Christianity's Course

Through the illusion, into the dream.

Localism & Federalism

Proper love of one's self extends slowly outward to proper constitution of the polis.

Claimed "universal order" can be directly judged by its effects upon the virtues previous to it. If, for example, in a man's private life, his quest for knowledge ruins his faith & goodness, then the knowledge is "unprofitable" (not-upaya) and therefore, a sin. All of "modern order" (or at least, that part which is peculiarly "modern", which is its claim to fame) can be viewed as a counterfeit of "real" progress, which is metaphysical, not materialistic. One world government is gutting local communities. It is therefore fake & wrong. One's progress can be judged by its effects on one's previous attainments. This is spiritual discernment, or "judging spirits".

America Again

Actually, even Japan could learn some things from Germany, such as the low cost of the educational system, and the strength of labor unions and work councils. TG's remarks about how Americans use their disposable income to turn their homes into gadget-filled cocoons while even blue-collar Europeans go out drinking, dancing and to the (live) theater also make one ponder the strength of our social fabric. If you have any interest in reading about social reality rather than vampire tales, "escapist" murder mysteries, or political rants by folks who are proud to be ignorant, you'll find this book a great mix of fun with seriousness.
Were You Born on the Wrong Continent

Rosiya

It's hard to hold on, when there's nobody to dream on... - Bon Jovi

The tears of Russia.

Auden Again

Thou shalt not commit a social science.

Or, also entitled, "But father, I'm reading Vauvenargues!"

Or, as Baron Ledhin says, "I hate to quote Vauvenargues...."

Great line from Comanche Moon.

1. An unpardonable and heinous sin.2. A great Intervention., and,3. A remarkable Atonement.
The Answer
A Rose, in tatters on the garden path, Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath, Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush. And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun, Had pity, whispering to that luckless one, "Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well -- What voices heardst thou when thy petals fell?" And the Rose answered, "In that evil hour A voice said, `Father, wherefore falls the flower? For lo, the very gossamers are still.' And a voice answered, `Son, by Allah's will!'" Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward, Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord: "Sister, before We smote the dark in twain, Ere yet the stars saw one another plain, Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task That thou shouldst fall, and such an one should ask." Whereat the withered flower, all content, Died as they die whose days are innocent; While he who questioned why the flower fell Caught hold of God and saved his soul from Hell.
Rudyard Kipling

Wisdom

If you study philosophy and the good arts, you are considered a dreamer

If you live chastely and modestly, a fool

If you are pious, a hypocrite

If you believe in God, an imbecile

If you are charitable, effeminate

What I learned at school

Beatitude

As far as great sanctity is concerned, it manifests itself especially by the connection or harmony of even the most dissimilar virtues. One man may be inclined by nature to fortitude, but not to meekness; for another, the inverse is true. Nature is, so to speak, determined ad unum; it needs to be completed by the different virtues under the direction of wisdom and prudence. Great sanctity is thus the eminent union of all the acquired and infused virtues, even of the most dissimilar ones, which God alone can so intimately unite. It is the union of great fortitude and perfect meekness, of ardent love of truth and justice and of great mercy toward souls that have gone astray. This union indicates a very close union with God, for what is divided in the kingdom of nature is united in the kingdom of God, especially in God Himself. Thus sanctity is a beautiful representation of the union of the most varied divine perfections, of infinite justice and infinite mercy in the eminence of the Deity or of the inner life of God. Christian martyrs manifest at one and the same time the greatest fortitude in their torments and the greatest meekness by praying for their executioners.(27) They are truly marked with the image of Jesus crucified.

Source

Van Til as he should have written it....

