[viagradiscounttt]

quite central to lynette's title for this thread, matherne includes:
"you, by virtue of reading this review of a set of lectures by rudolf steiner, may be thinking that this is like preaching to the choir — you know much of this already. but there are many people who have lost their way because the external sciences haven been systematically undermining the very basis of christ jesus's divinity. by using methods of history, archaeology, and anthropology they strive to convince people that he was but a human being, if he existed at all, and that his teachings are just one among many great teachings which may benefit gullible believers." nina
i feel that to say, "he was but a human being," whether one subscribes to this view or not, necessarily entails a concept of intrinsic separateness and differentiation of relative divinity.

throughout history, men have approached their understanding of their relationship with god in terms of the mundane and the ethereal, the sinner and the blameless, the creator and the creation, etc., and have built huge, complex edifices of thought in order to try and categorize and define in relative terms just what our relationship to god is.

this is all part of the growth and evolution of man, and is exactly as it should be - for man begins by seeing himself as a product of his environment; as a product of something much greater than himself. with this 'obvious' fact as a starting point, man sets about attempting to define his place in creation, and to find ways to honor the gods and incur their favor.

man sets up a priesthood, and imagines he now has a communications conduit to divinity. the priestly ruling class sets about the complex task of defining in relative terms the place of man in the cosmos, and also consolidates its power over the lowly commoner, claiming a higher pedigree, or closeness to divinity.

thus the stage is set for an almost infinite complexity of theology, all based upon the agreed-on premise that man has his place somewhere on the hierarchical ladder of creation, with the simple creatures of the world below him in importance, and with the unseen angelic realms and other higher principalities occupying offices of greater intrinsic virtue and god-worthiness.

above this ladder of creation hovers the creator who views his creation and leads the battle against evil - cutting down and burning all who rebel against the priestly concept of relative divinity, and rewarding those who, from the perspective of admission of their intrinsic unworthiness and unclean stature, worship their creator with fervor.

again, i feel this is nothing but demonstrative of an evolving humanity and the necessary growng pains of the human stage of self-awareness, and is exactly as it should be. you can't tell someone they are wrong for their beliefs, as their unfolding evolution and becoming stands upon those beliefs. there comes a time when a spiritual seeker feels a growing unease with his complex seas of ologies and osophies, and the relativism that allows for the concepts of greater or lesser degrees of divinity. he determines to leave behind fear, sensing that his fears in some way limit his apprehension of his own divinity. he refuses to heed the priestly warnings of damnation, if he should dare openly explore the concepts of his own intrinsic unworthiness. he instinctively senses that there exists a simpler spirituality, free of the demand to internalize that which he is authoritatively told that he must internalize - a spirituality with his own inner being as his only authority, and with himself as his only direct guide to what direction his path of evolution should take.

this is the point at which one may be able to comprehend the truth of one. for many, it is stunning in its simplicity and its ability to replace all the ologies and osophies in one clear moment of realization. in the law of one, there is only one consciousness, one life, one being. there is no relative divinity, because there is only one. manyness is a self-imposed state of illusion, to counter infinite yet static intelligence with dynamic yet confused experience. as an antidote to fear-based theology, one begins to realize that each part of the creation is the creator itself; the tiniest particle only seemingly separate, therefore literally being the creator. one quickly deduces that everything seemingly exterior to themselves, other people and live things and objects are each as divine or not divine as every other thing, as each is the creator in full.

then comes the big cathartic moment - one realizes that there is in effect only one soul, and every manifestation of life 'out' there is really they themselves, merely having a different experience. that little salamander, warming itself in the sun? that's you, literally, and the creator, literally, merely enjoying another form of experience. literally. no experience is any less or more valid than any other, as every experience is the creator, all experience together is the creator, no experience can be separated from the creator, and no experience is other than the experiencing of the creator. our little sunbathing salamander is not part of the creator, he is the creator.

this is absolutely simple, and when one has allowed the infinite complexities of relative thought to stand aside for a while, and begins to allow the total yet infinite simplicity of one to begin to trickle through their being, one begins to realize that they can no longer live in the same way as before; as they now see themselves in every other face, see the creator in every other face, see no intrinsic evil in the world; but rather, man's ongoing process of realizing the law of one, individually and collectively. mark