The best arguments for a personal god

[Freefrommainstream]

Hello this post may seem a little bit controversial because many kastrupians or idealists do not believe in a persibal god you can pray to. First I will come up with arguments for god in general then with arguments for a personal one

Modified Pascals Wager
The chance that god exists is higher than that he does not exist so we should bet on him like we would do if for example the chance that we succeed in a race is 99% we would take part in the race


The argument against solipsism
We cannot prove that anything exists but we can assume that some things exist. Things which are more probable are more likely to exist so we can assume that some things exist. The conclusion is that we can not prove anything objectively and we need to rely on intuition for everything the same is applicable for god

The argument against solipsism for god
We can not objectively prove god but we can assume his existence because of the following arguments:

Many (Hundreds of millions) people claim that they have experienced a personal god

The chance that X many people claim that they have experienced god without having experienced god is so low that we can conclude that they have really experienced god
---------------------------
There are many other arguments for a personal god ask me for some more if you want

[AshvinP]

Hello this post may seem a little bit controversial because many kastrupians or idealists do not believe in a persibal god you can pray to. First I will come up with arguments for god in general then with arguments for a personal one

Modified Pascals Wager
The chance that god exists is higher than that he does not exist so we should bet on him like we would do if for example the chance that we succeed in a race is 99% we would take part in the race


The argument against solipsism
We cannot prove that anything exists but we can assume that some things exist. Things which are more probable are more likely to exist so we can assume that some things exist. The conclusion is that we can not prove anything objectively and we need to rely on intuition for everything the same is applicable for god

The argument against solipsism for god
We can not objectively prove god but we can assume his existence because of the following arguments:

Many (Hundreds of millions) people claim that they have experienced a personal god

The chance that X many people claim that they have experienced god without having experienced god is so low that we can conclude that they have really experienced god
---------------------------
There are many other arguments for a personal god ask me for some more if you want

Hello ffm,

It is my view that only God-like activity can reach inner certainty of a personal God's existence. Does God like to make intellectual arguments that convince us of his reality? I don't think so. I have never come across an ancient Divine revelation that takes the form of an intellectual argument.

So we need to find where God lives in our experience - in what activity does He come to expression? One could label this activity many things - in our activity of love, conscience, devotion, hope, upward striving, etc. But to express it in a way that encompasses all those, we could call it thoughtful 'attention'. When we pay attention to something, like the white clouds in the sky, we can't simultaneously observe the activity by which we are paying attention to those clouds. But that is precisely the activity where God lives, the temple into which he incarnates. God is the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation.

How to recover the experience of this force, by which alone we attain inner certainty of God's existence? Our attention must sacrifice the object of its activity for it to recover the activity itself. But if our attention is spread around many objects, hopping back and forth, then it would require infinite effort to withdraw attention from each object. That is why we must first learn to concentrate attention on a single object or theme and this object-theme then becomes a symbol for our activity of attention that sustains its existence. Then our consciousness can effortlessly flow between the object of attention and the activity of attending, bring them into harmony. There are many objects-theme we could choose to concentrate on, but could there be any better symbol for the God who lives in our attentive activity than the perfect image of God himself?

It just so happens that 2,000 years ago, God himself incarnated on the physical plane so he could become the perfect object of our concentrated attention, the 'apple of our eye'. This incarnation was not an argument for us to believe in his existence, but an exercise for us to experience his reality within us and set on a path to become Him, or progressively awaken to our essential unity with Him. What could possibly be more personal than gathering such an inner experience and walking such a path? For certainty of a personal God to arise, our experience-understanding of God must become personal.

[Federica]

Hello this post may seem a little bit controversial because many kastrupians or idealists do not believe in a persibal god you can pray to. First I will come up with arguments for god in general then with arguments for a personal one

Modified Pascals Wager
The chance that god exists is higher than that he does not exist so we should bet on him like we would do if for example the chance that we succeed in a race is 99% we would take part in the race


The argument against solipsism
We cannot prove that anything exists but we can assume that some things exist. Things which are more probable are more likely to exist so we can assume that some things exist. The conclusion is that we can not prove anything objectively and we need to rely on intuition for everything the same is applicable for god

The argument against solipsism for god
We can not objectively prove god but we can assume his existence because of the following arguments:

Many (Hundreds of millions) people claim that they have experienced a personal god

The chance that X many people claim that they have experienced god without having experienced god is so low that we can conclude that they have really experienced god
---------------------------
There are many other arguments for a personal god ask me for some more if you want

Freefrommainstream,

I think Ashvin's reply above is the simplest and clearest possible way to put the truth in words, however another little thing that we can notice in relation to the various arguments you put forward, is this: as reasonable and logical these arguments might be, how come that intelligent people have always largely disagreed, and continue to disagree on them? Don't you think it shows that searching for the most logical and rational argument will never really provide a completely definite solution to the question? Do you think it is a matter of who finds a new "more rational" or more convincing proof?

