Elena for Ton August 2nd, 2010

41. Elena - August 2, 2010

Hello Ton,

I’ve no idea why you’re still coming here so often but if you can apologize for your destructive behavior you can participate again or leave but free your self either way. This blog isn’t pathologically adverse to people who disagree like the fofblog!

You don’t need to apologize for what you think of me, we can all think what we like but for the aggressiveness on this site which is very destructive to me, there are constructive ways of criticizing each other’s points of view. Here are the posts I banned. Should you repeat the same “tone” I should ban you again.

In repeating a similar behavior to the one I had in the fofblog I hope you realized how easy it is to get there when one isn’t at all well and one isn’t at all well when one’s behavior is clearly aiming at hurting others. What we need to learn is to disagree without hurting each other’s integrity.

Here are your posts that I stopped, the one by Steiner I think was repeated or just got dumped in with the rest and what I think is worth looking at besides the aggressions, is the impossibility to find a point of agreement. That is what shows the attitude and intention and the desire to get me so upset that I’ll retaliate and treat you as badly which was my pattern in the first fofblog participation. For me it’s over, I hope you don’t even need to explain yourself on it. My behavior was as bad as yours then, I could not control my anger and frustration at the people for not seriously helping to stop the Fellowship. It happens! But we’ve got to learn the lesson if we want to dialogue and to do so we need to like each other enough. Since I don’t think there is any such liking in you why bother to speak just to indulge in aggression?

Cheers!

2010/06/16 at 5:40 am
e: “…Have fun Ton in your world, I’m delighted not to be a part of it.”

Elena

gee elena, what happened to “WE are ONE” ?

you’re a fraud and a hypocrite and you can’t handle truth.

Life!
40 #
ton

2010/06/15 at 9:29 pm
let’s examine “the text” of your previous post a little further:

e: “This text by Steiner is very valuable in this exploration and contradicts nothing of what I’ve been saying…”

well i’m glad you can find “value” in it, good for you elena, i hope you will find additional “value” when you read the book from which the excerpt was taken… i hate to take things out of context, but that seems to be the custom here on your blog… and although the excerpt stands on it’s own, to do it proper justice it should be read within the context of the whole book. i really don’t understand why you think “the text” should contradict what you’re saying… why do you even suggest it? you really do take a contrary perspective on almost everything don’t you elena ?

e: “I’m happy to be able to state that I don’t consider myself an anthroposophist but a human being and that is because unfortunately in many an anthroposophist we still find the same authoritarian, classicist, racist, academic and economic sense of superiority that separates people from people…”

yes, and regarding “the same authoritarian, classist, racist academic and sense of superiority that separates people” — there’s a saying in my country — it takes one to know one. and i’m sure there are many “anthroposophists” who would be happy to be able to state that you do not consider yourself “one of them.” what, did you forget your “we are one” slogan again elena ? or do you only use it when it’s “convenient…” it sounds like you are quite an expert — how many “anthroposophists” do you really know elena ? i work with some and based on my personal experiences i can say it’s like any other “walk of life” — there are some “good” and some “bad” and sometimes the “good” are “bad” and sometimes the “bad” are “good.” (of course this is but a subjective and personal opinion… but at least i can freely admit to it being so and i don’t have to speak in ‘absolutes’ like you do here).

e: “…making of it nothing more than another decadent cult like the Fellowship of Friends…”

you really are an expert eh elena ? you seem to know this from the inside out… eh ? you compare apples and oranges and you say they are the same because both are round…. what does that say about you ?

Life!
40 #
ton

2010/06/15 at 7:46 pm
elena, the excerpt speaks for itself, i’ll leave the ‘disagreeing with’ and ‘critique’ of the text to you, since that seems to be your special preoccupation here…

what about “indirect personal attacks” is that ok elena, it seems that indirect personal attacks are allowed here on planet elena, because that’s exactly what you are doing in your post. what you write elena, is part of the “text” — “the text” is not only what you decide to cut and paste from other authors… and when i comment on what you write elena, that’s part of ‘the text’ as well — you can edit it out, but that doesn’t change the truth. you edit out my comments because they disagree with you and then you try to justify it with flimsy excuses AND YOU DON’T SEE THIS AS AN ATTACK ON ME?!? but it’s ok for you to attack me, right elena? at least as long as it’s ‘indirect’ rather than ‘direct’ — you feel “justified” because after all it is your blog and you DICTATE the rules, right ? that’s fine, just admit that you are dictating the rules and that anyone else who wishes to freely express an opinion is subject to your summary judgement…. AND you mistakenly place the blame on me for your banishment from the fofblog so you feel further justified in banning me here… so much for your idealized and lofty notions about the “public square” and “freedom of speech” elena…. this just proves what i’ve suspected about you all along, you’re nothing but a self-righteous fraud, a foolish hypocrite who acts like a spoiled petulant child. this is further proof that “we” — that’s you and i elena — are obviously not one, no matter how many times you repeat it, that will not make it true…. no elena, you and i are two very different people. although you would love to be able to live in this “we are one” fantasy by dictating that “we” should all think, and say, and do only what you approve of, i will continue to fight against a world where intolerant, narrow-minded people like you dictate what is and is not “valid.” you enjoy too much your own vain, pretentious, insincere, and hollow claptrap, elena.

