Spiritual science of Martinus

[Federica]

I would like to offer a couple thoughts here, which is not intended to challenge anything written by others. Or mainly, just one - the difference generally resides in our approach to these different individualities and their spiritual understanding. If we automatically assume they are comparable and speaking of the same exact things because they have similar ideas and call what they do 'spiritual science', then we are being presumptuous. As I stated earlier to Eugene, I think it's clear that Martinus did not go through spiritual training for higher modes of cognition, which is why his resolution is so low. If we confuse these radically incomplete teachings for something complete-in-itself, then we are bound to reach misleading conclusions about spiritual reality. It is like a person doing a jigsaw puzzle, throwing half of the pieces away, and then remaining satisfied with the half-complete puzzle. This person forgets he threw half the other pieces away (by way of some theoretical abstraction or another) and says, 'I don't see any possible way to render a more complete picture here, so this must be the best we can do'.  

Unfortunately, experience does show that this is generally the way people approach all philosophical and spiritual systems which resonate with them. They take its ease of understanding and approachability as an invitation to rest comfortable with what has been presented, tying everything together in a neat low-resolution package, rather than a prompting to ascend further in their own cognitive development and explore new unfamiliar avenues of spiritual seeking. It is then assumed that all one needs to know during this lifetime is basically in that system and everything else can wait until after death.  I mentioned the laws of reincarnation and Karma before because that is clearly a case where, if we decide these are details that we can wait to become inwardly familiar with only after death, we are forsaking many opportunities to actually increase our level of consciousness after death in the Spheres where the threads of our next incarnation will be woven. These things have tremendous practical ramifications in our stream of becoming.

Now, to the extent Martinus and/or his main followers stated he 'saw the whole truth' and that is reflected in the teachings (and I'm not sure they did), that is a real problem. I have shared several passages where Steiner makes explicitly clear that is not the case with him or Anthroposophy. But, again, regardless of what the followers say, we have to take responsibility for our own approach to the teachings and separate the wheat from the chaff, and not to simply assume we are speaking of horizontal alternatives of 'spiritual science' which can be placed side by side. There is vertical depth involved and, generally, the Anthroposophical path is currently the one which gives us the most detailed insight into how and why all these other ones have arisen at this most critical juncture in humanity's spiritual evolution. Above all, it cultivates the mindset that our spiritual journey is just beginning and we should continuously move through all the conceptual outlooks with fluidity and flexibility, using them to kindle our higher faculties but never confusing them for those faculties.

Ashvin,

I agree with everything you said, however let's recall that nobody stated or suggested that Martinus' teachings should be taken as the final and only truth. For my part, I have invariably considered them as helpful "first steps", as you obviously also did when you recommended to Anthony a certain Martinus symbol for contemplation. Then you didn't warn him that there was a risk of throwing away half of the puzzle pieces, nor did you do that when commenting on my symbol recommendation to Eugene. You didn't say "be careful though", you said "great post". So, well, what's going on here?

Right, and that's why I said the point above was not a challenge to any points made by you or Guney.

We just discovered Martinus a week ago, so our understanding and approach is still in early development. As stated, the tendency of modern thinking is clearly to latch onto these systems in a rigid way over time, so it never hurts to reiterate these cautions in the early stages. Eugene was positively insulted when I suggested the teachings are low resolution and incomplete due to lack of higher cognitive development. Of course it's easy for people to say, at any given time, 'this isn't the final truth, only a tool on my spiritual journey', but what is their concrete disposition and approach over time? I did and do recommend the basic teachings/images because they seem to point in a helpful direction, but I probably should have added some more cautions about their limitations at the same time.

I also agree with Cleric that the reasons why Martinus teachings' are more approachable and digestible at first, which a few people voiced, including me, need to be clarified. It needs to be understood exactly why that is the case, so we don't mistake the reason as being that Martinus took a more sensible and clear-headed approach to the same spiritual science while Steiner took a more convoluted approach. The way I see it, their tasks to fulfill were quite different and Anthroposophy is clearly intended as not only a cosmology or set of practical teachings, but as a way of spiritual life which anticipates and inaugurates the Christ impulse inflowing humanity for the next few centuries and beyond. Simply put, it works on higher planes and with higher-order progressive intents for the course of human evolution towards spiritual freedom.