[Anthony66]

Hello this post may seem a little bit controversial because many kastrupians or idealists do not believe in a persibal god you can pray to. First I will come up with arguments for god in general then with arguments for a personal one

Modified Pascals Wager
The chance that god exists is higher than that he does not exist so we should bet on him like we would do if for example the chance that we succeed in a race is 99% we would take part in the race


The argument against solipsism
We cannot prove that anything exists but we can assume that some things exist. Things which are more probable are more likely to exist so we can assume that some things exist. The conclusion is that we can not prove anything objectively and we need to rely on intuition for everything the same is applicable for god

The argument against solipsism for god
We can not objectively prove god but we can assume his existence because of the following arguments:

Many (Hundreds of millions) people claim that they have experienced a personal god

The chance that X many people claim that they have experienced god without having experienced god is so low that we can conclude that they have really experienced god
---------------------------
There are many other arguments for a personal god ask me for some more if you want

Hello ffm,

It is my view that only God-like activity can reach inner certainty of a personal God's existence. Does God like to make intellectual arguments that convince us of his reality? I don't think so. I have never come across an ancient Divine revelation that takes the form of an intellectual argument.

So we need to find where God lives in our experience - in what activity does He come to expression? One could label this activity many things - in our activity of love, conscience, devotion, hope, upward striving, etc. But to express it in a way that encompasses all those, we could call it thoughtful 'attention'. When we pay attention to something, like the white clouds in the sky, we can't simultaneously observe the activity by which we are paying attention to those clouds. But that is precisely the activity where God lives, the temple into which he incarnates. God is the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation.

How to recover the experience of this force, by which alone we attain inner certainty of God's existence? Our attention must sacrifice the object of its activity for it to recover the activity itself. But if our attention is spread around many objects, hopping back and forth, then it would require infinite effort to withdraw attention from each object. That is why we must first learn to concentrate attention on a single object or theme and this object-theme then becomes a symbol for our activity of attention that sustains its existence. Then our consciousness can effortlessly flow between the object of attention and the activity of attending, bring them into harmony. There are many objects-theme we could choose to concentrate on, but could there be any better symbol for the God who lives in our attentive activity than the perfect image of God himself?

It just so happens that 2,000 years ago, God himself incarnated on the physical plane so he could become the perfect object of our concentrated attention, the 'apple of our eye'. This incarnation was not an argument for us to believe in his existence, but an exercise for us to experience his reality within us and set on a path to become Him, or progressively awaken to our essential unity with Him. What could possibly be more personal than gathering such an inner experience and walking such a path? For certainty of a personal God to arise, our experience-understanding of God must become personal.

How does one concentrate on the God that physically incarnated 2000 years ago? This seems somewhat more of a challenge than Cleric's circling dot of light exercise!!

[AshvinP]

Hello this post may seem a little bit controversial because many kastrupians or idealists do not believe in a persibal god you can pray to. First I will come up with arguments for god in general then with arguments for a personal one

Modified Pascals Wager
The chance that god exists is higher than that he does not exist so we should bet on him like we would do if for example the chance that we succeed in a race is 99% we would take part in the race


The argument against solipsism
We cannot prove that anything exists but we can assume that some things exist. Things which are more probable are more likely to exist so we can assume that some things exist. The conclusion is that we can not prove anything objectively and we need to rely on intuition for everything the same is applicable for god

The argument against solipsism for god
We can not objectively prove god but we can assume his existence because of the following arguments:

Many (Hundreds of millions) people claim that they have experienced a personal god

The chance that X many people claim that they have experienced god without having experienced god is so low that we can conclude that they have really experienced god
---------------------------
There are many other arguments for a personal god ask me for some more if you want

Hello ffm,

It is my view that only God-like activity can reach inner certainty of a personal God's existence. Does God like to make intellectual arguments that convince us of his reality? I don't think so. I have never come across an ancient Divine revelation that takes the form of an intellectual argument.

So we need to find where God lives in our experience - in what activity does He come to expression? One could label this activity many things - in our activity of love, conscience, devotion, hope, upward striving, etc. But to express it in a way that encompasses all those, we could call it thoughtful 'attention'. When we pay attention to something, like the white clouds in the sky, we can't simultaneously observe the activity by which we are paying attention to those clouds. But that is precisely the activity where God lives, the temple into which he incarnates. God is the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation.

