Christian initiation and Freedom

[zigzagger]

But we don't only exist in that thin slice, but also in the sub-sensory and supra-sensory depths. We have desires, impulses, feelings, passions, etc. that bubble up from the subconscious and ideas, ideals, virtues, etc. that trickle down from the supra-conscious. The only way we know of either the subconscious or the supra-conscious, or even the thin slice of sense-perceptible reality, is through our life of lucid thinking.

I see you have chosen a very complicated path. Very few, only a tiny number, do this. The problem is that the more you accrete to yourself, the more you will have to shed later. But do as you will.

[AshvinP]

But we don't only exist in that thin slice, but also in the sub-sensory and supra-sensory depths. We have desires, impulses, feelings, passions, etc. that bubble up from the subconscious and ideas, ideals, virtues, etc. that trickle down from the supra-conscious. The only way we know of either the subconscious or the supra-conscious, or even the thin slice of sense-perceptible reality, is through our life of lucid thinking.

I see you have chosen a very complicated path. Very few, only a tiny number, do this. The problem is that the more you accrete to yourself, the more you will have to shed later. But do as you will.

It's true that this path can become quite complicated if it's approached in a merely intellectual way, where we simply accrete mystical, occult, esoteric, etc. facts, without a corresponding inner transformation that allies our minds and hearts with Sun-inspired ideals. We have often used the metaphor of heliocentricity v. geocentricity here.





The geocentric view is the World understood from the perspective our normal intellectual intelligence, which is like a state of dreaming compared to higher cognitive modes of experience that we can awaken into. The latter bring us closer into central alignment with the Sun-perspective that is our true "I"-consciousness. Just as we only make sense of physical appearances in the waking world through the light, we can only make coherent sense of philosophical-scientific ideas about the World through the Light that incarnates in our thinking consciousness. It's interesting that the heliocentric understanding of the solar system didn't necessarily arise with Copernicus, but was already grasped in a more imaginative and moral way by ancient wisdom.

…for he (the sun) is stationed in the midst (of the Cosmos), and wears the Cosmos as a wreath (crown) around him (μέσος ίδρύται στεφανωφορωητόν κόσμον). And so he lets the Cosmos go on its course, not leaving it far separated from himself; for like a skilled driver, he has made fast and bound to himself the chariot of the Cosmos, lest it should rush away in disorder. (“Asclepius to King Ammon”, Corpus Hermeticum xvi, 7; trsl. W. Scott, Hermetica, vol. i, Oxford, 1924, p. 267)

We are not only seeking to accrete facts about the Sun and the harmonious functioning of the Cosmos under its guidance, but to allow our consciousness to coincide with the Sun, so we can begin viewing the World from its holistic perspective. It is in our complete freedom to choose whether we will regress back to a more animalistic dreaming consciousness which is perhaps indulgent and pleasant at first but can hardly make sense of its experience, or evolve further into a fully human consciousness that unites the living impulses of dreaming consciousness with the lucid ideas-ideals of waking consciousness.

[zigzagger]

A house is built in simple steps, one brick at a time. Eventually, the building is done: it is simple and functional. Or the owner can refuse to accept it, adding extensions, ornate turrets, decorative finials, running scrolls and fancy motifs. He can inlay it with gold and encrust it with diamonds. A baroque building will need more maintenance and will cost more to insure. Each owner must choose the kind of house he wants to live in. Whatever, it will be a temporary residence. The owner will not inhabit it forever.

[AshvinP]

A house is built in simple steps, one brick at a time. Eventually, the building is done: it is simple and functional. Or the owner can refuse to accept it, adding extensions, ornate turrets, decorative finials, running scrolls and fancy motifs. He can inlay it with gold and encrust it with diamonds. A baroque building will need more maintenance and will cost more to insure. Each owner must choose the kind of house he wants to live in. Whatever, it will be a temporary residence. The owner will not inhabit it forever.

Ok, so how do we decide what level of house design is adequate? Perhaps we can easily meet our basic living needs with one bathroom and a tiny living space, where we can place our cot for sleeping and a small table for eating. Maybe a small kitchen for cooking, but that's already an added luxury. But what if we also have spiritual ideals like reading philosophy, doing artwork as a hobby, playing instruments, meditating, etc.? Since you found your way to this forum, I am assuming you place some importance on philosophical thinking about reality. Where do you draw the line and how do you figure out whether the skills you develop within the house will have importance after the house is gone (after death)? So far, it seems like you are simply assuming that nothing we do on Earth before death has any value for our own souls after death, which is of course the materialist assumption as well.

