerned.”

You must understand what I mean by this. The consciousness of those human beings whom I have called devourers of soul and spirit is in a condition of dimness so far as their stomachs are concerned; for, by not accepting the spiritual into their human nature, they drive straight into the Luciferic stream everything they introduce into their stomachs. What people eat and drink without spirituality goes straight to Lucifer!

And what do I mean by “preserving jars?” I mean libraries and institutions of a similar kind, where the various sciences pursued by human beings without really stirring their interest are preserved; these sciences are not really alive in them but are simply preserved in the books on the shelves of libraries. All this knowledge has been separated from human beings. Everywhere there are books, books, books! Themselves students, when they take their doctor's degree, have to write a learned thesis which is then put into as many libraries as possible. When the students want to take up some particular post, again they must write a thesis! In addition to this, people are forever writing, although only a very small proportion of what they write is ever read. Only when some special preparation has to be made do people resort to what is moldering away in libraries. These “preserving jars” of wisdom are a particularly favorable means of furthering Ahriman's aims.

The ChatGPT is the jar of jars, itself preserving all the various preserving jars. It's like a wild-fire spreading of Ahrimanic impulse. I should immediately add that I recognize this same impulse in myself, and my tendency to preserve information and save documents that would probably never come to use again. But there is this urge to isolate knowledge, or should I say information, trying to preserve it, as if it could work as a substitute for living understanding...


Another example that comes to mind, that we see happening in the consumerist society is hoarding, at its various levels of severity. And obviously the more Luciferic-oriented person (but we most likely have both impulses playing in us) would be more of a minimalist, as a reaction, which I also recognize in myself to some extent. Less today, but I certainly had such impulse in connection with my initial spiritual explorations. It's all so clear...

Federica,

Everything you say above is pretty much valid, but I think there is a hint of taking the relation too linearly or rigidly. There are many polar rhythms nested within polar rhythms. We can easily become too rigid with these things and try to make everything fit neatly into one box or another, but that is why I say in the OP that our approach to polar relations should descend more into the life of Feeling, so it remains more fluid. We can see in some other comments how people are rejecting 'polarity' because it doesn't seem to fit neatly into pre-formatted intellectual boxes about these spiritual relations - and that's right, it doesn't. As Cleric said, it becomes misleading when we take in a static sense, rather than placing it in an evolutionary process spiraling upwards. We should simply make peace with the fact that it won't make crystal clear sense to our intellect, even though we can intuitively feel how it orients us in the proper direction and we can flesh out that intuition with a living exploration of the details.

As an aside, I think you are obviously doing that exploration here and elsewhere, so I don't mean this post as a corrective to your approach. It's a never-ending process of development - all our missteps along the way will be redeemed through this process if we remain devoted and persistent. It is especially powerful when we can recognize these polar tendencies within ourselves, within the progression of our lives, our years, our seasons, and our daily desires, feelings, and thoughts, which you indicated as well.

We should really appreciate how practically everything in spiritual evolution is a polar relation. We can speak of directly opposite or mutually exclusive things when we speak of isolated facts, like 1+1=2 and 1+1=3, but nowhere in our living, processual natural or cultural experience do such isolated facts present themselves. Instead, in the sphere of culture, we have historical events, streams, living personalities and teachings, etc. which are always flowing into and out of one another. These always stand in lawful polar relation. We could speak of it as Hegel's thesis and anthesis, which then integrate into a higher synthesis, and that synthesis then becomes the thesis in regards to its own antithesis, resolving into an even higher synthesis, and so forth.

Now the Christ-being and his incarnate impulse is the unique archetypal mediator, the Cosmic "I" which balances all poles of Earthly evolution, as indicated in the OP. But, most importantly, none of the familiar manifestations, such as various teachings, available to our ordinary cognition should be confused for this Ideal archetype, which flows through all forms but is identical to none of them. Another interesting example is that of Plato and Aristotle, which modern philosophers generally treat as directly opposite in various ways. The former focused mostly on how the particular Earthly details should be resolved into their archetypal Ideal forms, while the latter focused on how the Ideal forms should be sought in their concrete Earthly manifestations. Of course such a simple summary cannot possibly do their massive corpuses of work justice, but I think it is a useful comparison. This polar relation is famously depicted in Raphael's School of Athens. Viewing this dynamic in artistic forms can help it penetrate our life of feeling. (Plato points upwards and Aristotle downwards, Plato in red and Aristotle in blue)





So, in a sense, the Christ events inaugurated a series of cultural developments which allowed Platonic philosophy to spiral into Aristotelian philosophy, bearing their fruit in the spiritual evolutionary tasks of that epoch and continuing into our own modern epoch. We have arrived at a point of excess in the direction of the 'Aristotle impulse', but this point of excess can itself provide the foundation from which a higher synthesis will blossom IF we start becoming conscious of how we have been participating in the evolutionary process (as we try to do here). But, again, we certainly shouldn't imagine these early developments exhaust the significance of the Christ events and the deed on Golgotha - not even close. The latter is like an Idealized image of the entire Earthly evolution at the scales of the individual, culture, and nature. It is both the means of Earthly evolution and its end (telos). It is an ideal attractor Force from which all imperfect natural, cultural, and individual forms have emanated and towards which they are all striving, either unconsciously, semi-consciously, or consciously (on the modern path of initiation).