Symbolic thinking, Anthroposophy and Transhumanism

[Anthony66]

Who or what is the Lord in your polytheistic universe?

It's LUCA! (but upside-down)

You're learning to express yourself more concisely!

[Anthony66]

Since the following thought has just come to me in a roundabout way (not from the daily thoughts) I'll share it here

Who or what is the Lord in your polytheistic universe?

As a sort of quick and dirty phenomenological approach to this question, one could start by experiencing their current linear sequence of thoughts. For ex. right now I have thoughts condensing related to 'how to phenomenologically illustrate the Lord to Anthony'. These are linearly experienced as the stream of my inner voice. Yet these thoughts are only a tiny subset of my intuitive context - to begin with, this context embeds the whole range of ideas that I have developed over my lifetime, my conception of reality, the skills that I have acquired, the configuration of my soul life (temperament, character, preferences, etc.), the various relationships throughout my life, and so on. The point is to really feel how tiny our thoughts are at any given time are compared to this much vaster intuitive context. The former float at the very surface of this context like crushed ice pieces in the ocean.

Yet even this personal intuitive context is tiny, is another ice cube, floating on the whole ocean of ideas, knowledge, skills, emotions, etc. experienced and acquired by human souls alive today or in the past. And then we can imagine the context of all relative perspectives who have gone through development in any possible environment within the evolving Solar organism, not just current humanity, but all Earthly kingdoms and all planetary environments. Again, it is about cultivating the feeling of our highly constricted thought-life in comparison to this ever-widening intuitive context that encompasses all possible perspectives through their temporal development which is guided along intentional streamlines.

We aren't looking for the LUCA as some Divine Atom that regulates all the lower atomic beings, but as the very intuitive structure through which all relative perspectives awaken to and experience their progressive development back to their Divine origin. The Lord is not simply the sum total of all the content experienced by these perspectives, but the very 'substance' of all potential experience itself - all meaningful qualities and relationships that could be experienced - which we desire to gradually incarnate and integrate within our individual perspective, so that the Good of the Whole may once again live within and through us.

That's a helpful phenomenological approach to "God" but you are no doubt aware of the usage of the term "Lord" or "LORD" in orthodox, Christian piety. The all-caps rendering is a favorite among translators for YHWH - the personal, covenantal God of the OT and the name revealed to Moses. Christians use the term to refer to a personal being they perceive to have a close relationship to and a feeling of endearment to. What I am objecting to (and I know this is a common gripe of mine) is that repurposing the term to something somewhat foreign to its common usage. This is confusing and unhelpful. One would never hear a Christian describe the Lord as "the very intuitive structure through which all relative perspectives awaken to". We don't describe people as intuitive structures.

[Anthony66]

Who or what is the Lord in your polytheistic universe?

What I read in these words:

"Who or what" =
"I don't prefer to be invited out of the anthropomorphic perspective".

"polytheistic" =
"I prefer to look at images at a 1-pixel resolution. Any resolution above 1 is polytheism, that is, the output of an unevolved tribal man of the past."

What I read in these words is that perhaps someone needs to educate themselves in the Christian tradition

[AshvinP]

Who or what is the Lord in your polytheistic universe?

As a sort of quick and dirty phenomenological approach to this question, one could start by experiencing their current linear sequence of thoughts. For ex. right now I have thoughts condensing related to 'how to phenomenologically illustrate the Lord to Anthony'. These are linearly experienced as the stream of my inner voice. Yet these thoughts are only a tiny subset of my intuitive context - to begin with, this context embeds the whole range of ideas that I have developed over my lifetime, my conception of reality, the skills that I have acquired, the configuration of my soul life (temperament, character, preferences, etc.), the various relationships throughout my life, and so on. The point is to really feel how tiny our thoughts are at any given time are compared to this much vaster intuitive context. The former float at the very surface of this context like crushed ice pieces in the ocean.