[Güney27]

Lately I have started to look a little more at the teachings of various Western Christian masters.
Among others, I came across Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskalos.

Here I noticed that they are more understandable than Steiner, which is probably due to the fact that they do not go into as much detail as Steiner, and write their texts in a clearer and more practical way.

Especially the question of what is the core message of the Christian initiation teachings is well summed up by these authors.


Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskolos describe that Humans are on earth to manifest God's Kingdom and to carry out the Divine Will. This can only be done by transforming ourselves into purer beings, developing sacred values within ourselves and motivating all our actions with goodness and beauty. For this, a purification of our being must take place and our egoism must be overcome. Every human being has a great task, because in us lives a side which is egoistic, cold, greedy and so on. Steiner also emphasized this matter, saying that for each spiritual step we take, we have to take three steps in our morality. I like the phrase that people are on the way to becoming workers in God's cosmic enterprise. Here I wonder how this relates to man's freedom. When man becomes a worker in the cosmic enterprise, does he have to give up his freedom at a certain point in order to carry out Divine plans?

Guney,

Thanks for starting this thread and referring us to OMA and Daskalos. They are wise spiritual masters, indeed. I also love your image and quote!

On the topic of carrying out the Divine Will, we should always remember that His Will is for us to become One with Him - or to progressively reawaken to our Oneness with Him - and that He is the essence of Freedom. God is the only fully Free Be-ing. So growing into our higher potential, i.e. our Divinity, cannot be anything other than free-ing. Put another way, our very sense of 'freedom' can only have meaning in relation to how near or far we are in our lucid consciousness from God. The more we fragment our bei-ing into the sensory spectrum and life of personal emotions and desires and opinions and arbitrary actions, the more we are enslaved to foreign powers that may bring temporary happiness and pleasure but at the expense of long-lasting spiritual freedom. The more we harmonize the currents of our willing-feeling-thinking through loving spiritual ideals united under the umbrella of actualizing God's Will, the more we realize our Divine potential that is the essence of freedom.

All of that is quite metaphysical and abstract. The task ahead of us is to increasingly steer the freedom we find initially in our thinking "I"-consciousness into closer and closer union with the Divine "I"-consciousness, exactly through the purification you suggest above. Steiner's saying could not be any more true in my experience - each step we take to acquire knowledge should be accompanied by a few more towards inner moral perfection. These naturally feed back into one another over time as well - what we know helps us steer our moral efforts and the virtues we acquire on the path help us more effectively seek and integrate knowledge. We should never feel that one is coming at the expense of the other, but rather they are mutually supporting one another, just like faith in the Divine Will and freedom of the human will.

Here is another angle from Tomberg, who I find to be somewhat halfway between OMA and Steiner in style and content. There is no doubt that he was also a spiritual master. It's interesting because sometime after being ousted from the Anthroposophical Society, Tomberg joined the Catholic Church. He has a very high view of the Church's creeds, confessions, sacraments, traditions, and even 'dogmas', and I personally find this to be a perspective that helps deepen my own faith in God and humanity. Previously I was quite critical and cynical towards these aspects of the Church like most occultists and esotericists, but he has helped me to confront my own lack of faith in this regard.

In other words, is resurrection something which purely and simply happens to man, without any participation on his part, or is it a comprehensive act which embraces the entire circle of that which is above and that which is below—including human will? Let us return once again to Lazarus’ resurrection at Bethany. There, Jesus, after being “deeply moved in spirit”, after having wept, after having been “deeply moved again”, and after having given thanks to the Father “that thou hast heard me”, cried in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!” And “the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth” (John xi, 33-44). Did Lazarus come out of the tomb like a somnambulant obeying the order of a hypnotist, i.e. under magical constraint? Or did he come out because the voice that he heard had awoken in him all the love, all the hope and all the faith which vibrated in it, and thus he experienced the ardent desire to be near the one who called him?

... it was the affection and respect that the Master inspired in the soul of Lazarus, just as it was the persuasion that life was still necessary for him and that precious experiences were still promised to him here below, which made Lazarus come out of the tomb... The Arcanum of resurrection is therefore one of morality, pure and simple, wholly contrary to a pure and simple act of power. It is not a matter of a feat of force—no matter whether divine, Angelic or human—but rather of the superiority of the moral order to the natural order, including death. Resurrection is not an all-powerful divine act, but rather the effect of the meeting and union of divine love, hope and faith with human love, hope and faith. The trumpet sounds from above the whole of divine love, hope and faith; and not only the human spirit and soul but also all the atoms of the human body respond “yes” in chorus, which is the free expression—a cry from the heart of the whole being and of each particular atom—of the love, hope and faith of man, and of Nature, which is represented by man. For man represents Nature towards God and he represents God towards Nature. For this reason, in addressing ourselves to the Father who is in heaven, we say: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

What would be the good of praying to the all-powerful Father for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven if we were not the connecting link between him and Nature?…if the Father still reigned in Nature, and if all that took place on earth were his will only?…if he had not yielded his rule over Nature to others, and if other wills than his were not developing on the earth?

