(1) Christology - Parallel's between modern Theology and the Christology of Rudolf Steiner

[@user-uo3vn7tv4b]

Thank you! Very informative and timely discussion. So many synchronicities, I love this stuff. Thanks to YT algorithm as well.

[@theseventh7865]

This was great, i loved the systematic clarity. Had the exact same experience as Craig, reading Emil Boch 3 years . Which would have been a year ago now, happening around the time of my baptism. That feeling of remembering and agitation is what keeps me coming back to anthroposophy

[@TheExceptionalState]

Lovely to hear from you again Kate. I am looking forward to many more interesting conversations with these Aussies and Kiwis :). Jude's (Martin) PhD is definitely worth taking a look at if you are interested.

[@matthewmccartin7069]

Is it an unfair assessment to say the following?: Pure Thinking is akin to Samahdi, it is a knowing by being , it is the precondition for spiritual science and for knowing the inner life of the outer world. Seeing the spirit in natural events as an intuition (Goethe) as simultaneous knowing and perceiving, requires a state of caring and still transpersonal mind. Concepts are byproducts of dead thinking, a place -holder for the intellect to orient itself outside of reality. All conceptual activity must stop to notice and become aware of your spiritual being , the Higher Self, which inhabits all levels of reality. 'We live by the grace of thinking' can be also a pejorative statement in the creation of a subject/object duality that exits participation in reality. When the universe 'thinks in us' is when thinking becomes a reality-perceiving faculty. I think a misleading thing about McGuilcrist is that left and right brain are two halves. I would suggest from experience that if modes of awareness is how your Higher Self thinks, by knowing by being, then the left brain is only 10 per cent in importance by comparison. If the intellect needs to be overcome in emphasis by the conscious cultivatiom of other faculties, it must be ranked among multiple faculties, not just two, the majority of which are not left brained. It should not be considered half of the mind.

[@TheExceptionalState]

Hi Matthew. A brief look a the many definitions of Samadhi means I can neither agree nor disagree with your statement. However, I do think we can pick apart one area to create some clarity. If we start with normal consciousness we can understand that knowledge is a result of the union of experience (perceptin in PoF) and the inner creations of concepts and ideas. We need to be careful to distinguish between concepts/ideas (which can never be fully defined in language/are infinite) and mental representations which are individual representations taken from experience of the senses as placeholders for concepts. Thinking is the creator of the subject/object duality and all the other dualities that shape our lives. Another way of expressing this is that the activity of thinking transcends this dualism as it is dualism’s creator. We live by the grace of thinking can be understood to mean that we only know (are conscious of) our own existence because of this activity. However, by living directly in this activity (pure thinking) and not in mental representations we are living in that being/activity that transcends duality. In that sense I think some common ground can be found with some descriptions of Samadhi. You might like to look into the "exitus-reditus motif" as I think this helps open the mind to a larger experience of what the activity of thinking . Hope this makes sense

[@matthewmccartin7069]

I think what we are saying is similar perhaps with different terms. Steiner uses 'thinking' in his own way. I would say that thinking arises out of awareness, which is the integrated being of your Spiritual Self, which is in essence a spiritual activity that in modern times dies into the image/concept of what it is is aware of. Our Higher Self, as a being of love, has its own awareness, which knows by being, and it's qualities of love and peacefulness, we have by the grace of the Universal Self, which is what Christ was the avatar for. Being able to cultivate an intuitive relationship with the Higher Self is to stand between two worlds, physical/spiritual. Overcoming/sacrificing your personal self (with its preferences and opinions and colored/selfish way of seeing) to join transpersonal awareness and its selfless engagement in perceiving reality is what Christ provided for us individually by joining with the Earth. The peaceful, unconditional love within awareness is our resource to invite the Higher Self(Christ) into our earthly selves. It must take the leadership role as selflessness/ sensing it's qualities instead of the instrumental , manipulating intellect alone. A bit of a tangent, sorry. But I think Steiner's 'thinking' overcoming duality has to do with transpersonal awareness or the ability to enter Samadhi (which is the intergrated awarness of your higher being) in the midst of everyday life. Only it can selflessly listen to what other beings are saying by 'being' them (knowing their noumena) through the use of our latent clarevoyent capacities.

[@TheExceptionalState]

@@matthewmccartin7069I agree, we seem to be coming from the same perspective, but each one of us emphasizing slightly different aspects. I think here you have the essence of it when you say "Steiner uses 'thinking' in his own way. I would say that thinking arises out of awareness, which is the integrated being of your Spiritual Self". I fully agree with this, but also feel it is useful to add a clarifying point. If we examine the activity of thinking (not the thoughts produced by it) then we find that it first appears as experience (in awareness to use your term), but thinking at the same time takes us beyond mere experience to an enhanced experience where we can talk about understanding something that was previously incomprehensible. Thinking is that activity that enables us to consciously experience the intelligence/nous/divine/universal self that underlies the structure of all experience.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

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