The intent is that we are to come meet the Christ in the 'clouds' with our higher thinking consciousness on his new descent (which is not to the physical plane). This requires us to strain the intellect and energetically work our thinking through the spiritual realities. We should always pay attention to our first person thinking experience of these things - does it feel like we are mostly passive, almost like we are watching a movie about spiritual cosmology and evolution? Or does every sentence or paragraph require a corresponding striving upwards on our part, which impels us to read and re-read and revisit? That energetic effort is probably more important than even understanding the content of what is written at first. The latter will naturally fall into place at its proper time if we are devoted and persistent. There is also room for more 'relaxed reading', which is how I would characterize the website texts of Martinus (I haven't ordered any books yet), but it should be pursued more sparingly in my view and only as a complement to the more energetic thinking through spiritual realities.

Alright, Ashvin, thanks for your patience. I appreciate your always new ways to describe how living thinking should feel, as opposed to in principle agreement with a metaphysical system. I must admit, I still feel that the warning in this case, although appropriate, has a somewhat inexplicably harsher character, but I can definitely live with that, please don't take this as a further question on my part. Only one last note, because you speak of possible book ordering Maybe you have noticed, but in case you haven't, everything is freely available online.

[AshvinP]

Alright, Ashvin, thanks for your patience. I appreciate your always new ways to describe how living thinking should feel, as opposed to in principle agreement with a metaphysical system. I must admit, I still feel that the warning in this case, although appropriate, has a somewhat inexplicably harsher character, but I can definitely live with that, please don't take this as a further question on my part. Only one last note, because you speak of possible book ordering Maybe you have noticed, but in case you haven't, everything is freely available online.

Thanks for pointing that out, Federica. Perhaps this reveals a subconscious materialistic tendency to unnecessarily spend money

I started browsing through some of the books and I began discerning a lot more chaff mixed in with the wheat in his writings. As Cleric said, the resolution remains at the level of general principles and laws of spiritual evolution. That is not a problem in itself, as long as the person realizes they have an incomplete picture and ascent into higher cognitive modes could flesh out the principles in ways which significantly change one's understanding of the overall framework. On the other hand, if one takes it as a mostly complete picture and tries to develop a formal system of 'laws' by which our spiritual existence unfolds towards the Divine states, then significant misunderstandings can arise. When the concrete relations of spiritual beings have not been discerned, one can begin to extrapolate the general principles onto evolutionary developments in ways which are not warranted. Unfortunately it seems to me that Martinus may have been in this latter category and my earlier recommendations were premature. I think that his devotional practices and images are very helpful, but I feel it is necessary to add additional cautions with respect to the spiritual details he is conveying in the writings.

For ex., with regards to the Christ events, he writes in 'The Christmas Gospel':

That the newborn son of God must lie in a "manger", as long as he has only a "stable" for living quarters, is of course a given. It is not common to set any high human cultural worth upon a "stable" or living quarters for animals. There isn't usually found here any gently rocking cradles or soft and expensive cots, since everything here of course is intended for and adapted to animals alone. The infant Jesus or terrestrial human being must also during its stay in a "stable" as a newborn "Christ" or "son of God" be laid to rest in whatever could be laid hands on in the "stable", such as even a "manger".

What then is the "manger" in the "cosmic sense"? The "manger" is the as-yet "mammalian" terrestrial human organism or body. The "newborn baby", the "heavenly being", also lays in an object intended for animals. But how else should even a son of God's spirit be able to manifest itself in a "stable" by any other means than by the phenomena found in the "stable"? How shall a "heavenly being" appear in the material world's "animal kingdom" other than through an animal body? There are as yet no real physical bodies for the perfect human being or "heavenly beings" to be found on earth.
The son of God or "Christ-being" must therefore spend its first infancy in a "manger", which therefore means in a "mammalian" organism, because there is not yet found on earth real "human" organisms (etheric organisms created through the materialisation of higher physical and spiritual matter in combination). The son of God must therefore in this, its first tentative period of childhood, appear in a specific "male organism" or a specific "female organism".