The earth, i.e. Nature, has been given by the Father to the free human being as the field of deployment of his freedom. And it is this freedom alone which can—and is in the right to—address this prayer to the Father in the name of freedom and in the name of the whole of Nature: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This prayer means to say: I desire your kingdom more than mine, for it is my ideal; and your will is the heart of hearts of my will—which languishes after your will, which is the way that my will seeks, the truth to which my will aspires, and the life from which my will lives.

This prayer is therefore not only an act of submission of the human will to divine will, but it is above all the expression of hunger and thirst for union with the divine will; it does not adhere to fatalism, but rather to love. It is to St. Augustine that we owe the remarkable statement: “God is more myself than I myself am”; he knew how to pray the Lord’s prayer.

Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 571-572). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Ashvin,
Would you like to say that you would distinguish exoteric Christianity from esoteric Christianity?
In the end they are just two interpretations of the same story.
Looking at religion exotericly, Jesus Christ was crucified to die for our sins. From an esoteric perspective, Jesus connected himself to the earth through his blood.
What do you think is the difference between the two perspectives?


I want to start more reaserch in Christianity in order to better understand the teachings of Christ. do you think valentin tomberg's book christ and sophia would be a good start?

[AshvinP]

Lately I have started to look a little more at the teachings of various Western Christian masters.
Among others, I came across Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskalos.

Here I noticed that they are more understandable than Steiner, which is probably due to the fact that they do not go into as much detail as Steiner, and write their texts in a clearer and more practical way.

Especially the question of what is the core message of the Christian initiation teachings is well summed up by these authors.


Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskolos describe that Humans are on earth to manifest God's Kingdom and to carry out the Divine Will. This can only be done by transforming ourselves into purer beings, developing sacred values within ourselves and motivating all our actions with goodness and beauty. For this, a purification of our being must take place and our egoism must be overcome. Every human being has a great task, because in us lives a side which is egoistic, cold, greedy and so on. Steiner also emphasized this matter, saying that for each spiritual step we take, we have to take three steps in our morality. I like the phrase that people are on the way to becoming workers in God's cosmic enterprise. Here I wonder how this relates to man's freedom. When man becomes a worker in the cosmic enterprise, does he have to give up his freedom at a certain point in order to carry out Divine plans?

Guney,

Thanks for starting this thread and referring us to OMA and Daskalos. They are wise spiritual masters, indeed. I also love your image and quote!

On the topic of carrying out the Divine Will, we should always remember that His Will is for us to become One with Him - or to progressively reawaken to our Oneness with Him - and that He is the essence of Freedom. God is the only fully Free Be-ing. So growing into our higher potential, i.e. our Divinity, cannot be anything other than free-ing. Put another way, our very sense of 'freedom' can only have meaning in relation to how near or far we are in our lucid consciousness from God. The more we fragment our bei-ing into the sensory spectrum and life of personal emotions and desires and opinions and arbitrary actions, the more we are enslaved to foreign powers that may bring temporary happiness and pleasure but at the expense of long-lasting spiritual freedom. The more we harmonize the currents of our willing-feeling-thinking through loving spiritual ideals united under the umbrella of actualizing God's Will, the more we realize our Divine potential that is the essence of freedom.

All of that is quite metaphysical and abstract. The task ahead of us is to increasingly steer the freedom we find initially in our thinking "I"-consciousness into closer and closer union with the Divine "I"-consciousness, exactly through the purification you suggest above. Steiner's saying could not be any more true in my experience - each step we take to acquire knowledge should be accompanied by a few more towards inner moral perfection. These naturally feed back into one another over time as well - what we know helps us steer our moral efforts and the virtues we acquire on the path help us more effectively seek and integrate knowledge. We should never feel that one is coming at the expense of the other, but rather they are mutually supporting one another, just like faith in the Divine Will and freedom of the human will.