Yet even this personal intuitive context is tiny, is another ice cube, floating on the whole ocean of ideas, knowledge, skills, emotions, etc. experienced and acquired by human souls alive today or in the past. And then we can imagine the context of all relative perspectives who have gone through development in any possible environment within the evolving Solar organism, not just current humanity, but all Earthly kingdoms and all planetary environments. Again, it is about cultivating the feeling of our highly constricted thought-life in comparison to this ever-widening intuitive context that encompasses all possible perspectives through their temporal development which is guided along intentional streamlines.

We aren't looking for the LUCA as some Divine Atom that regulates all the lower atomic beings, but as the very intuitive structure through which all relative perspectives awaken to and experience their progressive development back to their Divine origin. The Lord is not simply the sum total of all the content experienced by these perspectives, but the very 'substance' of all potential experience itself - all meaningful qualities and relationships that could be experienced - which we desire to gradually incarnate and integrate within our individual perspective, so that the Good of the Whole may once again live within and through us.

That's a helpful phenomenological approach to "God" but you are no doubt aware of the usage of the term "Lord" or "LORD" in orthodox, Christian piety. The all-caps rendering is a favorite among translators for YHWH - the personal, covenantal God of the OT and the name revealed to Moses. Christians use the term to refer to a personal being they perceive to have a close relationship to and a feeling of endearment to. What I am objecting to (and I know this is a common gripe of mine) is that repurposing the term to something somewhat foreign to its common usage. This is confusing and unhelpful. One would never hear a Christian describe the Lord as "the very intuitive structure through which all relative perspectives awaken to". We don't describe people as intuitive structures.

Let's imagine a 19th century physicist who talks about atoms, particles, and so forth interacting with one another as discrete units through space. He says this is the 'common usage' of the term "matter", because it was for quite some time. Then comes the 20th century quantum physicist and says "yes, these are helpful fictions we can use to discretize matter so our intellect can more easily encompass its transformations, but actually we are dealing with more mysterious matter-waves, a quantum field of potential that only collapses into discrete particles when observed by the intellect, and we need entirely new equations to deal with this deeper understanding." Then the old school physicist replies, "this is confusing and unhelpful, you are repurposing my convenient fiction of discrete matter into some mysterious quantum structure of superimposed potential... no physicist would ever do that."

I would hope any pious follower of Christ would be interested in pursuing the Truth of his nature and his relationship with the human soul and the Earthly environment. Let's be clear, neither the quantum field of potential nor the 'intuitive structure' is the final truth, the unveiling of the Mystery. These are still crutches the intellect uses to stabilize its orientation and dimly approach something much more mysterious, beyond all spatial and temporal determinations. Yet as long as we remain conscious of the symbolic crutches, i.e. conscious that they are nothing more than crutches, we can use these terms to help orient our intuition of the Mystery. People themselves are not the sum total of their discrete physical qualities, memories, personality traits, preferences, and so forth. Our innermost being that moves from incarnation to incarnation is much more mysterious than anything we normally identify with.

The 'intuitive structure' is only impersonal and unintimate as long as we remain outside the phenomenological understanding, as most modern people do, secular and religious. All those contextual factors I mentioned in the last post, that we can at least dimly expand our consciousness into to begin with, are what make possible the linear sequence of thoughts that I am condensing and expressing right this moment. I would never be here on this Earth, at this time, on this forum, writing this post to you, with this sequence of words, if the Lord was not present as the intuitive context right here and now. How much more gratitude and devotion can we feel when we understand this immanency of the Lord in everything we think, feel, and do? How much more intimate can our relationship to the Lord become? Just as the momentum of 19th century physics still leaves us with a sense of being discrete bubbles in a fragmented world, so does modern theology leave us in a 'Christian world' that is constantly veering into rabid consumerism, ecological destruction, widescale fraud, and war. Until we reach the inner side of the outer definitions, dogmas, creeds, etc., these trends can only get worse. And that's what a true follower of Christ should be concerned with - remaining outside the Truth and therefore enslaved by shadowy self- and other-destructive motivations.

[Federica]

Who or what is the Lord in your polytheistic universe?

What I read in these words:

"Who or what" =
"I don't prefer to be invited out of the anthropomorphic perspective".