How to recover the experience of this force, by which alone we attain inner certainty of God's existence? Our attention must sacrifice the object of its activity for it to recover the activity itself. But if our attention is spread around many objects, hopping back and forth, then it would require infinite effort to withdraw attention from each object. That is why we must first learn to concentrate attention on a single object or theme and this object-theme then becomes a symbol for our activity of attention that sustains its existence. Then our consciousness can effortlessly flow between the object of attention and the activity of attending, bring them into harmony. There are many objects-theme we could choose to concentrate on, but could there be any better symbol for the God who lives in our attentive activity than the perfect image of God himself?

It just so happens that 2,000 years ago, God himself incarnated on the physical plane so he could become the perfect object of our concentrated attention, the 'apple of our eye'. This incarnation was not an argument for us to believe in his existence, but an exercise for us to experience his reality within us and set on a path to become Him, or progressively awaken to our essential unity with Him. What could possibly be more personal than gathering such an inner experience and walking such a path? For certainty of a personal God to arise, our experience-understanding of God must become personal.

How does one concentrate on the God that physically incarnated 2000 years ago? This seems somewhat more of a challenge than Cleric's circling dot of light exercise!!

Anthony,

I should have been more clear. It seems to me that many people will start on an inner path without a deeply rooted sense of reverence, devotion, love, etc. for God, in which case we can meditate/concentrate on many other symbolic images to enter into the flow of our attentive activity where 'God', whatever we understand that word to mean, actually lives. If we have a concrete sense of devotion towards a personal God, however, and perhaps even God incarnate in Christ Jesus, then it makes great sense to keep this theme as the primary context for all our meditations. Even if we are unaware of the reasons why, that theme is the primary context for everything we do in modern culture. It is the context for all our cultural institutions of religion, science, philosophy, psychology, art, politics, and so forth. That event has informed the whole course of Western civilization that makes it possible for a wide swath of humanity to meditate/concentrate with thoughtful attention. We have law and order, wealth, homes, modern healthcare, etc., not to mention new thinking faculties, that all go into our individual capacity for attention. So if we can bring this implicit context into more conscious awareness, then we will surely find less resistance in withdrawing attention from the multiplicity of the sensory-conceptual spectrum and focusing it on the activity of attending itself. It acts as a supersensible attractor force that unites the forms/movements of our soul-life around a common center of celestial gravity (or levity). As Steiner puts it,

"Every idea which does not become your ideal slays a force in your soul; Every idea which becomes your ideal creates within you life-forces."

Christ incarnated to illustrate the fully human ideal, symbolically and literally (through his teachings and his actions). We can also meditate on specific verses of the Gospels, such as "In the beginning was the Word... through Him all things were made." What is the essence of the Word? Spoken or written speech is where the sensory forms, e.g. the black and white shapes or the audial sounds, are united with supersensible cognitive meaning. At least in our native language, we don't need to struggle to match up sensory forms with their meaning, but rather the two are intimately united. So what would the archetypal Word-Speech be? It is He who intimately unites the entire sensible creation, including human personalities, with the transpersonal essence of supersensible Divinity. There is endless depth of meaning and inspiration that can flow into our consciousness from focusing our concentration into such themes. All themes around the Christ events are practically identical to the activity we are engaging in since the ideal of our concentration is always to more perfectly unite the sensible with the supersensible across many nested layers of activity from humanity to the Godhead. That is why imitatio Christi can be rightly called the way towards all human ideals and the very purpose of our created existence. 

[Anthony66]

Hello ffm,

It is my view that only God-like activity can reach inner certainty of a personal God's existence. Does God like to make intellectual arguments that convince us of his reality? I don't think so. I have never come across an ancient Divine revelation that takes the form of an intellectual argument.

So we need to find where God lives in our experience - in what activity does He come to expression? One could label this activity many things - in our activity of love, conscience, devotion, hope, upward striving, etc. But to express it in a way that encompasses all those, we could call it thoughtful 'attention'. When we pay attention to something, like the white clouds in the sky, we can't simultaneously observe the activity by which we are paying attention to those clouds. But that is precisely the activity where God lives, the temple into which he incarnates. God is the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation.

How to recover the experience of this force, by which alone we attain inner certainty of God's existence? Our attention must sacrifice the object of its activity for it to recover the activity itself. But if our attention is spread around many objects, hopping back and forth, then it would require infinite effort to withdraw attention from each object. That is why we must first learn to concentrate attention on a single object or theme and this object-theme then becomes a symbol for our activity of attention that sustains its existence. Then our consciousness can effortlessly flow between the object of attention and the activity of attending, bring them into harmony. There are many objects-theme we could choose to concentrate on, but could there be any better symbol for the God who lives in our attentive activity than the perfect image of God himself?

It just so happens that 2,000 years ago, God himself incarnated on the physical plane so he could become the perfect object of our concentrated attention, the 'apple of our eye'. This incarnation was not an argument for us to believe in his existence, but an exercise for us to experience his reality within us and set on a path to become Him, or progressively awaken to our essential unity with Him. What could possibly be more personal than gathering such an inner experience and walking such a path? For certainty of a personal God to arise, our experience-understanding of God must become personal.