Here is another angle from Tomberg, who I find to be somewhat halfway between OMA and Steiner in style and content. There is no doubt that he was also a spiritual master. It's interesting because sometime after being ousted from the Anthroposophical Society, Tomberg joined the Catholic Church. He has a very high view of the Church's creeds, confessions, sacraments, traditions, and even 'dogmas', and I personally find this to be a perspective that helps deepen my own faith in God and humanity. Previously I was quite critical and cynical towards these aspects of the Church like most occultists and esotericists, but he has helped me to confront my own lack of faith in this regard.

In other words, is resurrection something which purely and simply happens to man, without any participation on his part, or is it a comprehensive act which embraces the entire circle of that which is above and that which is below—including human will? Let us return once again to Lazarus’ resurrection at Bethany. There, Jesus, after being “deeply moved in spirit”, after having wept, after having been “deeply moved again”, and after having given thanks to the Father “that thou hast heard me”, cried in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!” And “the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth” (John xi, 33-44). Did Lazarus come out of the tomb like a somnambulant obeying the order of a hypnotist, i.e. under magical constraint? Or did he come out because the voice that he heard had awoken in him all the love, all the hope and all the faith which vibrated in it, and thus he experienced the ardent desire to be near the one who called him?

... it was the affection and respect that the Master inspired in the soul of Lazarus, just as it was the persuasion that life was still necessary for him and that precious experiences were still promised to him here below, which made Lazarus come out of the tomb... The Arcanum of resurrection is therefore one of morality, pure and simple, wholly contrary to a pure and simple act of power. It is not a matter of a feat of force—no matter whether divine, Angelic or human—but rather of the superiority of the moral order to the natural order, including death. Resurrection is not an all-powerful divine act, but rather the effect of the meeting and union of divine love, hope and faith with human love, hope and faith. The trumpet sounds from above the whole of divine love, hope and faith; and not only the human spirit and soul but also all the atoms of the human body respond “yes” in chorus, which is the free expression—a cry from the heart of the whole being and of each particular atom—of the love, hope and faith of man, and of Nature, which is represented by man. For man represents Nature towards God and he represents God towards Nature. For this reason, in addressing ourselves to the Father who is in heaven, we say: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

What would be the good of praying to the all-powerful Father for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven if we were not the connecting link between him and Nature?…if the Father still reigned in Nature, and if all that took place on earth were his will only?…if he had not yielded his rule over Nature to others, and if other wills than his were not developing on the earth?

The earth, i.e. Nature, has been given by the Father to the free human being as the field of deployment of his freedom. And it is this freedom alone which can—and is in the right to—address this prayer to the Father in the name of freedom and in the name of the whole of Nature: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This prayer means to say: I desire your kingdom more than mine, for it is my ideal; and your will is the heart of hearts of my will—which languishes after your will, which is the way that my will seeks, the truth to which my will aspires, and the life from which my will lives.

This prayer is therefore not only an act of submission of the human will to divine will, but it is above all the expression of hunger and thirst for union with the divine will; it does not adhere to fatalism, but rather to love. It is to St. Augustine that we owe the remarkable statement: “God is more myself than I myself am”; he knew how to pray the Lord’s prayer.

Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 571-572). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Ashvin,
Would you like to say that you would distinguish exoteric Christianity from esoteric Christianity?
In the end they are just two interpretations of the same story.
Looking at religion exotericly, Jesus Christ was crucified to die for our sins. From an esoteric perspective, Jesus connected himself to the earth through his blood.
What do you think is the difference between the two perspectives?


I want to start more reaserch in Christianity in order to better understand the teachings of Christ. do you think valentin tomberg's book christ and sophia would be a good start?

Guney,

These are very deep topics to explore. The distinction I would draw between exoteric Christianity and esoteric is practically the same that I would draw between the outer and inner for every domain of experience. It is usually best to consider the individual human being as a microcosmic example of what we also find outspread in the forms and forces of nature and culture (including religious streams). Let's say I am looking at another person and see them smile. The outer physical smile is like a condensed image of a whole complex of inner desires, feelings, and ideas/intentions. We simply couldn't function in everyday life if we had to navigate that whole complex of inner currents every time we wanted to smile at someone or understand what someone else's smile means to us.

It is a similar thing with exoteric religious streams. Every creed, every dogma, every tradition, every ritual, etc. is like a condensed image that embeds a whole complex of inner spiritual realities, which are essentially relations of higher and lower spiritual beings with humanity. We can't do without exoteric spirituality in the same we can't do without outer gestures and signs when interacting with people. Esoteric spiritual investigation simply provides us the opportunity to start investigating some limited domain of the inner forces that finally resulted in the outer images we are familiar with in the exoteric traditions, thereby enriching the meaning of the latter. Ideally, there should be no 'interpretation' in esoteric investigation, only an unbiased and impartial assessment of the facts that are inwardly presented to us or that we come across in reliable sources and dispassionately reason through.