In this world there is no mystical translucency. But after his devastating of the mystical meaning of all the earthly embodiments, Trubetskoy ought to arrive at a certain difficulty. Rendered difficult for him is the question about the Church. In the Church he believes in nothing, and besides the Church he acknowledges nothing. But the Church ought also to seem one of the “earthly utopias”, that this is the ultimate recourse of that utopianism, which seeks the heavenly within the earthly, the Divine within the human, the other-worldly in the this-sidely. Trubetskoy ultimately to acknowledge, that upon earth, within earthly human history, that the Church also is an impossibility and an utopia, that it can appear only at the end of the world, only in the other-sidely. And as regards the Church he ought to affirm his idealistic thesis, i.e. to acknowledge it as being non-substantial, and as a norm, an ideal. I reiterate, that the critique of theocracy by Trubetskoy is excellent. But upon the path on which he stands, the critique of theocracy mustneeds also be extended to the Church, as upon an earthly utopian embodiment of the heavenly. He reduces the Church to the sacraments. But the Church has always striven to be more than the sacraments, it traverses the sphere of the earthly embodiment of the heavenly. The Catholic Church conceives of itself as a theocracy, the Kingdom of God upon earth. But the Orthodox Church also is not free of theocratic pretensions to order the world as regards itself. The separation of the Church from the state, which Trubetskoy desires, is also a diminution within the Church of earthly embodiments of the heavenly, a diluted churchly utopianism. Mustneeds there not be upon this path a refusal of embodiment of the heavenly into the earthly, until the very end of the world? Trubetskoy subsequently defends the secularisation of the whole of life and all of culture, and this mustneeds be acknowledged as very powerful on his side. It is necessary to renounce the lie and the sham of a Christian state, a Christian science, a Christian culture, etc, etc. The process of secularisation has an inner significance. But the whole of life and culture ought anew to become religious. Trubetskoy does not uncover the path to this, he does not point out the means for the spiritualisation of life. The Church also is the path of the making Divine the world. But in the metaphysics of Trubetskoy there is no place for the existence of the Church upon the earth. The Church as it were ought to remain in heaven. He demolishes all the earthly utopias, but together with this he demolishes also the Church, as resulting from an utopia. Trubetskoy points out the whole difficulty of the existence of a Christian dominion. There is only one Christian dominion -- this is the domain of the birds of the air and the lilies of the fields. Freedom from care is the Gospel testament. But upon earth it is impossible to be free from care, it is impossible to live, as do the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, upon the earth it is necessary to be prudent of domain. How to get out of this? It is indeed impossible to put off resolution of the contradictions of life until the end of the world. Do they not take too lightly the burden of the religious antinomy of life? It is necessary to accept life to the end, sacrificially and tragically. There is already therein no justification for the religiously neutral, for an external to God sociability and an external to God culture. Trubetskoy was more in the right than Bulgakov, when he rejects dominion from a Christian point of view and does not reckon it a task Divine. Bulgakov indeed has transferred over upon heaven his own economics, his own sweat. But the truth of Bulgakov is in this, that he sees the tormentiveness of the religious problem of economics and he does not reckon it possible to remain on the soil of religious neutrality. It mustneeds be recognised, that religiously there is nothing that is neutral, there is nothing that is outside religion

Berdyaev

A problem for many Christians, including self - Does going to Church convince one's self one doesn't need grace anymore? That is, one is "safe"? When in reality, the "Self" as it is is never "safe"? This is brilliant - the Western separation of Church & State inevitably utopianizes the Church, which (of course) exists on earth in its root, an earth robbed of all pantheism and mysticism. Thus, theology inclines to Deism, and "no neutrality" leads to the abolishment of the logic of the Church. Van Til should have written this essay. Yet Berdyaev acknowledges that there are problems in the direction of theocracy (against which Turbetskoi had written), affirming Turbetskoi. He simply observes that Bulgakov is right to claim that if Nature is not already Divine, if the world is not already the potter's field with the pearl, if there is no World-Soul, then the nations, the states, the peoples are meaningless, which means the Church is as well. This is why the Western Churches are dying. What life is in them comes entirely "as the Spirit blows" - it has no way to "touch the ground", fearful of creating theocracy; of course, it does so anyway, because there is no neutrality. America's religion is, ironically, entirely civil - there is still heresy, still apostasy, still orthodoxy. It goes by different names, now conservative, now liberal. This is Satan's plan - to anticipate God's work in such a way that he can counterfeit it before its proper time. This is the fall of man. The fall of us. America.