How does one concentrate on the God that physically incarnated 2000 years ago? This seems somewhat more of a challenge than Cleric's circling dot of light exercise!!

Anthony,

I should have been more clear. It seems to me that many people will start on an inner path without a deeply rooted sense of reverence, devotion, love, etc. for God, in which case we can meditate/concentrate on many other symbolic images to enter into the flow of our attentive activity where 'God', whatever we understand that word to mean, actually lives. If we have a concrete sense of devotion towards a personal God, however, and perhaps even God incarnate in Christ Jesus, then it makes great sense to keep this theme as the primary context for all our meditations. Even if we are unaware of the reasons why, that theme is the primary context for everything we do in modern culture. It is the context for all our cultural institutions of religion, science, philosophy, psychology, art, politics, and so forth. That event has informed the whole course of Western civilization that makes it possible for a wide swath of humanity to meditate/concentrate with thoughtful attention. We have law and order, wealth, homes, modern healthcare, etc., not to mention new thinking faculties, that all go into our individual capacity for attention. So if we can bring this implicit context into more conscious awareness, then we will surely find less resistance in withdrawing attention from the multiplicity of the sensory-conceptual spectrum and focusing it on the activity of attending itself. It acts as a supersensible attractor force that unites the forms/movements of our soul-life around a common center of celestial gravity (or levity). As Steiner puts it,

"Every idea which does not become your ideal slays a force in your soul; Every idea which becomes your ideal creates within you life-forces."

Christ incarnated to illustrate the fully human ideal, symbolically and literally (through his teachings and his actions). We can also meditate on specific verses of the Gospels, such as "In the beginning was the Word... through Him all things were made." What is the essence of the Word? Spoken or written speech is where the sensory forms, e.g. the black and white shapes or the audial sounds, are united with supersensible cognitive meaning. At least in our native language, we don't need to struggle to match up sensory forms with their meaning, but rather the two are intimately united. So what would the archetypal Word-Speech be? It is He who intimately unites the entire sensible creation, including human personalities, with the transpersonal essence of supersensible Divinity. There is endless depth of meaning and inspiration that can flow into our consciousness from focusing our concentration into such themes. All themes around the Christ events are practically identical to the activity we are engaging in since the ideal of our concentration is always to more perfectly unite the sensible with the supersensible across many nested layers of activity from humanity to the Godhead. That is why imitatio Christi can be rightly called the way towards all human ideals and the very purpose of our created existence. 

I personally find reverence, devotion, love, etc. for God quite difficult as I navigate the waters of esotericism. Sometimes it sounds like I've degenerated into the world of polytheism with all these higher beings. Other times as I mentioned here before, things seem quite impersonal with the navigation of geodesics and ideal gradients. And even here, you speak of God as "the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation" which doesn't sound like a lovable being of Bhakti practice.

You've made many assertions about Christ. Again what I struggle with is the fact that all his teachings and actions have been under question in my mind, given my reading of critical scholarship and participation on skeptical forums. But the esoteric approach claims to provide another gateway to discover these truths which is causing me to reassess some of my prior conclusions. I've recently attended a few Christian Community (the church Steiner helped form) liturgies which have been a strange mix of intrigue and boredom.

[AshvinP]

How does one concentrate on the God that physically incarnated 2000 years ago? This seems somewhat more of a challenge than Cleric's circling dot of light exercise!!

Anthony,

I should have been more clear. It seems to me that many people will start on an inner path without a deeply rooted sense of reverence, devotion, love, etc. for God, in which case we can meditate/concentrate on many other symbolic images to enter into the flow of our attentive activity where 'God', whatever we understand that word to mean, actually lives. If we have a concrete sense of devotion towards a personal God, however, and perhaps even God incarnate in Christ Jesus, then it makes great sense to keep this theme as the primary context for all our meditations. Even if we are unaware of the reasons why, that theme is the primary context for everything we do in modern culture. It is the context for all our cultural institutions of religion, science, philosophy, psychology, art, politics, and so forth. That event has informed the whole course of Western civilization that makes it possible for a wide swath of humanity to meditate/concentrate with thoughtful attention. We have law and order, wealth, homes, modern healthcare, etc., not to mention new thinking faculties, that all go into our individual capacity for attention. So if we can bring this implicit context into more conscious awareness, then we will surely find less resistance in withdrawing attention from the multiplicity of the sensory-conceptual spectrum and focusing it on the activity of attending itself. It acts as a supersensible attractor force that unites the forms/movements of our soul-life around a common center of celestial gravity (or levity). As Steiner puts it,

"Every idea which does not become your ideal slays a force in your soul; Every idea which becomes your ideal creates within you life-forces."