So taking your example, we should sense that this image (the words and all associated visuals, like those of the scourging and the cross) - "Jesus Christ was crucified to die for our sins" - embeds and evokes a whole array of inner experiences within us, most of which we aren't even consciously aware of. When we think about it, that's quite an enigmatic set of words - what does it mean to be crucified, what does it mean to die (and be resurrected), what does it mean for our sins to be redeemed, etc.? These simple images have inspired the entire course of Western civilization since that time, but we only have the dimmest sense of what it all means in our normal waking consciousness. The esoteric path is about bringing more and more of the hidden inner realities to our waking consciousness, not only for our personal benefit, but also and most importantly for the benefit of all those around us who continue to suffer due to the prevailing ignorance. If we discern the esoteric fact that a critical part of "Jesus died for our sins" is also that Jesus literally united his purifying and vivifying blood with the Earth's substance, then all sorts of new possibilities open up for working towards the Biblical ideals (such as modern meditation).

I can't fail to recommend Christ and Sophia by Tomberg, because I found it immensely significant, but I will also say that it presupposes a decent amount of background familiarity with Anthroposophy. Not all of it, but much of it does. I will quote an excerpt from the introduction to the book and perhaps that will help you make the decision.

Scripture, Tomberg begins, provides us with the evidence—or “facts”—of the divine spiritual worlds’ ongoing and mutually transformative interaction or conversation with humanity and the Earth. As such, it constitutes a continuation of the ancient mysteries, through whose suprasensory revelations human culture and civilization have always evolved and “whose methods alter with every epoch but persist in an unbroken line to the present day.”

The method for Tomberg is the one outlined by Rudolf Steiner and called anthroposophic spiritual science. This science is not a body of knowledge or information, but living human experience, a way of knowing, that leads to moral action in the world. Just as human experience, the unified human field, consists of body, soul, and spirit, so spiritual science—or “occultism”—likewise consists of a unity made up of three realms, traditionally called the eugenic, the hygienic, and the mechanical. The eugenic path is that which harmonizes the relations between humanity as a whole and the spiritual world; the hygienic path does the same for the individual human organism; while the mechanical regulates “nature” so that it harmonizes with true human destiny. The three paths are unfolded for us in the three great spiritual documents of our time: the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and the Apocalypse. The Hebrew Scriptures teach the esotericism of the “holy birth”; the Gospels teach the esotericism of healing humanity of its sickness; and the Apocalypse unveils the esoteric consequences of this healing of humanity for nature and the cosmos. In other words, Tomberg assumes a vast and dual task: on the one hand, to reveal the deepest, esoteric meaning of the Old and New Testaments and, in this sense, to contribute to a renewal of Christianity; on the other, to place Christianity—the love of Christ and Sophia—at the heart of Anthroposophy. Thus, the aim of the “meditations” is nothing other than to place Anthroposophy at the service of the Christ: to serve Christ and Sophia out of Anthroposophy.

It is impossible in the compass of an introduction to recount the depth and riches that flowed through Tomberg during this period. Readers will have to study for themselves these “meditations” as they continued to flow unabated during some of the most painful years of human history—years that placed their author continuously under the greatest personal and historical pressure. The “meditations” are not the fruit of an ivory tower existence but arise from a spiritual necessity during extraordinary times. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the inner strength of spiritual purpose required for such a task. Nevertheless, the context, however moving, is incidental. Readers will have to decide for themselves as to the value of Tomberg’s work, through the work they themselves do in coming to terms with it. Certainly, there are great riches here that demand repeated and meditative reading. The themes are vast and huge and concern nothing less than our human past, present, and future. At the same time, this vastness is always brought down to concrete, individual moral and spiritual experience.

Tomberg, Valentin; Bruce, R.H.. Christ and Sophia: Anthroposophic Meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocalypse . steinerbooks. Kindle Edition.

[Federica]

Here I noticed that they are more understandable than Steiner, which is probably due to the fact that they do not go into as much detail as Steiner, and write their texts in a clearer and more practical way.

Regarding this common thought that Steiner is not so accessible and understandable, that Luke has also expressed on the Mask thread, I have just come across the following by Dennis Klocek, that I think really nails the situation here. Klocek is referring to some Steiner lectures. He says:

"It couldn't be clearer, but when you first read it you don't get it."