More Quotes from Bondarev

"Thus the Jahve-element is today an integral part of the nationalism of all peoples, including those who, unlike the Jews, should not as yet be assimilated. . . . The folk-spirits, the archangels, the spirits of language have a moderating influence on the materialistic and abstract spirit of the epoch. The Archangel Michael -- the countenance of the Lord -- leads the human beings who can take their development into their own hands, beyond the national, beyond the folk-element, to the level of the universal-human."

"It was known in the occult societies that the impulse of the new sociality streams from the Spirit, that the conditions for this had matured on earth {after the ascension of Michael as Time-Spirit in 1879} and that the developed self-consciousness of man is no longer willing to endure the last form of slavery -- the sale of human labour. It was becoming dangerous to ignore the decree of the spirit and it was impossible to do away with it entirely. Therefore the impulse was given free rein, but in an ahrimanic sheath. From the beginning both Russia and Germany were subject to attack." [p. 117]

". . . Germany is the 'third eye' of the world, that centre of modern civilization through which it can establish the conscious supersensible connection with the world of the spirit. . . . An oppression, a destruction of Germany and Middle Europe, the falsification of its spiritual nature, would mean to sever the connection of earthly civilization with the spiritual world, to cast it into the darkness of materialism. -- A distortion of the spiritual nature of Russia, the dissolving of its connection with Central Europe is tantamount to robbing the world of its future." [p. 191]

Friday Post at Gornahoor

From Russia with Love.

Perceval goes North and East

Ch. 13 The Russian Complex. How Mystery knowledge from Europe migrated into Russia in the 18th Century. The Trubetskoi family. The Russian mystical profile: Fedorov, Soloviev, Berdayev, and the Symbolist movement. Destruction of the mystical elements of Gnosis during the Revolution. The occult roots of the Russian Revolution.The survival of Sophianic teachings in the new atmospheric sciences with Merzekovsky, Vernadsky and others, leading to Gaia theory today.

RE: The Swan Knights & the Graal

Rudra Chakrin - When the Man Comes Around

Having said that, I must emphasize that I am not proposing hatred as an alternative way to overcome perpetration—because love (in my humble view) is not up to the task. The power behind Rite Action is not hatred but rage. Pure selfless rage. Black rage. Transpersonal rage. Lest anyone be frightened off by this extremely charged term, rage, take a moment to consider this notion: rage might have a transcendent aspect. It might even be regarded as a factor of human generosity, not merely a negative, destructive, or reactive trait. Nature is full of rage. Gaia can be a rageful goddess: consider the lion-headed Sekmet in Egyptian mythology, to cite one of countless examples. The power of rage is innate to human nature and prevalent in the animal kingdoms, as well as among birds, serpents, and insects. I propose that rage be regarded as a kind of resource—even a moral resource—and not something to be condemned or repressed.

Interesting. Almost as if the ideas in the Bhagavad-Gita, the ending of Harry Potter, & Revelation were all aiming at a final conflict. I hear Cash.

True Liberty

As there is no liberty for man but in the order which results from the true and the good, one may say that the conquest of liberty is the great work of the human soul. Man, by feeing himself from his evil passions and their slavery, creates himself, as it were, a second time. Nature made him living and suffering; he makes himself happy and immortal; he thus becomes the representative of divinity upon earth. And (relatively) exercises its almighty power.

End Times

In contrast to the Christianity of the Holy Trinity our century creates its new kind of religion. This 'religion' (counter-religion) absorbs all the fruits of atavistic occultism and makes them, in one or another form, accessible to the masses. In the mass-media one is already stating openly that parapsychology ought to take on the role of a new, universal, international religion. Any form whatever of practical magic, witchcraft, shamanism, every old superstition, all the teachings of East and West, North and South, the latest scientific theories and discoveries - all this will be thrown into the melting-'pot' of a so-called universal, earthly-cosmic world-view whose function will be to determine in practice the development of culture and civilization in the new epoch.

The entire social structure of the world assumes ever more distinctly the traits of a social anti-threefolding. In place of the equality of all human beings in the sphere of rights, we see emerging the world-wide rulership of a new, occult aristocracy. The spiritual life is shaped by means of magical hocus-pocus, of anti-aestheticism, and through the synthesis of pop-art and parapsychology.