Christ incarnated to illustrate the fully human ideal, symbolically and literally (through his teachings and his actions). We can also meditate on specific verses of the Gospels, such as "In the beginning was the Word... through Him all things were made." What is the essence of the Word? Spoken or written speech is where the sensory forms, e.g. the black and white shapes or the audial sounds, are united with supersensible cognitive meaning. At least in our native language, we don't need to struggle to match up sensory forms with their meaning, but rather the two are intimately united. So what would the archetypal Word-Speech be? It is He who intimately unites the entire sensible creation, including human personalities, with the transpersonal essence of supersensible Divinity. There is endless depth of meaning and inspiration that can flow into our consciousness from focusing our concentration into such themes. All themes around the Christ events are practically identical to the activity we are engaging in since the ideal of our concentration is always to more perfectly unite the sensible with the supersensible across many nested layers of activity from humanity to the Godhead. That is why imitatio Christi can be rightly called the way towards all human ideals and the very purpose of our created existence. 

I personally find reverence, devotion, love, etc. for God quite difficult as I navigate the waters of esotericism. Sometimes it sounds like I've degenerated into the world of polytheism with all these higher beings. Other times as I mentioned here before, things seem quite impersonal with the navigation of geodesics and ideal gradients. And even here, you speak of God as "the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation" which doesn't sound like a lovable being of Bhakti practice.

You've made many assertions about Christ. Again what I struggle with is the fact that all his teachings and actions have been under question in my mind, given my reading of critical scholarship and participation on skeptical forums. But the esoteric approach claims to provide another gateway to discover these truths which is causing me to reassess some of my prior conclusions. I've recently attended a few Christian Community (the church Steiner helped form) liturgies which have been a strange mix of intrigue and boredom.

That's good, Anthony. The intrigue is a good sign, but only if it is something more than idle curiosity. I doubt my encounters with the deeply symbolic Christian practices would be any less boring than yours unless I had first endeavored to experientially encounter the Christ in my own spiritual activity, as referred to on the other thread as well.

Let's take a leap of faith and imagine for a moment that the Christ is a real being, as real as anyone you know, work with, have relationships with, and so forth, with concrete desires and intentions that shape your life. Let's further imagine what we have spoken of often here, that all be-ings exist nested one within the other. What we experience as our human 'potential' that will gradually unfold in the 'future', in concert with all other human souls, is the concrete activity of the Christ being, i.e. it's his actuality. Our experience of a localized human soul is the result of the interfering activity of countless other lower and higher beings, of which Christ is the center of gravity for all such beings in the Cosmos. What would this Being intend for human souls such as ourselves? Would he intend for us to use the gift of our ego-consciousness to formulate very definite and accurate conceptual systems about him? Or rather would he intend for us to actually realize our fully human potential by expanding our ego-consciousness to more perfectly coincide with his, so that we may realize his redemptive purposes on Earth as in Heaven?

The esoteric approach answers the latter question in the affirmative and, through inner certainty of that answer, seeks to harmonize current human intentions with the overarching Christ intention. It is not about populating the Christ events, scriptures, theology, and so on with more and more horizontal thoughts, like the computer engineer does when he sees a cell phone and breaks it down into all its intricate components, but living into the sort of spiritual activity that those events and teachings symbolize. The higher conceptual resonance only comes afterward as a natural result of that devoted and intentional activity. It is not only that Christ doesn't intend for us to systematically conceptualize his inner reality, but that he actively blocks the potential for such a possibility - which is nothing but an illusion - so as to continually prompt us to realize our actual inner potential and creatively participate with him in the redemptive purposes. Our disappointment and frustration with our current systems can be the biggest benefactor for our spiritual evolution if we don't simply replace them with more systems. I think esotericists are just as likely as others to fall into a systematizing of the Christ reality unless they faithfully pursue the experience of the inner dynamics of their own intimate activity where the Christ has actually incarnated. Reverence, devotion, and love cannot help but flow more strongly from this most intimate of intimate experiences, yet they are also the means of such experience.