That's exactly right! In other words, the way we approach what Steiner communicates should be consistent with the mode of consciousness illustrated in his writings. We cannot expect to read it, match it with our concepts, get it, archive it.
We have to be more active than that. We have to synchronize our inner dispostion with the words, put in effort, cooperate with what we are reading. It wouldn't make any sense to read about the new mode of consciousness that we have to actualize, and expect that the old mode of consciousness is enough, in order to understand. In the terms of the Barfield thread: we can't read about Final Participation, and expect that we can take that home with simple Onlooker's Consciousness. It's about putting a little more energy and participation in our efforts to understand Steiner. We have to do our part, shape that understanding into existence. When we do so, it doesn't take too much until we can say: "it couldn't be clearer". And it is always worth it.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,
If we are free to abandon our will and carry out the divine will, are we really free?

Aren't we a stone that is thrown in one direction and thinks that it is itself responsible for the flight?
Suppose a person decides to become a Christian and study religion. Something in him urges him to do this and not lose his interest. That something is not under his conscious control.
Perhaps it is his destiny, his karma or something else that directs him to it. That's the way it is for me, various things made me come to this forum. At first I didn't understand anything at all, but a feeling within me pushed me to keep researching. These things were not under my conscious control.
Today I am at the point where I am trying to optimize my life to become God's worker.
Was this decision really my own?

Guney and others,

Here is another angle on this question.

On this forum, we have often referred to Kant's philosophy in a very critical way. Speaking for myself, I have often referenced it as a nihilistic epistemology that led Western civilization to forsake the power of human reason and therefore the active seeking of the Spirit that weaves through the World. That is a pretty undeniable thread of 'critical idealism' which is found in the "followers" of Kant, but what about Kant's 'transcendental idealism' itself? There is perhaps room to reevaluate my harsh criticism and see Kant's philosophy in a new constructive light. The purpose of this reevaluation is not so much to determine who is 'right' and who is 'wrong', or even to figure out exactly what Kant's philosophy was (although that is helpful), but to challenge us all to continually revisit our previously held ideas/views and try to see them in a new light, from different angles and perspectives, including angles which may seem diametrically opposite to previous angles. 

It reminds me of law school, where we had to read case opinions from the high courts. After reading the majority opinion, I would feel that the legal arguments were air tight, rock solid, and the judge had reasoned through the issues exactly right. Then I would read the dissenting opinion and be amazed that the arguments for the other side were equally rock solid and persuasive. The intellect, with its logical reasoning, is structured so as to view the World from two sides - we could generally call them the empirical (natural) and transcendental (moral) sides - and kindle new constructive intuitions through their interplay. That is ultimately how the intellect grows and loosens its rigid constraints - by confronting a thesis with its antithesis and finding, or rather waiting patiently and experiencing, the higher vantage from which they can be synthesized. This should be a ceaseless process in our spiritual striving.

What Kant discerned, and himself compared in the realm of the Spirit to the "discovery of Copernicus" in the realm of Nature, was that the human self could lift its consciousness beyond a mere identification with its stream of thinking and begin contemplating that stream of thinking and the ways in which it orders the World of appearances. Many people today assume that is simply a way of developing a new intellectual theory about "thinking", but was that really the case for Kant? For him, it seems to have been more importantly a way in which we can begin experiencing the 'transcendental self' (or individuality) who encompasses but is distinct from the 'empirical self' (or lower personality). Just as Copernicus reoriented our thinking about the Cosmos towards the perspective of the Sun, around which all other planets revolve, Kant reoriented our thinking about the empirical self towards the transcendental self, around which all forms - memories, habits, temperaments, desires, emotions, thoughts, etc. - of the lower personality revolve. There was great potential to be unleashed from such a reorientation, as Federica also pointed to here in the context of Barfield's 'final participation'. 

In other words, in the heavily objectifying tendency of current thinking (alpha thinking) lies the seed of the next step in the evolution of consciousness. Because, when alpha thinking picks up just ‘thinking’ as object of inquiry (a special case of alpha thinking that Barfield calls beta thinking) all of a sudden appears the possibility of regaining a reflective quality in thinking. In this reflexivity, subject and object can be brought to a match, and thinking can switch from a knowing mode based on inference, to one based on creation, as the authors put it. So the entirely new state of consciousness that appears when thinking is brought to deploy its modern objectifying quality onto itself, is what Barfield calls Final Participation (as opposed to the instinctive Original Participation of ancient man).