Economically one divides the world into the caste of rulers and the helots who work for them. It will not be long before, instead of the associations of free producers (communes, communities), we will see the proletarians of the future: pious beings living on the level of group-consciousness, and bound to machines through the use of occult forces.

All this is unfortunately no empty fantasy. Such a development can only be arrested through a conscious appeal to Christ in his Second Coming, the event heralded by Anthroposophy. In the end the forces of good will triumph, for Christ has said: In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world (John 16; 33).

The Time of Ahriman is Now

Man has the task of penetrating thinking with the will, of developing reason, of enlivening his thoughts, giving them substance and then carrying individually-willed thinking as the substance of his 'I' across the threshold of the supersensible world (on the path of initiation or after death). But Ahriman wishes to prevent this. He would like the will to remain separate, and thoughts to be especially formed only in us (in the way he wishes; July 3, 1921, GA 205). In this case we would lose our individuality. We would arrive at the moment of death with an altogether exaggerated, instinctively-formed thought. But we humans would not be able to retain this thought, and Ahriman would be able to take hold of it and integrate it into the rest of the world ... (Ibid.). Humanity faces this danger if it continues in present-day materialism (however broadly its concepts may be interpreted) with the result that the ahrimanic powers so gain in strength that Ahriman can steal thoughts from the human being and incorporate them in their effective working into the earth (i.e. the abstractions become reality) so that the earth, which is actually (in time) supposed to pass away (spiritualize) will be consolidated ... Ahriman works counter to the word: 'Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away'. He wants the words to be thrown away and that heaven and earth should remain (materially). This can only be accomplished when human beings are robbed of their thoughts, when human beings are de-individualized (Ibid.).

In the lecture quoted above Rudolf Steiner goes on to speak about the human brain, and says that it will grow ever harder if the ahrimanic influence persists, and that human beings would have to live with materialistic, obsessive ideas. The whole approach to pedagogy and education would be structured in such a way that the human being would no longer be able to have flexible thoughts, that even children from a certain age on would only have very rigid thoughts. And all this has virtually been accomplished today. In time means will be found to teach the human being instantaneously, outside school and at a certain age, everything he needs to know, so that he becomes an extremely clever automaton. Through injection with certain substances it will be accomplished (in such a case) that the ether-body is loosened in the physical body ... (and in that case) the interplay between cosmos and ether-body will be extremely lively, [but] man will become an automaton if his physical body is not educated through spiritual will here on earth (Ibid.). The reader who follows the latest achievements of science will say that this has already been done in individual cases. People will therefore have all the more reason to be concerned about their future, and not only the earthly one.

Manifold are the influences upon man, of Lucifer and Ahriman, who are antipodes in the cosmos. They reveal themselves as such also within us. Where, for instance, Lucifer hates any kind of law, Ahriman would like everything to comply with law: statutes, regulations, programmes and so on. Their polar opposite characteristics and influences can be shown in a table.

Bondarev on Steiner

We must struggle against this.

Ich hatt ein Kameraden

Fugue for the Gnostics. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Bondarev on Following Christ

The conditions prevailing in the cosmos require of man that he should attain knowledge of the world-battle waged by the Gods against the luciferic and ahrimanic hordes. In this battle the highest God, who passed through death on earth and pointed the way to the final overcoming of the world-dualism of spirit and matter, is on the side of man. But man can follow Christ only in the 'I', for He is the God of the human 'I'. This means that, in his 'I', which he lives out in the combined faculties thinking, feeling and willing, the human being should strive for the ideal of the higher life, which brings not impoverishment and loss but enhancement of self-consciousness and the wealth of individual being.

The fourth chakra is the balancing chakra in the middle of the human chalice (the Grail?). It is midpoint between heaven & earth. Christ (in a certain sense) is the balancing point between heaven & earth. In him, righteousness and peace meet and have kissed. Bondarev is saying exactly that.