Life!
40 #
ton

2010/06/15 at 3:55 am
lost somewhere in all of the “disagreeing” you do with the previous text, you questioned the author’s view of christianity… i see that much of what you disagree with is simply ‘reactionary’– ‘knee-jerk’ reaction on your part comes from a lack of understanding…. to help deepen your understanding and toward satisfying your stated ‘mandate’ to explore the ‘separation of state and religion,’ may i suggest a book, here’s an excerpt that pertains to some of what you’ve pondered here in the past… no reactionary response is required, you have nothing to prove elena.

“THE FACT that the Divine, the Word, the eternal Logos was no longer met only on a spiritual plane in the dark secrecy of the Mysteries but that in speaking about the Logos they were indicating the historical and human personality of Jesus, must have exercised the deepest influence upon those who acknowledged Christianity. Previously the Logos had been seen as reality only in different stages of human perfection. It was possible to observe the delicate, subtle differences in the spiritual life of the personality and to see in what manner and degree the Logos became living within the individual personalities seeking initiation. A higher degree of maturity had to be interpreted as a higher stage in the evolution of spiritual existence. The preparatory steps had to be sought in a past spiritual life. And the present life had to be regarded as the preparatory stage for future stages of spiritual evolution. The conservation of the spiritual power of the soul and the eternity of that power could be assumed from the Jewish esoteric teaching (The Zohar), “Nothing in the world is lost, nothing falls into the void, not even the words and voice of man; everything has its place and destination.” (see Note 72) The one personality was only a metamorphosis of the soul which changes from personality to personality. The single life of the personality was considered only as a link in the chain of development reaching forward and backward. Through Christianity this changing Logos is directed from the individual personality to the unique personality of Jesus. What previously had been distributed throughout the world was now united in a unique personality. Jesus became the unique God-Man. In Jesus something once was present which must appear to man as the greatest of ideals and with which in the course of man’s repeated earthly lives he ought in the future to be more and more united. Jesus took upon himself the apotheosis of the whole of humanity. In him was sought what formerly could be sought only in a man’s own soul. What had always been found as divine and eternal in the human personality had been taken from it. And all this eternal could be seen in Jesus. It is not the eternal part in the soul that conquers death and is raised as divine through its own power, but the one God who was in Jesus, will appear and raise the souls. From this it follows that an entirely new significance was given to personality. The eternal, immortal part had been taken from it. Only the personality as such was left. If eternity were not to be denied, immortality must be ascribed to the personality itself. The belief in the soul’s eternal metamorphosis became the belief in personal immortality. The personality gained infinite importance because it was the only thing in man to which he could cling. — Henceforth there is nothing between the personality and the infinite God. A direct relationship with Him must be established. Man was no longer capable of becoming divine himself in a greater or lesser degree; he was simply man, standing in a direct but outward relationship to God. Those who knew the ancient Mystery-conceptions were bound to feel that this brought quite a new note into the conception of the world. Many people found themselves in this position during the first centuries of Christianity. They knew the nature of the Mysteries; if they wished to become Christians they were obliged to come to terms with the old method. This brought them into difficult conflicts within their souls. They tried in the most varied ways to find a balance between the divergent world conceptions. This conflict is reflected in the writings of early Christian times, both of pagans attracted by the sublimity of Christianity and of those Christians who found it hard to give up the ways of the Mysteries. Christianity grew slowly out of Mystery wisdom. On the one hand Christian convictions were presented in the form of the Mystery truths, and on the other the Mystery wisdom was clothed in Christian words. Clement of Alexandria (died 217 A.D.), a Christian writer whose education had been pagan, provides an instance of this: “Thus the Lord did not hinder us from doing good while keeping the Sabbath, but allowed us to communicate of those divine mysteries, and of that holy light, to those who are able to receive them. He did not disclose to the many what did not belong to the many; but to the few to whom he knew that they belonged, who were capable of receiving and being moulded according to them. But secret things are entrusted to speech, not to writing, as God confided the unutterable mystery to the Logos, not to the written word.” — “God gave to the church some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” (see Note 73) By the most diverse means personalities tried to find the way from the ancient conceptions to the Christian ones. And each of them, believing he was on the right path, called the others heretics. Side by side with the latter, the Church grew stronger as an external institution. The more power it gained the more the path recognized as the right one by the decisions of councils took the place of personal investigation. It was for the Church to decide who deviated too far from the divine truth which it guarded. The concept of a “heretic” took firmer and firmer shape. During the first centuries of Christianity the search for the divine path was a much more personal matter than it became later. A long distance had to be traveled before Augustine’s conviction could become possible: “I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Church.” (see Note in Chapter 6)