This reorientation points us in the direction where humanity can gradually unveil greater and greater degrees of morally oriented freedom - first in the domain of thinking consciousness, then in the domain of the psyche, then in the domain of organic processes, and finally in the domain of the inorganic matter (that is resurrected back to the level of organic forms). There is no rigid separation between these levels of redemptive work, however, and they gradually need to harmonize and work in concert. We could say a morally oriented freedom is practically synonymous with the capacity to not only reflect on the past ordering of thinking, as the latter is encoded in sensory perceptions and memories of the soul-life, but to start also working consciously and creatively on the future ordering of the natural world that is still germinal within present thinking activity. In this way, the past ordering of thinking is fulfilled, i.e. the intended purposes of the sensory spectrum and soul-life are brought to realization through the Spirit. That can only be done once thinking makes itself the object of observation and knowledge. 

What had taken place in Kant was a "repositioning" of consciousness from identifying itself with the process of thinking to observing and evaluating that very process... Philosophy has Kant to thank, however, not only for having rebuked reason for its claim to sole validity... but also for a new experience that the transcendental method (the inner observation of the process of thinking from a higher vantage point) brings with it. This experience is that of the reality of the transcendental self, which is higher than the empirical self... From this, moreover, results the certainty of freedom, that is, the reality of morality as the capacity to bring about new causes within the realm of determined causal sequence (the chain of causes and effects in nature). That is what acting freely and morally means.

As a starting point for this consideration of morally oriented freedom, we can take Steiner's remarks on Kant and the concept of 'duty' in the Philosophy of Freedom. 

Acting out of freedom does not exclude the moral laws; it includes them, but shows itself to be on a higher level than those actions which are merely dictated by such laws. Why should my action be of less service to the public good when I have done it out of love than when I have done it only because I consider serving the public good to be my duty? The mere concept of duty excludes freedom because it does not acknowledge the individual element but demands that this be subject to a general standard....When Kant says of duty: “Duty! Thou exalted and mighty name, thou that dost comprise nothing lovable, nothing ingratiating, but demandest submission,” thou that “settest up a law ... before which all inclinations are silent, even though they secretly work against it,” 5 then out of the consciousness of the free spirit, man replies: “Freedom! Thou kindly and human name, thou that dost comprise all that is morally most lovable, all that my manhood most prizes, and that makest me the servant of nobody, thou that settest up no mere law, but awaitest what my moral love itself will recognize as law because in the face of every merely imposed law it feels itself unfree.”

Upon initial considerations, the above will appear as quite critical of Kant's ethical philosophy. But that presupposes Kant's philosophy employed the idea-ideal of 'duty' as that of an externally 'imposed law' and, further, that he considered following this law an end in itself. Is that a fair way to understand Kant's ethical philosophy? Perhaps not. Another way is to discern how Kant perceived in the idea of duty a starting point for a truly moral and free ethics, in so far as duty places itself in opposition to all that which arises from personal inclinations, wishes, desires, preferences, etc. Steiner himself emphasized in many places that, before we can harmonize our personal feelings and desires with our morally intuited ideals, we must be willing to unveil and sacrifice the personalized context of those desires (what he often referred to as catharsis of the soul). In our normal experience, the idea of following a course of action out of duty is the most clear example where we work opposite to our immediate and automatic personal inclinations, which have been accreted through epochs of conditioning within the sensory spectrum. A person who goes to war for his/her country out of a sheer sense of duty, for ex., puts on pause all of their personal comforts, conveniences, hopes, and dreams to serve a greater cause (at least what is considered a 'greater cause' in the inner forum of their own consciousness, which is what really matters here).  

This brings us to the reason for Kant's insistence on the concept of duty as the highest concept of ethics. Kant wanted to place a concept of this kind in the foreground of ethics - a concept that expresses in the clearest and purest way possible the difference between the empirical subject and the transcendental subject - in order to intensify this difference until it appears to be an opposition. It was in the concept of duty that an opposition most clearly appeared for Kant between the empirical self with its inclinations and disinclinations, its wishes and hopes, on the one hand, and the pure ought of the transcendental self on the other, an ought that can be opposed to inclinations, wishes, and hopes of any kind.

As we can tell, all of this discussion relates to Guney's question about how uniting our personal will with the Divine Will, out of a freely adopted sense of duty, can lead to moral freedom. It can only progressively realize that freedom, however, if it resists making the concept of duty an end itself, but rather only the initial means of deconditioning from its merely personal concerns, entangled with the sensory spectrum, in order to experience the transcendental self who only knows its own be-ing through the context of the Divine Will. Just as the lower personality or empirical self becomes conscious of itself through the dim reflections of the normal sensory and conceptual spectrum, we could say the higher transcendental self becomes conscious of itself through the Divine judgments pronounced on its experiences-deeds. These are judgments that reveal to it how harmoniously or disharmoniously its deeds fit into the whole functioning of the Cosmic organism. That is the same Cosmic organism by virtue of which it exists and remains healthy and evolving.