[Anthony66]

Anthony,

I should have been more clear. It seems to me that many people will start on an inner path without a deeply rooted sense of reverence, devotion, love, etc. for God, in which case we can meditate/concentrate on many other symbolic images to enter into the flow of our attentive activity where 'God', whatever we understand that word to mean, actually lives. If we have a concrete sense of devotion towards a personal God, however, and perhaps even God incarnate in Christ Jesus, then it makes great sense to keep this theme as the primary context for all our meditations. Even if we are unaware of the reasons why, that theme is the primary context for everything we do in modern culture. It is the context for all our cultural institutions of religion, science, philosophy, psychology, art, politics, and so forth. That event has informed the whole course of Western civilization that makes it possible for a wide swath of humanity to meditate/concentrate with thoughtful attention. We have law and order, wealth, homes, modern healthcare, etc., not to mention new thinking faculties, that all go into our individual capacity for attention. So if we can bring this implicit context into more conscious awareness, then we will surely find less resistance in withdrawing attention from the multiplicity of the sensory-conceptual spectrum and focusing it on the activity of attending itself. It acts as a supersensible attractor force that unites the forms/movements of our soul-life around a common center of celestial gravity (or levity). As Steiner puts it,

"Every idea which does not become your ideal slays a force in your soul; Every idea which becomes your ideal creates within you life-forces."

Christ incarnated to illustrate the fully human ideal, symbolically and literally (through his teachings and his actions). We can also meditate on specific verses of the Gospels, such as "In the beginning was the Word... through Him all things were made." What is the essence of the Word? Spoken or written speech is where the sensory forms, e.g. the black and white shapes or the audial sounds, are united with supersensible cognitive meaning. At least in our native language, we don't need to struggle to match up sensory forms with their meaning, but rather the two are intimately united. So what would the archetypal Word-Speech be? It is He who intimately unites the entire sensible creation, including human personalities, with the transpersonal essence of supersensible Divinity. There is endless depth of meaning and inspiration that can flow into our consciousness from focusing our concentration into such themes. All themes around the Christ events are practically identical to the activity we are engaging in since the ideal of our concentration is always to more perfectly unite the sensible with the supersensible across many nested layers of activity from humanity to the Godhead. That is why imitatio Christi can be rightly called the way towards all human ideals and the very purpose of our created existence. 

I personally find reverence, devotion, love, etc. for God quite difficult as I navigate the waters of esotericism. Sometimes it sounds like I've degenerated into the world of polytheism with all these higher beings. Other times as I mentioned here before, things seem quite impersonal with the navigation of geodesics and ideal gradients. And even here, you speak of God as "the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation" which doesn't sound like a lovable being of Bhakti practice.

You've made many assertions about Christ. Again what I struggle with is the fact that all his teachings and actions have been under question in my mind, given my reading of critical scholarship and participation on skeptical forums. But the esoteric approach claims to provide another gateway to discover these truths which is causing me to reassess some of my prior conclusions. I've recently attended a few Christian Community (the church Steiner helped form) liturgies which have been a strange mix of intrigue and boredom.

That's good, Anthony. The intrigue is a good sign, but only if it is something more than idle curiosity. I doubt my encounters with the deeply symbolic Christian practices would be any less boring than yours unless I had first endeavored to experientially encounter the Christ in my own spiritual activity, as referred to on the other thread as well.

Let's take a leap of faith and imagine for a moment that the Christ is a real being, as real as anyone you know, work with, have relationships with, and so forth, with concrete desires and intentions that shape your life. Let's further imagine what we have spoken of often here, that all be-ings exist nested one within the other. What we experience as our human 'potential' that will gradually unfold in the 'future', in concert with all other human souls, is the concrete activity of the Christ being, i.e. it's his actuality. Our experience of a localized human soul is the result of the interfering activity of countless other lower and higher beings, of which Christ is the center of gravity for all such beings in the Cosmos. What would this Being intend for human souls such as ourselves? Would he intend for us to use the gift of our ego-consciousness to formulate very definite and accurate conceptual systems about him? Or rather would he intend for us to actually realize our fully human potential by expanding our ego-consciousness to more perfectly coincide with his, so that we may realize his redemptive purposes on Earth as in Heaven?

The esoteric approach answers the latter question in the affirmative and, through inner certainty of that answer, seeks to harmonize current human intentions with the overarching Christ intention. It is not about populating the Christ events, scriptures, theology, and so on with more and more horizontal thoughts, like the computer engineer does when he sees a cell phone and breaks it down into all its intricate components, but living into the sort of spiritual activity that those events and teachings symbolize. The higher conceptual resonance only comes afterward as a natural result of that devoted and intentional activity. It is not only that Christ doesn't intend for us to systematically conceptualize his inner reality, but that he actively blocks the potential for such a possibility - which is nothing but an illusion - so as to continually prompt us to realize our actual inner potential and creatively participate with him in the redemptive purposes. Our disappointment and frustration with our current systems can be the biggest benefactor for our spiritual evolution if we don't simply replace them with more systems. I think esotericists are just as likely as others to fall into a systematizing of the Christ reality unless they faithfully pursue the experience of the inner dynamics of their own intimate activity where the Christ has actually incarnated. Reverence, devotion, and love cannot help but flow more strongly from this most intimate of intimate experiences, yet they are also the means of such experience.

Can you please explain what you mean by the bold.