The conflict between the method of the Mysteries and that of the Christian religion acquired a special stamp through the various “Gnostic” sects and writers. We may class as Gnostics all the writers of the first Christian centuries who sought for a deeper spiritual sense in Christian teachings. (A brilliant account of the development of Gnosis is given in G. R. S. Mead’s book mentioned above, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten.) We understand the Gnostics when we look upon them as saturated with the ancient wisdom of the Mysteries and striving to understand Christianity from that point of view. For them Christ is the Logos. As such He is above all of a spiritual nature. In His primal essence He cannot approach man from without. He must be awakened in the soul. But the historical Jesus must bear some relationship to this spiritual Logos. This was the crucial question for the Gnostics. Some settled it in one way, some in another. The essential point common to them all was that to arrive at a true understanding of the Christ-idea, mere historical tradition was not sufficient, but that it must be sought either in the wisdom of the Mysteries or in the Neoplatonic philosophy which was derived from the same source. The Gnostics had faith in human wisdom, and believed it capable of bringing forth a Christ by whom the historical Christ could be measured. In fact, through the former alone could the latter be understood and beheld in the right light.

From this point of view the doctrine given in the books of Dionysius the Areopagite is of special interest. It is true that there is no mention of these writings until the sixth century. But it matters little when and where they were written; the point is that they give an account of Christianity which is clothed in the language of Neoplatonic philosophy, and presented in the form of a spiritual vision of the higher world. In any case this is a form of presentation belonging to the first Christian centuries. In olden times this presentation was handed on in the form of oral tradition; in fact the most important things were not entrusted to writing. Christianity thus presented could be regarded as reflected in the mirror of the Neoplatonic world conception. Sense-perception dims man’s spiritual vision. He must go beyond the material world. But all human concepts are derived primarily from observation by the senses. What man observes with his senses he calls existent; what he does not so observe he calls non-existent. Therefore if he wishes to open up an actual view of the divine he must go beyond existence and non-existence, for as he conceives them these also have their origin in the sphere of the senses. In this sense God is neither existent nor non-existent. He is super-existent. Consequently He cannot be attained by means of ordinary perception, which has to do with existing things. We must be raised above ourselves, above our sense-observation, above our reasoning logic if we are to find the bridge to spiritual conception; then we are able to get a glimpse into the perspectives of the divine. — But this super-existent divinity has brought forth the Logos, the foundation of the universe, filled with wisdom. Man’s lower powers are able to reach Him. He is present in the structure of the world as the spiritual Son of God; He is the mediator between God and man. He may be present in man in various stages. For instance, He may be realized in an external institution, in which those variously imbued with His spirit are grouped into a hierarchy. A “Church” of this kind is the material reality of the Logos, and the power which lives in it lived personally in the Christ become flesh, in Jesus. Thus through Jesus the Church is united to God; in Him lies its meaning and crowning-point.

