Live chat on March 30 (in French) on different Christian esoteric initiation paths
Hello friends,
Here is a text written in introduction of a discussion that will take place on March 30 live at 20:00 between Guillaume attewel and me on the paths d; initiation.
Guillaume has followed a Christian esoteric path and I want to discuss with him on our two approaches, hoping that this can inspire around!
This is what can serve as a prelude to further discussion on such a broad topic: Early Initiation and Initiatory Pathways as provided by Rudolf Steiner. Let me say immediately that all I am going to say concerns only my temporary and necessarily very partial understanding of a teaching that I am only able to scratch, even if I have been reading and meditating on Steiner for fifteen years. years.
I believe that Steiner introduces a new path to Christ. A path that passes through the understanding of Christ as cosmic Being.
Much of his teaching deals with cosmic hierarchies, their roles in the creation and functioning of the universe as a whole.
This understanding of the activity of spiritual hierarchies behind the curtain of matter is a prerequisite for understanding the cosmic role of Christ.
It is therefore a path that passes through the intellect, through a long, laborious and constantly resumed study.
What do we study at Steiner? What the Egyptian initiates or Zoroastrians contemplated. At the time of ancient Egypt the candidates were plunged into lethargy for 3 days and contemplated the spiritual world. When they came back they could print their experiences in their etheric body and thus remember them. They had become initiated, possessors of a direct vision of the forces and the cosmic beings and able to transmit these visions by the force of the memory.
To arrive at this moment of initiation, the candidates were severely selected according to their moral qualities and their spiritual potentials. They spent years of preparation and purification and did not experience initiation until they were ready.
By studying Steiner, one therefore has first intellectual access to the fact that the traditional initiates lived in a state of ” trance ”, ” modified state of consciousness ” or ” coma ” artificially induced.
Steiner introduces us to this knowledge in full consciousness and it is a difference of size. But this knowledge is at first only terribly superficial, being intellectual. It is the first layer of this modern path of initiation, sometimes called Rosicrucian way.
Yet this first layer already costs a lot of effort. And this intellectual asceticism is also there to form in itself the first spiritual forces: those of thought. This simple ability to focus on a complicated subject replaces in a way the trance setting or any ritual whatsoever.
What difference will you tell me?
That of freedom. Self-awareness is a condition for the full exercise of individual freedom.
Why propose this way at the dawn of the 20th century?
To understand a path one must ask what questions this path tries to answer. What is the situation of the man of the 20-21 century?
He is a city dweller, cut off from Nature, who has replaced religion with science. In the past, religion offered images of the Universe, of its creation and of the insertion of man into this Universe, that is to say gave it its meaning. Now it is science that provides us with the great images of the cosmos and our origins. With the small difference that science is absolutely incapable of making sense: The planet earth floats by chance in an endless vacuum and by chance the conditions were favorable to life. And from this material life would be born by a combination of circumstances even more extraordinary the conscience ….
Faced with this void of abyssal meaning, Steiner brings his teaching while not denying the positive contributions of science, being himself a scientist. It does not seek to reconnect with a past before science but proposes a future according to science and who knows how to integrate what is integrable (and reject all errors and scientific dogmas).
It takes into account the forces involved: The intellect and the lack of spirituality. With the intellect, the ability to think for oneself, that is, to develop as a free individual. And so the increase of the forces of egoism. The forces of egoism require a suitable initiation.
This initiation goes through the metamorphosis of the forces of the intellect.
Thinking has become commonplace and not knowing how to reserve for an elite. Thus the books of Steiner are accessible to all, there is no anthroposophy of secret rites of ranks, and The challenge is a metamorphosis of conceptual thought into imaginative thought, then intuitive and intuitive, that is to say, from a dead and deadly thought into a living and life-giving thought, based on free will. This necessary metamorphosis of intellect brings us back to Christ. Without the solar forces brought by Christ at the time of Golgotha, no conscious metamorphosis of the intellect would be possible. The Christic force is the solar force that renews and vivifies the sclerotic forces of the intellect. I am aware that by reading this more than one will say that here we are in the sect etc … No, simply I am obliged to make shortcuts … .The main idea is that the Being Solar that the Egyptians contemplated during their initiation, this Being incarnated in a being of flesh, and became visible by all, by the common senses. The image of Christ on the Cross is this Solar Being. What changes the whole relationship to Initiation: What once was sought in the spiritual world is in the world of the senses.
Still, it is necessary to take the trouble to understand these Christic forces. In respect of free will absolutely nothing obliges the man to try to understand the forces of redemption brought at the time of Golgotha. Every impulse to understand must come from the most intimate interior of each. We can ignore the call, be content with traditional images provided by the church ….
In this world everything is a symbol, except for Golgotha: We have here a totally new moment of total coincidence between the symbol and its real meaning: We are witnessing the death of a God. A Solar Being came to Earth to live death, the only experience that the gods could not live until then … In crossing and overcoming death Christ brings the invigorating solar forces necessary for the metamorphosis of our intellect and selfishness. And if we still see so little effect, it is that 2000 years is nothing on a cosmic scale. The Earth has just been fertilized by the Sun …
We are free to understand it first and then to deepen this cognition of Christ to the experience of Christ. Intellectual comprehension is only the smallest layer of the path, (even if it takes me a lot of time already, hum …). We go from the cognition of cosmic evolution to that of the role of Christ in this evolution and we deepen by an ever deeper experience and inner transformation.
And this lived in turn nourished the Solar energy that took the Earth for body. (” This is my Body ”). Because this energy needs our collaboration but again it must be done freely. Inner freedom being the condition for true love …
I can only present here one of the many paths of anthroposophy. There are others just as important as phenomenology deepened by meditation. It’s a way that reconciles natural science with spirituality, but enough talk for now …
I hope in any case that this text could be subject to many and fruitful reflections! …
Sincerely,
Christophe