[AshvinP]

I personally find reverence, devotion, love, etc. for God quite difficult as I navigate the waters of esotericism. Sometimes it sounds like I've degenerated into the world of polytheism with all these higher beings. Other times as I mentioned here before, things seem quite impersonal with the navigation of geodesics and ideal gradients. And even here, you speak of God as "the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation" which doesn't sound like a lovable being of Bhakti practice.

You've made many assertions about Christ. Again what I struggle with is the fact that all his teachings and actions have been under question in my mind, given my reading of critical scholarship and participation on skeptical forums. But the esoteric approach claims to provide another gateway to discover these truths which is causing me to reassess some of my prior conclusions. I've recently attended a few Christian Community (the church Steiner helped form) liturgies which have been a strange mix of intrigue and boredom.

That's good, Anthony. The intrigue is a good sign, but only if it is something more than idle curiosity. I doubt my encounters with the deeply symbolic Christian practices would be any less boring than yours unless I had first endeavored to experientially encounter the Christ in my own spiritual activity, as referred to on the other thread as well.

Let's take a leap of faith and imagine for a moment that the Christ is a real being, as real as anyone you know, work with, have relationships with, and so forth, with concrete desires and intentions that shape your life. Let's further imagine what we have spoken of often here, that all be-ings exist nested one within the other. What we experience as our human 'potential' that will gradually unfold in the 'future', in concert with all other human souls, is the concrete activity of the Christ being, i.e. it's his actuality. Our experience of a localized human soul is the result of the interfering activity of countless other lower and higher beings, of which Christ is the center of gravity for all such beings in the Cosmos. What would this Being intend for human souls such as ourselves? Would he intend for us to use the gift of our ego-consciousness to formulate very definite and accurate conceptual systems about him? Or rather would he intend for us to actually realize our fully human potential by expanding our ego-consciousness to more perfectly coincide with his, so that we may realize his redemptive purposes on Earth as in Heaven?

The esoteric approach answers the latter question in the affirmative and, through inner certainty of that answer, seeks to harmonize current human intentions with the overarching Christ intention. It is not about populating the Christ events, scriptures, theology, and so on with more and more horizontal thoughts, like the computer engineer does when he sees a cell phone and breaks it down into all its intricate components, but living into the sort of spiritual activity that those events and teachings symbolize. The higher conceptual resonance only comes afterward as a natural result of that devoted and intentional activity. It is not only that Christ doesn't intend for us to systematically conceptualize his inner reality, but that he actively blocks the potential for such a possibility - which is nothing but an illusion - so as to continually prompt us to realize our actual inner potential and creatively participate with him in the redemptive purposes. Our disappointment and frustration with our current systems can be the biggest benefactor for our spiritual evolution if we don't simply replace them with more systems. I think esotericists are just as likely as others to fall into a systematizing of the Christ reality unless they faithfully pursue the experience of the inner dynamics of their own intimate activity where the Christ has actually incarnated. Reverence, devotion, and love cannot help but flow more strongly from this most intimate of intimate experiences, yet they are also the means of such experience.

Can you please explain what you mean by the bold.

In esoteric terms, we could say that Christ battles with Ahriman, who is the inner impulse to mechanically conceptualize all of spiritual reality. That is how we get materialistic philosophy where the living and intentional spiritual relations of the natural domain are replaced with mechanical concepts of mindless and intention-less protons, electrons, atoms, energy, and so forth. Spiritualists and religious people generally do a similar thing when they try to systematically conceptualize Divine relations with humanity solely through the intellect. If we were completely given over to this Ahrimanic impulse, then we would have no motivation to transform ourselves inwardly and ascend in our understanding to the supersensible, rather than thrusting down the supersensible to the formatting of our current sense-based cognition. The Divine guidance, however, limits our capacity for intellectual intelligence so we don't fall into this complete state of decadence. How that is done gets into pretty complex spiritual science, but we could get a sense for it as follows.

Suppose we pay close attention to how our intellect works over the course of a day. In that case, we may be able to get a feel for how it is always trying to overextend itself or outpace the level of intuitive knowledge that it has gained through life experience. It is generally running at rapid speed, fueled by passions, and this is mostly the source of our exhaustion and other maladies of the soul and body in the modern age. We may even be kept up at night because the intellect continues to run and analyze past experiences and thoughts, preventing us from returning to the spirit world during sleep in a healthy way. Eventually, the dynamics of our organic structure simply shut down this activity so that it doesn't completely destroy us. And after a more prolonged period of such iterations, we experience death so as to put a natural end to this mechanical, passion-fueled activity and continue in the spirit worlds with only purified and living activity. Modern man who continues to resist attuning his cognition with the spirit world and only tries to intellectually conceptualize the latter is really destroying the healthy functioning of his organism and his potential for development across the threshold.