This only works if our inherited selfish tendencies can be put to work in service of spiritual ideals, i.e. we can 'selfishly' develop our spiritual capacities, with courage and ambition, which then allows us to expand our very inner understanding of 'self' to encompass broader and broader constellations of Be-ing. That is how selfishness gets spiraled into selflessness and how the intentions and goals of more expansive spheres of beings are harmonized. We all progressively awaken to our latent potential as DIvine co-creators and become who we really are, in essence. 

PS - Guney, if you are interested in exploring one of Tomberg's works to a getter better sense of esoteric Christianity, I would recommend "Personal Certainty: On the Way, the Truth, and the Life", from which the above quotes were sourced. It is pretty short and easy to read through.

[Federica]

In connection with Ashvin’s new angle on freedom in the post above, it's maybe worth recalling the specular face of the healthy habit of continually revisit our previously held ideas:

The purpose of this reevaluation is not so much to determine who is 'right' and who is 'wrong', or even to figure out exactly what Kant's philosophy was (although that is helpful), but to challenge us all to continually revisit our previously held ideas/views and try to see them in a new light, from different angles and perspectives, including angles which may seem diametrically opposite to previous angles.

In the same way that we can look back at our previously held ideas and remain open to rediscovering them from a higher, harmonizing perspective, we can also orient the forming of our current and future understanding. This involves letting go of our desire to once and for all tick off objects of knowledge from our list, accepting that real understanding is progressive, immersive, and interconnected. This necessary acceptance also echoes the fifth of Steiner’s six basic exercises: confronting every new experience with complete open-mindedness.

The issue is that, when we ask big questions - freedom and religious call, for example - we would often like to be able to attend to one side of the question first, solve it - gathering that everything else stands still and waits for us - then clarify and grasp another side of the question, and proceed in this manner, “step by step”. That's the intellectual tendency again, that wants to lay out (in mental space) all pieces in orderly manner, a, b, c, and d, and then tackle them one by one, in a process that is actually discontinuous, that extracts itself out of the flow of reality, as we can intuit. So it’s not possible to consider freedom in isolation, define it, test it in our mind’s eye by means of various examples, declare it covered, then with the same method move on to the Christ impulse, and how it changed/changes human consciousness, then tackle morality, and so forth. Such processing of objects of knowledge, as if we could throw them on the coroner’s slab and dissect and analyze them as isolated pieces, is the problem. It’s as if we were trying to guess the last thoughts and feelings of a dead person, by doing the autopsy of their brain and heart. It won't work, because there's no more life in what we are dissecting. Thoughts also have lost their life, can't reveal any true knowledge, if we try to fracture them apart from the living flow of reality before analizing them. We can't do that. Instead we have to slip into them while they're still alive, pumping organs we share into, within the fabric of reality (which means in shared territory with other alive intelligences).

Beyond its practical use in mundane matters, we learn to let go of our obsession with breaking down complex problems in simple steps, hoping to feel smart, resourceful, and in control. We come to accept that knowledge is an all-round expansion. Everything evolves arounds its center, including ourselves, as symbolized by the simple mandala Cleric shared in this recent post. When we grow in awareness within it, we are in direct friction with all sides of our questions at the same time. We can’t ponder a question and rehearse it forever in our mind, keeping it at safe distance (intellectual approach). At some point, we have to meet it without intermediaries, knowing that the experience will not feel fully complete and mastered. Which is why we need “the feeling within, that pushes us to keep researching” as Güney puts it. This is also my own experience. And hopefully what happens next is that patience and open mindedness start to spring from that feeling, helping us accept that knowledge is brought within our reach only in slow waves of progression.

[Federica]

I was reading the lecture "Two paintings by Raphael". We know the first painting, the School of Athens, from a previous thread, and I thought the second one, The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, fits well in this discussion.

The two paintings have to be studied together one after the other. They are an expression of what happened from the pre-Christian age down to the later part of the Middle Ages, and they express it in artistic form. Just imagine how great and mighty must have been the impression made upon a really sensitive soul who saw these pictures, first one and then the other, and said to himself: “I am myself inter woven into this onward path of Wisdom, which mankind follows in the course of evolution; I am part of it, I belong to the march of events as it is shown in these pictures.” For the man who understood the sense of evolution in those days really felt this.