So, although he has overcome the erroneous conception of the 'immaculate conception' (which leaves Joseph out of the picture), he still holds to the erroneous view that the Christ-being was incarnate in the infant Jesus. That may be related to what Guney mentioned earlier as well, about Martinus not seeing Jesus Christ as God, only the perfect ideal for the human being - I am not sure about that either. The reality is that the divine Christ-being only incarnated into the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth at the baptism by John. These sorts of critical omissions/errors in understanding of the Christ events most likely reflect a serious schism in the understanding of the human being's psycho-physical organization. The latter reflects a lengthy process of intentional activity which guided its evolution and the Christ-being, in his Cosmic role, was involved at every new stage. 

It appears Martinus thinks that our physical organization belongs to the 'animal zone' while the psychic-spiritual aspect belongs to the 'human zone' - "But to be born in the animal kingdom's highest sphere or zone inevitably requires a set of parents, by whose aid a birth can be manifested and a being's incarnation in flesh and blood be achieved." So everything connected with reproduction and nutrition, for ex., belongs to the animal zone which is governed by the laws of the physical plane. Of course that is true to some extent, but it is only half the picture - heredity only contributes half of the forces for our physical organization through reproduction. The other half of the forces, which is especially prominent in the inner organic structure, is contributed from out of the Cosmos based on the soul-spiritual capacities and talents we have developed through our incarnations and elaborated between death-rebirth. Even the physically detectable processes of our organization can only be grasped by accounting for the Cosmic forces as well.  

In reviewing these things we must observe something which for the man of to-day lies far from the most essential kind of observation, something which he always employs, but not where it is of the utmost importance. It would not occur to anyone who takes a compass, a magnetic needle in hand, to seek in the needle itself the cause of its pointing with one end to the North and with the other to the South; the physicist feels himself compelled to regard the magnetic force proceeding from the needle, and the directing magnetic force coming from the North Pole of the earth, as a whole. The cause of what takes place in the small space of the needle is sought in the great universe. Yet this is not done in other cases where it should be done, and where it is of importance. If anyone — especially a scientist — observes that one living being is formed within another living being, as, for instance, the egg is formed in the body of the hen, he sees there how something forms in the smallest space; but what does not usually strike him is to apply what he knows of the magnetic needle and say, that the reason why the germ of the egg develops in the body of the hen lies in the entire cosmos, not in the hen. Exactly as the great universe has a part in the magnetic needle, so too the whole cosmos has a share in the hen's body, — no matter what other processes also take part in it — the whole cosmos in its spherical form co-operate. The processes that can be traced back through the line of heredity to the fore-fathers, only co-operate when the germ of the egg is formed in the maternal organism. That of course is heresy in the eyes of official science, but it is a truth. The forces of the cosmos co-operate in the most varied ways. 

What are the practical implications of this misunderstanding by Martinus, if it exists? I am not quite sure, but I have some ideas. For one, it might lead him to conclude the process of spiritual evolution from the animal to human zones takes root entirely through normal intelligence and gradual cultural modifications, informed by experiences of 'cosmic consciousness' which inspire forgiveness and love. I browsed through 'The Road to Initiation', and couldn't find anything to the contrary, but found this:

The development of the principle of giving is thus the salvation of the world. And we see too that this principle is the soul of all wisdom and, in a specially adapted way, is what is most important in the present greatest world religions. From them it enters terrestrial human mentality as the basis for the formation of morality and reverberates more and more in its jurisprudence, laws or judicial system, politics and social administration.
...But mental life grows. Since the result of evolution is an increase in freedom, and since dictatorship is coercion, there will inevitably come a time when all dictatorship will have to cease in favour of democracy, which, with its changeable and movable structure, can follow evolution and, with its liberating nature, keep abreast of the growing mental demands or obstacles, whether they be in the artistic, scientific or purely economic area. Dictatorship is thus the past. Democracy is the future.

