Cleric K wrote: ↑Tue May 02, 2023 1:07 pm
Since several people already share that they find Martinuses spiritual science to be more accessible than the anthroposophical, I would like to point out a fundamental reason for this. Please understand right from the start that this is not some right vs. wrong confrontation. Things are very transparent as soon as we understand what we’re speaking of.
It all boils down to one of the most important questions that contemporary man has to ask himself:
How do I know?
Really, how Martinus knows? He was self-initiated, he experienced oneness and from then on answers began to flow. This is more or less how people envision clairvoyance. One gains access to additional perceptions and sees things there. Or doesn’t see anything but hears the answers ready served, as channelers do.
Habitually, this is also how things are envisioned for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is assumed that the methods of initiation that Steiner disclosed are simply alternative means for achieving what can be also achieved by drinking ayahuasca, having a mystical experience, doing holotropic breathwork, sensory deprivation, OBE, NDE, etc. It is assumed that all that is needed is to achieve some form of non-ordinary state of consciousness and hopefully extract some concepts from the experience.
We can never comprehend the evolutionary place of spiritual science if we don’t feel as an urgent necessity that man needs a way of knowing reality and not simply patching up a metaphysical world conception.
The difference between having a metaphysical conception and approaching the actual states of being
Let’s take something like reincarnation. It makes sense, we can logically reason through it, it feels intuitively right but what would be the kind of experience which presents this as an immediate fact? Believing that we have been Napoleon in our previous incarnation can’t be taken seriously. The only way would be to seek the actual experience of the forms of consciousness in which man exists in the period between death and new birth. This is the key point.
A spiritual science that can truly penetrate into reality has no other choice but draws upon the states of consciousness which are like those we go through between death and rebirth.
Even by merely stating this, a large portion of the audience already leaves the hall. It is really nothing but our materialistic heritage which has implanted the deep prejudice that it is fundamentally impossible to know anything about the states of existence through which we go after death (if there’s at all such a thing).
We really need to distinguish between having a metaphysical conception on our side of the veil and seeking the actual experience of reality across the veil. Let’s take the example of spiritual beings. Martinus speaks of them as forming a hierarchical chain. Eugene also speaks of nondual beings with which we live in the nondual worlds. But let’s shake off for a second all the accumulated conceptions and ask ourselves what would be the experience of interacting with these beings in the higher worlds? In our sensory life the only kinds of beings that we know are those that impress themselves into our senses. In a spiritual sense we know only ourselves. But what happens after death when we no longer have any sensory organs? What does it mean in that state to interact with a being? What does it mean to exist in that state? What do we experience?
If we don’t habitually brush off these questions, we’ll quickly realize how great of a void in knowledge we have. Of course, people today are quick to fantasize that after death we’ll feel like an orb of light and then other beings will be found as other orbs floating around. This however is nothing but a fantasy extrapolated from the experiences in the sensory spectrum. It is imagined that we still exist and feel much like in our Earthly ego state. We have our orb of consciousness, we move about, we look outside and perceive other orbs of consciousness, we interact with them, play with them, create with them and so on.
If one feels completely satisfied with such a conception then – and this is what the experiences on the forum show – there’s not much point to try to explain anything more..
The vital need for living knowledge
Life experiences should lead us to a point where we feel that such conceptions are nothing but Maya upon Maya. This should bring about a state of inner desperation where we like Solomon say “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” If we have never been pained by such an experience we simply have no chance to understand the deepest spiritual need that any true spiritual science is supposed to fulfill. If we’re perfectly happy with vain patched up decoration in our soul interior, then it is like spiritual science offers us a kind of food for which we don’t even comprehend that a corresponding hunger may exist.
So this is a kind of point of departure. When we hear something like angel, archangel, archai, we should observe what we’re doing with our thinking when we conceive of these beings. Interaction with a human being is something completely experiential. We can describe in the greatest details how they feel to the touch, to the sight, to the taste, how our thoughts and feelings are stirred when we interact with them. But what does it mean to interact with an angel? Obviously we can’t touch and see it. Maybe we can see a dreamlike image of a winged creature but is this the angel or is it the impression that our soul constructs for something which is not sense perceptible at all?
We can only understand the evolutionary place of athroposophically oriented spiritual science if we have reached the point to feel the vital need to understand such things. It is anthropo- (related to the human being) because this knowledge grows together with self-knowledge. By understanding what we are, we also understand the world and vice versa.
Spiritual science is not a concrete teaching but the living reality that can meet our vital need
Please try to decouple this from the persona of Steiner. The need to have real experience and understanding of our states of existence beyond the threshold of death is something that a soul can feel vital need of even if it has never heard about Steiner. If we don’t understand what spiritual science brings into the world we’ll inevitably see it only as another cosmology. Then we have Martinuses cosmology, Steiner’s cosmology, Seth’s cosmology and so on. But in the case of spiritual science the primary aspect is the scientific method, the path of inner transformation of the soul. It starts with PoF and then goes on towards the experiences across the threshold. Then the cosmology is the result of these experiences.