Though this Word (lógos) is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake,² even as they forget what they do in sleep.

Does that mean we should forsake conceptual activity? Not at all. I have tried recently to elucidate how our conceptual activity can be utilized as 'symbolic ordering', but this has proven difficult. Here's another way to think about it. When we engage in symbolic ordering we are navigating supersensible meaning with our intuitive faculty and then letting it naturally condense into concepts. These concepts then remain as fluid symbols for the supersensible meaning and allow our thinking activity to move between that meaning and sensible phenomena in a rhythmic manner. The sensible phenomena inform the concepts and kindle our intuition further and then we repeat the process, hopefully at ever-higher stages of understanding. We could think of it like snowflakes condensing out of invisible atmospheric dynamics, where the former remain as self-similar fractal copies of the latter even as they are all unique in their functional expression. A clear experience of this process is when we live in intuitive meaning but cannot find the words to express that meaning i.e. they are on the tips of our tongues. The more we try to rush and force the process of condensation, the more we struggle and end up with no words or only ill-fitting words. But if we are patient and simply live with the intuitive meaning for awhile, eventually our thinking activity naturally condenses towards the proper words, i.e. it narrows the intuitive potential in an organic way.

The intellectual systematizing process, on the other hand, does not patiently live with the intuitive meaning but grasps at the meaning immediately and thrusts it down into the lower soul-life of impulses and passions. The meaning is then mixed up with these impure elements before crystallizing back into concepts from the bottom-up, that we then use to construct our systematic understanding of the reality in question. But these concepts are now often conveying the exact opposite meaning of the original intuitive reality that we were living in. They are conditioned by the lower earthly context from the bottom-up instead of by the higher ideal context from the top-down. A stark historical example of this process is how Hegel's idealistic philosophy, i.e. his phenomenology of the spirit, was turned upside down into the Marxist philosophy of "historical materialism". History was then conceived as a dialectic of purely material relations and spiritual reality became a mere 'ideological superstructure'. That of course influenced the whole course of world events in the late 19th and 20th centuries and still today to a significant extent. So these things have severe practical consequences and we can avoid a lot of self-destructive tendencies if we reawaken our childlike trust in the Spirit of intuitive thinking and work on cultivating the vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. 

The vow of obedience is the practice of silencing personal desires, emotions and imagination in the face of reason and conscience; it is the primacy of the ideal as opposed to the apparent, the nation as opposed to the personal, humanity as opposed to the nation, and God as opposed to humanity. It is the life of cosmic and human hierarchical ordering; it is the meaning and justification of the fact that there are Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels; Priests, Knights and Commoners. Obedience is order: it is international law; it is the state; it is the Church; it is universal peace. True obedience is the very opposite of tyranny and slavery, since its root is the love which issues from faith and confidence. That which is above serves that which is below and that which is below obeys that which is above. Obedience is the practical conclusion to that which one recognises as the existence of something higher than oneself. Whosoever recognises God, obeys.

...The vow of poverty is the practice of inner emptiness, which is established as a consequence of the silence of personal desires, emotions and imagination so that the soul is capable of receiving from above the revelation of the word, the life and the light. Poverty is perpetual active vigil and expectation before the eternal sources of creativity; it is the soul awaiting that which is new and unexpected; it is the aptitude for learning always and everywhere; it is the conditio sine qua non of all illumination, all revelation and all initiation.

...The vow of chastity means to say the putting into practice of the resolution to live according to solar law, without covetousness and without indifference. Because virtue is boring and vice is disgusting. But that which lives at the foundation of the heart is neither boring nor disgusting. The foundation of the heart is love. The heart lives only when it loves. It is then like the sun. And chastity is the state of the human being in which the heart, having become solar, is the centre of gravity.

Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism (p. 112). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

[Anthony66]

So we need to find where God lives in our experience - in what activity does He come to expression? One could label this activity many things - in our activity of love, conscience, devotion, hope, upward striving, etc. But to express it in a way that encompasses all those, we could call it thoughtful 'attention'. When we pay attention to something, like the white clouds in the sky, we can't simultaneously observe the activity by which we are paying attention to those clouds. But that is precisely the activity where God lives, the temple into which he incarnates. God is the force by which we pay attention and bring the World of appearances into manifestation.

Ashvin,

I'm still captivated by the bolded text. At first blush and to most theists in the Western traditions this sounds quite heretical. God is a transcendent being, the maximally great being, a being who exists apart from his creation, the one who sits on the other side of the heavenly/earthly divide. How do we reconcile with God existing in the immanence of our thinking activity? The answer I guess lies in our failure to understand our thinking activity as being a convoluted expression of universal Thinking. It is through ascending to higher cognition that we "draw near to God". How would you put it?