"polytheistic" =
"I prefer to look at images at a 1-pixel resolution. Any resolution above 1 is polytheism, that is, the output of an unevolved tribal man of the past."

What I read in these words is that perhaps someone needs to educate themselves in the Christian tradition

That's for sure!
Which means I may not know the point of departure of your train of thoughts that led to your initial post. Nonetheless, I can still see the point of arrival, when it makes contact with the universe of living thinking, and calls it "polytheistic". My 1-pixel comment addresses that. That "polytheistic" was meant as a negative is my subjective impression, derived from your overall communications in this forum - I would give you that. I apologize if this is not the case!

[Cleric K]

Since the following thought has just come to me in a roundabout way (not from the daily thoughts) I'll share it here

Bless, thank, consecrate: a rule of life

"Do you want to make your life ever richer and more beautiful? Bless every creature you encounter, every object you touch. Thank the Lord for all that is given to you, the joys and the sorrows, and dedicate each of your activities to Him. Bless, thank, consecrate. Make these three practices a rule for your entire existence."

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Thanks, Cleric I appreciate the advice, tough it sets the bar high! But then I've wondered: "What consecrating actually means in this thought, more than blessing, sending love to all creatures and objects, and be thankful? Is it dedicating the deeds back to God? How this dedication is different from being thankful?"

Maybe we can approach consecration by thinking of 'repurposing'. This is inevitably connected with sacrifice. Think of the many industries that sell their product on time basis. For example, a large corporation that has a supercomputer can sell CPU time. Clients can rent the computer for a time to perform their calculations. Others buy TV time in order to have their commercials included in the schedule.

We use our spiritual 'CPU time' all the time for the most varied goals. To consecrate our time can be like devoting it freely to the Universal Enterprise. Funnily, this Time belongs to it in the first place. Only in our specific evolutionary scenario we feel that it is our own, and we feel violated if we need to use it for the greater work.

Thus consecration can be thought of as repurposing our inner and outer resources for this enterprise. It is not some empty dedication like saying "I dedicate the next song to so and so". It's like uniting the dispersed parts of the Cosmic organism back to its Divine unity.

[Federica]

Since the following thought has just come to me in a roundabout way (not from the daily thoughts) I'll share it here

Thanks, Cleric I appreciate the advice, tough it sets the bar high! But then I've wondered: "What consecrating actually means in this thought, more than blessing, sending love to all creatures and objects, and be thankful? Is it dedicating the deeds back to God? How this dedication is different from being thankful?"

Maybe we can approach consecration by thinking of 'repurposing'. This is inevitably connected with sacrifice. Think of the many industries that sell their product on time basis. For example, a large corporation that has a supercomputer can sell CPU time. Clients can rent the computer for a time to perform their calculations. Others buy TV time in order to have their commercials included in the schedule.

We use our spiritual 'CPU time' all the time for the most varied goals. To consecrate our time can be like devoting it freely to the Universal Enterprise. Funnily, this Time belongs to it in the first place. Only in our specific evolutionary scenario we feel that it is our own, and we feel violated if we need to use it for the greater work.

Thus consecration can be thought of as repurposing our inner and outer resources for this enterprise. It is not some empty dedication like saying "I dedicate the next song to so and so". It's like uniting the dispersed parts of the Cosmic organism back to its Divine unity.

I see Cleric, thank you, it's clear. Different meaning from what I used to associate with the word. In this sense of spontaneously recognizing how we stand in relation to the Divine Name - that is, accountable - I have no resistance to 'consecration', only a difficulty in maintaining the idea close to attention through the day. I understand that the specific reference to consecrating particular objects or activities in time, is to give us a chance to consecrate in fact our whole existence by starting somewhere, in a concrete, practicable manner that can become more habitual with time.