Since democracy gives its citizens freedom to change in accordance with evolution, according as their voting majority grows to want this change, and this freedom must normally take into account or be somewhat subdued by the voting minority or opposition of the citizens of this democracy, there thereby arising a certain guarantee that rashness cannot occur and that thorough deliberation cannot be avoided, democracy becomes in fact a cultivation of life's own granting of freedom to the growing terrestrial human mentality on a level corresponding to evolution. Democracy is thus the only means whereby the granting of the growth of life or the transformation of the flock from animal to human being in the most bloodless way can be revealed or practised by the cosmic principle of giving. True democracy is thus the creation of an opening in the terrestrial mental sphere that is growing in freedom through which the flock, in a way that is adapted to them, can ultimately be given unhindered access to the greatest gift of life: the widest possible or unrestricted evolution of spirit and culture, of wisdom and love and the consequent unshakably associated creation of an all-outshining peace and harmony as a fact in daily life on Earth.

One thing I notice is that, when a spiritual cosmology isn't rooted in higher cognitive capacity, there is no mention of how the Cosmic spheres are superimposed on our physical existence. Steiner is always reminding us that we are sleeping in our life of will and dreaming in our life of feeling, for ex., or how the Saturn-Sun-Moon phases of evolution are still present in our Earthly experience, and generally how the spirit worlds are interpentrating and interwoven with the normal physical spectrum, especially our own bodily organization, at all times (through human consciousness). Things start to get uncomfortable for the spiritual seeker at this point for a variety of reasons - now the activity of spiritual beings becomes more intimate and, at the same time, more complex for the intellect to grasp. There are no really simple answers to who we are, why we are, how we came to be, or where exactly we are going, anymore. It can't be summed up in a few paragraphs, articles, or even books. That forces us to withhold judgments on many aspects of our stream of becoming, which is generally undesired and unpreferred for the intellect. 

Of course, I am no expert on Martinus and I don't want to make the same mistake twice. So I am not definitively claiming the above is a correct assessment, but only that it warrants further caution when reading through the material. The most important lesson here is that I prematurely recommended this author's 'spiritual science' from a few isolated texts, and that's not a wise approach in this domain. There is a very fine line to navigate between fact and fiction, truth and error, when it comes to the dynamics of spiritual reality. It is not about anyone being 'wrong', but about the habitual tendency for all people to confuse radically incomplete understanding for relatively complete understanding and then derive thought-systems on the basis of the latter. Our love of ease and familiarity and outward 'consensus' can easily blind us to problematic ideas which need to be handled with care. Nevertheless, I know that it is also an important learning experience, as long as I am willing to recognize, admit, and learn from it. 

[Federica]

I started browsing through some of the books and I began discerning a lot more chaff mixed in with the wheat in his writings. As Cleric said, the resolution remains at the level of general principles and laws of spiritual evolution. That is not a problem in itself, as long as the person realizes they have an incomplete picture and ascent into higher cognitive modes could flesh out the principles in ways which significantly change one's understanding of the overall framework. On the other hand, if one takes it as a mostly complete picture and tries to develop a formal system of 'laws' by which our spiritual existence unfolds towards the Divine states, then significant misunderstandings can arise. When the concrete relations of spiritual beings have not been discerned, one can begin to extrapolate the general principles onto evolutionary developments in ways which are not warranted. Unfortunately it seems to me that Martinus may have been in this latter category and my earlier recommendations were premature. I think that his devotional practices and images are very helpful, but I feel it is necessary to add additional cautions with respect to the spiritual details he is conveying in the writings.

Ashvin,
Thank you for bringing your analysis to us in such a substantiated way. Because of lacking knowledge, higher and lower, I couldn't have detected any of these caveats, which is also the reason why it's only through examples such as these that I can better see what the crux of the matter is, and what kind of misunderstanding lie in wait for the naive reader. Looong way to go....