The Truth, Thinking and Christ
Read John 14:5-21 Jesus said to him (Thomas), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.” John14:6 - 7
“I am the truth” – the Greek word for truth used here is ‘aletheia’ which indicates the reality lying at the basis of an appearance, the essence of a matter. The I AM is not open to interpretation, it is the naked essence of our being. There can be no pretence; pretence comes from the astral.
The I AM is actually a frightening thing just as the naked truth can be hard to bear. How often do we shrink from truth? John chose to mention this in chapter 16 when he recorded Jesus’ words, “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. John 16:12
Thomas’ question: “Where are you going; how can we know the way?” seems to get such an odd answer unless we look at it differently. Esoterically, the Way relates to the Father, and the will; the Truth points to the Son, and to thinking.
In Thomas we see our lost ability to think purely. Knowledge has become abstract and personal and is therefore subjective; our own ideas can stand in the way of truth.
What is thinking really? Thinking is nothing more than placing one concept next to another, one image next to another and by comparing them all we reach a conclusion or make a judgement. Because we are so bound to our physical body, and because our relationship to our I AM is so tentative, most of our concepts and images come from the past. Innately we use the past to understand the present. It is difficult for us to factor in the future when the past is so vivid.
Yet the real purpose of thinking is so that we can understand the reality of our being. The reality of our being is not the past but the future when we will be fully human. The I AM that we are working hard to incorporate into our being has only ever been experienced fully by one man: Jesus. Rev. Mario would sometimes end his prayers by saying, “We pray these things in the matchless name of Jesus.”
What we need is a living thinking, a thinking that can factor in the future. It is only with this kind of living thinking - which uses the etheric body - that we can grasp many of the truths in the Bible. So many biblical statements seem to have little mean ing to our earthly mind. Sometimes they even seem to be mindless repetition, or even contradiction. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.” If we know the I AM then we know the Father, the originator of the I AM. This is like seeing the likeness of the father in his son.
“Believe” says Jesus, not blindly but trust. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.” This is not about persuasion, we are asked to take it as fact. We can do this by experiencing thinking as a creative act. When we think we create a form in the astral world. On Old Saturn when the Archai, the time spirits, thought they created a physical form. If we can free our thinking from our nervous system we have creative Imagination. This is thinking that is freed from the brain, it is pure thinking, free thinking. Pure thinking enables us to trust these words and experience the truth that sets us free.
It seems slightly peculiar that Jesus goes on and on about “knowing” except if we understand then that truth speaks about knowing. “I am the truth” tells us that when our I AM is fully engaged we will know. We will know Christ, we will know the Father and we will know the way. Verse 17 says that the Spirit of truth will be revealed to us if we seek it. So we are asked to believe and know and our I AM will be revealed.
Chapter 14 is really quite astounding. Perhaps we should read it as a mantra every morning.
· We will do greater works than Jesus when his fully Christed I AM reconnects with the Father.
· Whatever we ask in the I AM, it will be done.
· Christ will come to us and the comforter/counsellor will be sent to abide with us forever.
How could we ever get depressed, anxious or fearful knowing this and believing this? Feel verse 18 reverberate through you.
“I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also.
Yes! You said: How could we
Yes! You said:
How could we ever get depressed, anxious or fearful knowing this and believing this?
referring to Christ's
“I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also"
I think that the future tense is used for conventional rather than ontological reasons. It's like Dennis Klocek said, "It is done; now we must learn to see/think it, which was the ultimate purpose of Steiner's life"
This is connected to my long-ago-comments about shame. Clearly if we are forcing ourselves to 'believe' those words we will, at best, achieve the sort of manufactured and artifical "peace" that is the result of such striving: the strong but brittle peace that goes away with the honk of a car or the election of a president. But if we realize Christ's "message", if we re-cognize our very living, then His Peace is ours; it's the only-one-triangle from The Philosophy of Freedom.
I understand that many Christians and Anthroposophists think of shame as something Christ "knows". This isn't my view, but regardless of how you relate to the experience of shame, at the end of the day it is either His Way or the highway (if shame). We were not left desolate, ever. He comes, always. He will not be seen by fleshed eyes but cognized by the open intelligence of the heart. I love that quote!
Jeff
about depression
Depression is a plague of our times. Very often I also think how we can be depressed, if we are eternal being, if Christ is always with us. It looks like wasting of our earthly time.
Of course there are different life situations and everybody can have crises, which are important too, because in the darkness we can see the Light.
According to anthroposophical medicine it is considered that depression is connected with lack of light, inner light, light of our ‘I AM’, light of Christ.
I like also the following words about life written by one of enlightened persons in the world, Celaleddin Rumi:
“With passion pray,
With passion work,
With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish
in the ocean of God?”
Love to All
Olga
depressed fish
Steiner thought that every emotion was a modification of love. He used the word "love" in many different ways, but if we consider what "love" means in the context of PoF, we can see the connection between depression/anxiety/rage/mania and the denial of our prior unity in Christ.
The beauty, to me, is that no matter what we face (within or without) we can consider it the perfect pointer to the very Self that is already our own. In this sense, the actual experience of depression is the doorway to our freedom.
Our technological culture wishes to zap away depression. Our spiritual culture wishes to pray away or meditate away or next-lifetime-away our depression. Christ (and the meaning of PoF) states that whatever we face is the always and only doorway to His eternal company. We must lose face to find His.
Even a dead a fish is in good company with Rumi! I love that Rumi saw so clearly that passion, true passion, is simply unqualified and always available to the Heart's knowing eyes. Swirl! Thanks, Olga....
Before I scramble to work,
Before I scramble to work, I wanted to jot down two quotes that I find useful to ponder in relation to depression. They both come from the "ACIM" version of PoF. The first from Chapter 10's "The Denial of God" and the second from Chapter 12's "Seeking and Finding". They each speak to the egoic function in creating the appearance of a "hidden" or "distant" Christ.
Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in projection, and you will believe that others and not yourself have done this to you. You must receive the message you give because it is the message you want. You may believe that you judge your brothers by the messages they give you, but you have judged them by the message you give to them. Do not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark in them that would bring joy to you. It is the denial of the spark that brings depression, for whenever you see your brothers without it, you are denying God.
...................
Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise you would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy. For His promise is always, "Seek and you will find," and under His guidance you cannot be defeated. His is the journey to accomplishment, and the goal He sets before you He will give you. For He will never deceive God's Son whom He loves with the Love of the Father.
lessons
Thank you Jeff,
In anthroposophical medicine there is a meditation which speaks that Christ also leads us down to the sickness and through this experience we can find Him…
Our problems become our lessons. But we can stay in the same classes all the time (what is called ‘karma’) or consciously change our life. This is a kind of Mercy. With thankfulness in our hearts we can support others, while still having our own lessons…