One thing was clear to all Gnosis: one must come to terms with the idea of Jesus as a personality. Christ and Jesus must be brought into relationship with each other. Divinity was taken from human personality and must be recovered in one way or another. It must be possible to find it again in Jesus. The mystic was dealing with a degree of divinity within himself, and with his own earthly material personality. The Christian was dealing with the latter and also with a perfect God, far above all that is humanly attainable. If we hold firmly to this conception a fundamentally mystical attitude of soul is only possible when the soul finds the higher spiritual element in itself and its spiritual eye is opened so that the light issuing from the Christ in Jesus falls upon it. The union of the soul with its highest powers is at the same time union with the historical Christ. For mysticism is a direct feeling and experience of the divine within the soul. But a God far transcending everything human can never dwell in the soul in the real sense of the word. Gnosis and all subsequent Christian mysticism represent the effort in one way or another to lay hold of that God and to apprehend Him directly in the soul. A conflict in this case was inevitable. In reality it was only possible for a man to find his own divine part; but this is a human-divine part, that is, a divine part at a certain stage of development. Yet the Christian God is a definite one, perfect in Himself. It was possible for a person to find in himself the power to strive upward to this God, but he could not say that what he experienced in his own soul at any stage of development was one with God. A gulf appeared between what it was possible to perceive in the soul and what Christianity described as divine. It is the gulf between knowledge and belief, between cognition and religious feeling. This gulf does not exist for a mystic in the old sense of the word. He knows that he can comprehend the divine only by degrees, and he also knows why this is so. It is clear to him that this gradual attainment is a real attainment of the true, living divinity and he finds it difficult to speak of a perfect, isolated divine principle. A mystic of this kind does not wish to recognize a perfect God, but he wishes to experience the divine life. He wishes to become divine himself; he does not wish to gain an external relationship to the Godhead. It is of the essence of Christianity that its mysticism in this sense starts with an assumption. The Christian mystic seeks to behold divinity within himself, but he must look to the historical Christ as his eyes do to the sun; just as the physical eye says to itself, By means of the sun I see what I have power to see, so the Christian mystic says to himself, I will intensify my innermost being in the direction of divine vision, and the light which makes such vision possible is given in the Christ who has appeared. He is, and through this I am able to rise to the highest within myself. In this the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages show how they differ from the mystics of the ancient Mysteries. (See my book, Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens. Berlin, 1901, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Englewood, New Jersey, 1960, Volume 3 of the Centennial Edition of the Written Works of Rudolf Steiner, 1861–1961.)

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA008/English/RPC1961/GA008_index.html

Life!
40 #
ton

2010/06/15 at 3:34 am
e: “Just for your information I will only allow posts that refer to the subject in question and not me personally to get through to the blog. That is why I passed the previous four. But I guess if you aren’t printing somebody else’s material, you’ve nothing of your own to say besides personally diminishing others.I’m so glad I’ve managed to stop you from your tactics!
Elena”

and of course you dictate the ‘subject’ in question… so much for ‘the public square’ eh elena? so you’ll ‘allow’ comments which you deem ‘worthy’ and edit out anything that does not ‘suit’ you… so much for tolerance, eh elena? you are the most intolerant person i’ve never met… all the preaching you do here means nothing because in actual fact you are a complete hippocrit… you represent the ‘nazi’ mentality that you so vociferously preach against… there is an old saying in my country… and this is a perfect example of “the kettle calling the pot black” — elena, you are someone who has dedicated hours, weeks, days months and years to filling the many, many volumes of your blogspace with the “printing of somebody else’s” material… and yet you criticize me for doing the same. your ‘critiques’ here are transparent attempts to build up a false sense of self-esteem by making yourself feel ‘smarter’ than others, to increase your own sense of self-aggrandizement by ‘arguing’ against ‘someone’ who doesn’t argue back. elena, your problem is that you don’t understand what the ‘subject’ is here on your blog… YOU ARE the subject, and that’s what you fail to recognize… that’s what i’ve been pointing out all along… and all this ‘stuff’ you spend so many hours and days and weeks and months culling and cutting and pasting from the web, it’s all being selected by and filtering THROUGH THE SUBJECT — that’s you… now i ask, what’s the object?

Life!
40 #
tonme.gnome@verizon.net
108.2.86.88
2010/06/14 at 5:44 pm
e: “Thank you Ton for giving me an opportunity to clarify my understanding through these texts. I realize you probably didn’t offer them so that I would expand my self so lavishly but, c’est la vie!”

i expect nothing less from you than to “expand so lavishly” — as you are wont to do in any and all cases anyway… i could think of other words for this ‘tendency’ of yours… but never mind that, i’m glad you are able to find some food for thought… although it seems that you misjudge the “spirit” of the text in some cases… it’s an overview, not a defense of the various perspectives presented… it’s an attempt to put the philosophy of individualism (the concept of the “I”) into a developmental/ historical context… i thought you could take it for what it’s worth, but you seem to be much more carried away with and interested in your own critique than the developmental progression which the author identifies…. maybe this has to do with the ‘source’ — ?

e: “That is what you and I have been disagreeing about Ton.”

there’s a lot we do not agree on elena… i see you’re now editing out my comments from your blog… but of course there’s not enough room here for my comments, after all, you have so many, much more important things to ‘say’ — and heaven forbid that an actual human interaction might occur here in your own personal ivory tower… but i understand, isolation is more comfortable for you, so i’ll leave you to it.