Manicheanism

The legend says that once the spirits of darkness wanted to storm the realm of light. They succeeded in reaching the boundary of the realm of light and wanted to conquer it. But they could accomplish nothing. Now they were to be punished ... by the realm of light. But nothing evil existed in the realm of light, only good. The demons of darkness could only have been punished with good. So what happened? ... The spirits of the realm of light took a portion of their realm and mixed it into the material kingdom of darkness ... Thus there arose within this realm of darkness a sourdough as it were, a ferment, which set the kingdom of darkness into a chaotic whirling dance, whereby it received a new element, namely death. So that it continuously devours itself and thus bears the seed of its own destruction within itself (Nov. 11, 1904, GA 93). The legend tells further that thanks to this event man appeared. As the first man (Adam) it was ... he who had been sent from the realm of light to mix with the realm of darkness and to overcome through death all that should not be in the realm of darkness; to overcome it within himself (ibid.).

Rudolf Steiner

The West and the Slavs

Russian philosopher-Prince V. F. Odoyevsky wrote: In the madness of materialism the West delivers its great thinkers to the graveyard of thoughts, and tramples those in the dirt, who wish to abjure this madness with strong and holy words.

Germanity & Slavs

See *The Crisis Of Civilization* by the excommunicated Russian Anthroposophist Gennady Bondarev. He considers the 6th Epoch to be more a "German-Slavic" epoch, since the right development can happen only if the Mid-European cultural tasks of social *I*-development come to fruition and are passed on to the East. Steiner says that the Germans are the avant-garde of the sixth sub-race (GA264). The true German culture comes to expression in Idealism, Goetheanism, Anthroposophy, and Social Threefolding. It has been the aim, all too succesful, of evil occult-political forces in the 20th Century to crush the Germans and the East Slavs, to prevent the right evolution toward the 6th Epoch. If these evil designssucceed, the 6th Epoch will then be centered in South America, but will be maimed and distorted, and the Spirit Self will not descend in the way intended for progressive evolution. Bondarev does not give a citation of Steiner for this last point, but I think Prokofieff does, in his *Spiritual Origins of Eastern Europe...*This book of Bondarev's has not really been published in English, but you can get an proofreader's copy from Nelson Willby in London:nwillby@mistral.co.

This is a deep study of the contempory war agains Mid and Eastern Europe, and more. He also has a book especially about Russia, *Die Wartende Kultur*, a 3-volume work on the Goethean method, and more. These are available in German from Willy Lochmann: <lochmann_verlag@gmx.ch > Prokofieff,in the book mentioned, puts forward the idea that the East Slavs took on, as a sacrifice, the world-karma of materialism in the form of the Boshevik oppression, thus enabling Western and Central Europe to develop to a better degree than would have been otherwise possible. He comes in for some trenchant criticism on this point (and many others also) from another Russian, Irina Gordienko, in her book *S.O. Prokofieff, Myth and Reality*. For a flyer on this last book, see Site

Gleaned from Cassiopeia website

Christian Heritage

Christian children have, for centuries, been taught the Anjoli Mudra, a yogic mudra that raises the life force up the spine, focuses mind in the higher centers and the forehead, and puts one automatically into the devotional (bhakti-yoga) attitude. In the Catholic churches they are also taught the yogic austerities by long kneeling and standing, which is equivalent to many yogic asanas and designed to make the body impervious to discomfort, which helps the mind separate itself from bodily distraction and enmeshment and paves the way for later yogic development including the samadhi of the Christian saints. Setting children into beautiful churches also stimulates the attitude of reverence, highly auspicious for bhakti-yoga, teaches them about God's first creation of space (akasa), etc. Christian are also often taught repetition of prayers or prayer formula (mantra). This should be continued. Many huge flagstones of later mystical development are laid in the early mind by the great heritage of Christian bhakti-yoga. Continuing to teach a few simple yogic mudras to Christian children is highly advised, because it benefits them, and the Christian bhakti-yoga should be better understood.

Quotes on Creation & Work

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

~ Robert Heinlein

Conversely, it is the weak characters without power over themselves that hate the constraint of style. They feel that if this bitter and evil constraint were imposed upon them they would be demeaned; they become slaves as soon as they serve; they hate to serve. Such spirits — and they may be of the first rank — are always out to shape and interpret their environment as free nature: wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, and surprising. And they are well advised because it is only in this way that they can give pleasure to themselves. For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of what is ugly makes one bad and gloomy.

Nietzsche
Culled from Gornahoor website

The Kingdom of God

Gornahoor post.