[Anthony66]

As a sort of quick and dirty phenomenological approach to this question, one could start by experiencing their current linear sequence of thoughts. For ex. right now I have thoughts condensing related to 'how to phenomenologically illustrate the Lord to Anthony'. These are linearly experienced as the stream of my inner voice. Yet these thoughts are only a tiny subset of my intuitive context - to begin with, this context embeds the whole range of ideas that I have developed over my lifetime, my conception of reality, the skills that I have acquired, the configuration of my soul life (temperament, character, preferences, etc.), the various relationships throughout my life, and so on. The point is to really feel how tiny our thoughts are at any given time are compared to this much vaster intuitive context. The former float at the very surface of this context like crushed ice pieces in the ocean.

Yet even this personal intuitive context is tiny, is another ice cube, floating on the whole ocean of ideas, knowledge, skills, emotions, etc. experienced and acquired by human souls alive today or in the past. And then we can imagine the context of all relative perspectives who have gone through development in any possible environment within the evolving Solar organism, not just current humanity, but all Earthly kingdoms and all planetary environments. Again, it is about cultivating the feeling of our highly constricted thought-life in comparison to this ever-widening intuitive context that encompasses all possible perspectives through their temporal development which is guided along intentional streamlines.

We aren't looking for the LUCA as some Divine Atom that regulates all the lower atomic beings, but as the very intuitive structure through which all relative perspectives awaken to and experience their progressive development back to their Divine origin. The Lord is not simply the sum total of all the content experienced by these perspectives, but the very 'substance' of all potential experience itself - all meaningful qualities and relationships that could be experienced - which we desire to gradually incarnate and integrate within our individual perspective, so that the Good of the Whole may once again live within and through us.

That's a helpful phenomenological approach to "God" but you are no doubt aware of the usage of the term "Lord" or "LORD" in orthodox, Christian piety. The all-caps rendering is a favorite among translators for YHWH - the personal, covenantal God of the OT and the name revealed to Moses. Christians use the term to refer to a personal being they perceive to have a close relationship to and a feeling of endearment to. What I am objecting to (and I know this is a common gripe of mine) is that repurposing the term to something somewhat foreign to its common usage. This is confusing and unhelpful. One would never hear a Christian describe the Lord as "the very intuitive structure through which all relative perspectives awaken to". We don't describe people as intuitive structures.

Let's imagine a 19th century physicist who talks about atoms, particles, and so forth interacting with one another as discrete units through space. He says this is the 'common usage' of the term "matter", because it was for quite some time. Then comes the 20th century quantum physicist and says "yes, these are helpful fictions we can use to discretize matter so our intellect can more easily encompass its transformations, but actually we are dealing with more mysterious matter-waves, a quantum field of potential that only collapses into discrete particles when observed by the intellect, and we need entirely new equations to deal with this deeper understanding." Then the old school physicist replies, "this is confusing and unhelpful, you are repurposing my convenient fiction of discrete matter into some mysterious quantum structure of superimposed potential... no physicist would ever do that."

I would hope any pious follower of Christ would be interested in pursuing the Truth of his nature and his relationship with the human soul and the Earthly environment. Let's be clear, neither the quantum field of potential nor the 'intuitive structure' is the final truth, the unveiling of the Mystery. These are still crutches the intellect uses to stabilize its orientation and dimly approach something much more mysterious, beyond all spatial and temporal determinations. Yet as long as we remain conscious of the symbolic crutches, i.e. conscious that they are nothing more than crutches, we can use these terms to help orient our intuition of the Mystery. People themselves are not the sum total of their discrete physical qualities, memories, personality traits, preferences, and so forth. Our innermost being that moves from incarnation to incarnation is much more mysterious than anything we normally identify with.

The 'intuitive structure' is only impersonal and unintimate as long as we remain outside the phenomenological understanding, as most modern people do, secular and religious. All those contextual factors I mentioned in the last post, that we can at least dimly expand our consciousness into to begin with, are what make possible the linear sequence of thoughts that I am condensing and expressing right this moment. I would never be here on this Earth, at this time, on this forum, writing this post to you, with this sequence of words, if the Lord was not present as the intuitive context right here and now. How much more gratitude and devotion can we feel when we understand this immanency of the Lord in everything we think, feel, and do? How much more intimate can our relationship to the Lord become? Just as the momentum of 19th century physics still leaves us with a sense of being discrete bubbles in a fragmented world, so does modern theology leave us in a 'Christian world' that is constantly veering into rabid consumerism, ecological destruction, widescale fraud, and war. Until we reach the inner side of the outer definitions, dogmas, creeds, etc., these trends can only get worse. And that's what a true follower of Christ should be concerned with - remaining outside the Truth and therefore enslaved by shadowy self- and other-destructive motivations.