We have to distinguish what our soul needs for its development from what the intellect desires for its own satisfaction
This has to be borne in mind. When we say that we find X’s cosmology more accessible it should be clear that it is more accessible to our intellect, it forms a more convenient picture that we can hold and contemplate in our mind. The reason spiritual science feels to be less accessible is because it is not so comfortable for the intellect and this was never the goal! We only have to remind what was said before: imagine a state where we lose all our senses, and the support of the brain. There’s no way on Earth this could be comfortable and accessible for the intellect! In fact, the intellect is no more in that state. Yet it is the only way we can gain true knowledge of reality.
We have to be perfectly clear for the difference between thinking metaphysically and having actual experiences in the higher worlds. The former is a great lure because we soon get the impression that just because we think about the foundational secrets of the Cosmos we are already there. This is especially true when we think about something like the Trinity. There's difference from the Earth to Heaven between thinking of X1,2,3 and the experiences in the spiritual world for which the concepts are only the dimmest pointers.
I hope this can be understood. Otherwise it’s like saying: “Spiritual science is overly complicated. I find the description of an angel as a luminous winged creature to be much more accessible. Steiner simply lacks the pedagogical skills and he overintellectualizes things. He speaks about an angel in the most complicated and confusing ways instead of simply drawing a picture of a winged being.” Alas, with such an attitude we ensure that we can never pierce the veil of Maya. What feels convenient and accessible is such only because it nicely fits our
sensory habits. And this wouldn’t be so bad if these habits were not arbitrarily extrapolated beyond the threshold. In the Imaginative state it is still possible to experience an impression of an angelic being in the form of a winged creature but with the great difference that (if properly developed) we in no way mistake that image for the reality of the being. Instead, we’re fully conscious that this is an impression within our own etheric body of the supersensible interaction with a spiritual being.
Higher consciousness can only be developed on Earth
When things like these are taken into account it becomes transparently obvious that we can never pierce the veil of Maya by clinging to our comfortable sensory and intellectual habits. Neither does it helps to say “Well, there’s no need to strain. After death when the veil falls I’ll behold the spiritual beings in their true reality. On Earth I’m completely satisfied to have only an approximate dream picture.” Alas, as we have spoken so many times, this position rests on a specific over self-confidence. We believe that we already have the needed organization which makes it possible to be conscious of the spiritual beings after death. This however is by no means the case. It is like someone who can do calculations only by using pen and paper. He says “I don’t need to develop the forces which allow me to do calculations in my mind. I’ll do that after I lose the paper.” But just as little we’ll be magically able to do calculations in our mind if we suddenly lose the paper, so we find ourselves severely lacking in the spiritual world if we have never tried to conceive of an angel as anything more than a picture of a winged creature. Such pictures are nowhere to be found not long after death. Then what remains is utter confusion because we simply can’t recognize the reality of the angel. We can perceive that reality only if on Earth we have understood how the angel manifests in us.
Spiritual science can only be understood if we seek the states of consciousness from whence the descriptions proceed
This is what I wanted to point out. Spiritual science is difficult because we have to build intuition of the states of being that we exist in after death. This has to be borne in mind at all times when we read an anthroposophical work. The conceptions, if taken in isolation as a picture, are only secondary. When we read we have to always feel the vital question “What is the state of existence from whence these things can be perceived as facts?” A question that receives its answer not in abstract words but as an actual inner movement, as if we try to co-experience the facts together with the clairvoyant. And this is what distinguishes spiritual science because everything communicated is
inseparable from the path that reaches these states.
It's not about right vs. wrong but about whether we feel the vital need
Now all this will probably once again provoke outrage and accusations of superiority. But before that I would invite anyone to ask themselves: “Do I really want to approach the experiences between death and rebirth in the most real way?” Please don’t answer hastily. We should be clear that many people are curious to hear something about the afterlife but in no way would try to seek the first-person experiences of these states (except in the most naive way by fantasizing blissfully floating orbs in Heaven). And this is somewhat understandable as it requires to voluntarily approach the experience of death and go through it while still on Earth.
So if we are to ever reach agreement on these topics we have to be clear what we’re comparing. It doesn’t take much to see that Martinus presents a cosmology, a testament. But we won’t find there the science of initiation. We won’t find the knowledge of how to be lifted from the senses and brain, then even from the etheric body and experience what it means to exist in a spiritual world where all reality consists of spiritual beings. If we snap back to imagine these beings as floating winged creatures and we don’t even sense that this is only a higher form of Maya, then we
don’t yet understand what problem spiritual science gives the methods of solving. It will always feel that things are only unnecessarily complicated and could be depicted in a much more accessible way. We can complain about complicatedness only
if we have never tried to approach the state we would find ourselves in once we detach from the support of the physical and etheric bodies. If we reflect on this even for a while we’ll be convinced how utterly different that state should be. Eugene would say that it is completely orthogonal. And in a sense this is true but it is not
absolutely orthogonal. We simply need quite different skills if we are to move in and out of that state and be able to express in concepts and images the unique conditions there.
This is not said as a criticism of Martinus cosmology. There is a place for such pedagogy too. But if we’re speaking of spiritual science we need to understand that we’re dealing with
different problems. If we don’t feel the deep need to know in the most real first-person way something of the kind of existence we lead between death and rebirth, this whole most important aspect of spiritual science will be simply missed and what remains would be an overly complicated cosmology which will be blamed on poor pedagogical skills.