Again, this is all well and good if by Lord one has in view the ground of reality which Christian theology, particularly classical theism eventually landed on. But in popular piety, Lord is the OT figure who had a keen interest in the status of flesh on penises, the mixing of fabrics, slaughtering Canaanites, taking delight in the smell of burnt sacrifices, and the like. He is a god with personality - likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, virtues and imperfections. I guess we can view this all as a progression in humanity's understanding of the divine - tribal deity to omni-god to foundational intuitive structure. But the differences between the Lord of those early apprehensions to the one you are proposing is very great indeed.

[AshvinP]

Again, this is all well and good if by Lord one has in view the ground of reality which Christian theology, particularly classical theism eventually landed on. But in popular piety, Lord is the OT figure who had a keen interest in the status of flesh on penises, the mixing of fabrics, slaughtering Canaanites, taking delight in the smell of burnt sacrifices, and the like. He is a god with personality - likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, virtues and imperfections. I guess we can view this all as a progression in humanity's understanding of the divine - tribal deity to omni-god to foundational intuitive structure. But the differences between the Lord of those early apprehensions to the one you are proposing is very great indeed.

Anthony,

Can you just say a few words on what significance this has for you? If there is a progressive transformation in humanity's understanding and relationship with the Divine, which I would say could not be made more plain for anyone who examines the whole corpus of OT and NT without modern prejudice, and this fact is at tension with "popular piety" as you understand it (which may be overestimating your ability to speak for the understanding of many others, but we can leave that aside), what relevance does this have to any practical pursuit of truthful understanding in the here and now?

Put another way, I am asking you to fill in the blank - "I don't necessarily have these atomistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of the nature of the Divine as revealed in scripture, but some people do in popular culture, and what you guys speak of is at tension with their understanding, so therefore [fill in the blank]."

[Anthony66]

Again, this is all well and good if by Lord one has in view the ground of reality which Christian theology, particularly classical theism eventually landed on. But in popular piety, Lord is the OT figure who had a keen interest in the status of flesh on penises, the mixing of fabrics, slaughtering Canaanites, taking delight in the smell of burnt sacrifices, and the like. He is a god with personality - likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, virtues and imperfections. I guess we can view this all as a progression in humanity's understanding of the divine - tribal deity to omni-god to foundational intuitive structure. But the differences between the Lord of those early apprehensions to the one you are proposing is very great indeed.

Anthony,

Can you just say a few words on what significance this has for you? If there is a progressive transformation in humanity's understanding and relationship with the Divine, which I would say could not be made more plain for anyone who examines the whole corpus of OT and NT without modern prejudice, and this fact is at tension with "popular piety" as you understand it (which may be overestimating your ability to speak for the understanding of many others, but we can leave that aside), what relevance does this have to any practical pursuit of truthful understanding in the here and now?

Put another way, I am asking you to fill in the blank - "I don't necessarily have these atomistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of the nature of the Divine as revealed in scripture, but some people do in popular culture, and what you guys speak of is at tension with their understanding, so therefore [fill in the blank]."

I don't necessarily have these atomistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of the nature of the Divine as revealed in scripture, but some people do in popular culture, and what you guys speak of is at tension with their understanding, so therefore it is unhelpful to put new wine in old wineskins through redefining terms that are in active usage. A greater concern I continue to work is the continuity/discontinuity between spiritual science and the old faith. Is SS, as I hope is the case, a spiritual stream that reveals a true deeper meaning? Or is there no continuity with the faith once delivered by the apostolic witness ("Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves", "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’")?