The Resonant Remnant

It is easy to get discouraged when seeking to impart a new idea or insight. The established order is resistant to any change; its intellectual class has a vested interest in defending the ‘received wisdom’ that supports and sustains the social, political and cultural order of the day; and the mass of the people are generally indifferent and uninvolved in such things. So why keep going?

The main reason to persist in your work is that you are called to do it. The main wellspring of motivation has to come from within. Nothing else will be able to sustain work on an idea that is new and at variance with the ‘received wisdom’ of the given established order of things. Those who follow their true desire, their ‘heart’s desire’, their ‘ruling passion’ are the happiest of men, for they are the most true to themselves.

The other reason to persist is that your work has value and meaning to others – not to the establishment intellectuals and academics elaborating and defending the status quo, but to a small group of individuals who need to hear what you have to say for their own development and evolution of self.

You don’t know who these individuals are nor where they are, and you will seldom meet with any of them in your lifetime of work. And yet they are there and they will find you and your work through no effort of your own.

Scripture refers to these as the ‘remnant’, that small group of individuals who are meant to hear what you have to say. All you can do is speak into the wind, as it were, that is to the general public, knowing full well that the message falls on deaf and indifferent ears for the most part, yet trusting that somewhere at some time someone is listening with whom the idea resonates and stirs something deep within, often unbeknowst and of great surprise to themselves. And a seed is planted that will bear fruit later on, in ways unknown and unpredictable, yet of some importance. The harvest may be seen in your lifetime, though most of the fruit will not bear and be ripe until long after.

One such writer, a voice ‘crying in the wilderness’ in his day, was Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), a libertarian in an age of nationalism and concentration of state power. He wrote an essay, ‘Isaiah’s Job’, about the seemingly thankless task of sharing a message with an indifferent, if not hostile, audience. Isaiah was a man called by God to deliver a message that God’s own people did not want to hear, not then, and almost as certainly since: if they didn’t change their way, disasters would ensue. God told Isaiah to deliver this message without sugar-coating or adjusting it in any way to take into account sensitivities of those in power or the prevailing beliefs of the masses. God also told Isaiah, ‘by the way, the people will ignore your message’. Isaiah asked rather logically, ‘Then what is the point of delivering the message?’ No doubt he was aware of the tendency of people to attack the bringer of bad news. God replied that there were still some individuals, a remnant, who were meant to hear the message and thereby be inspired and motivated to activate their divine mission and advance man’s dominion and the evolution of mind and consciousness. Empires, states, belief systems and social orders will rise and fall, prosper and decline, come and go, yet will the evolution of mind and consciousness persist.

Mass-produced products, products for the mass of people require advertising and all the subtle psychological tools developed by Madison Avenue (the ‘Mad Men’) to reach the people who want what you have or if not, to convince them they need what you have to offer. You have to give the people what they want to prosper in this world. However, we are told that ‘my kingdom is not of this world’. The Idea that is linked to one’s calling, that for which we have been ‘called forth’ into this lifetime, cannot really be advertised, neither can it be shifted, shaped and shoe-horned to fit the subjective and ephemeral tastes of the masses. It cannot be sold, it can only be presented to a generally indifferent public in the knowledge that therein resides a ‘remnant’, though invisible, able and willing to receive the Idea, though we know not how nor when.

Today, the internet provides for a virtual marketplace of Ideas, where each can present their ideas and works, not with the intent of selling a ‘product’, but of sending out a signal that will be picked up and received by those on that wave-length. The measure of success is not in the immediate or even distant future in terms of numbers, status or material return, but rather in the inner joy and fulfillment that comes from working one’s calling. The remnant are those that ‘hear’ a particular word or idea and to the extent an idea falls on fallow ground, it will germinate, grow and bear fruit for a later harvest.

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The Organizing Idea or Paradigm

by Rodger Douglas

This blog entry is by a guest writer.  It addresses, in a creative and novel way that also makes for easy reading, the basic argument that Thomas Kuhn is making in his landmark work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, about how scientific knowledge occurs and how his view differs from those that had been put forward in the Enlightenment and even today, with its linear view of scientific progress, or its more sceptical one, as set out by Immanuel Kant over two centuries ago, and more recently by Karl Popper. Some fore-knowledge of the epistemological context will undoubtedly enhance the experience, but is not altogether a necessity. Enjoy. -The Editor

Imagine you are a writer for Eyewitness Travel Guides and you arrive on an undiscovered island. Over a period of a few months you explore the island and then write a review. After reading about your recently discovered island, writers from Fodor’s, Rough Guides and Lonely Planet go to the island and write their own reviews. Their guidebooks sell much better than yours so you decide to ask a well-know philosopher to write a foreword to your book. Hopefully, this will boost sales.

You approach Descartes, Kant and Comte and they tell you that travel guide writing is a process of development and that each consecutive writer builds on the knowledge of the previous writer. Since your book was the first one written it is thus the least accurate, least comprehensive and probably contains a lot of myth and superstition. Later travel writers have built on your initial work and incorporated new facts about the island into their books. These three great philosophers of the European Enlightenment turn down your request for a foreword. They decide to endorse Lonely Planet since it was the last book written and thus most accurate.

A little disappointed but undeterred you approach the Karl Popper. This 20th century philosopher however, agrees with his predecessors from the Enlightenment and tells you that progress in guidebook writing is a smooth and accumulative process where new knowledge is built up from old knowledge.

You feel a little hurt when Popper turns down your request for a foreword and says he too will be endorsingLonely Planet. He does nevertheless leave you with some valuable advice about writing guidebooks. While browsing through your book Popper noticed that you only included information about the island’s best hotels, restaurants and sites. You have rated some of the establishments on your island with 5 stars but there is no objective way to determine whether they deserve five stars or not. Your concept of a good hotel or restaurant is conjectural and based on who you are culturally and historically. The best you can do is discard all the really awful hotels, restaurants and sites and what you are left with might deserve five stars, but you will never be certain that they do. False claims can be discarded, leaving us with theories that, while not necessarily true, are at least not demonstrably false. “Science advances through disproof.” You thank him for his advice and leave without your valued foreword.

The following day you approach Thomas Kuhn and he tells you that once an island is discovered and a travel guide is written long periods of “normal writing” follow. During this period some highly conservative research and editing is done so that writers can refine and consolidate a specific body of knowledge or paradigm about the island. But eventually things change; tourists invade your once pristine island, an airport is built, hotels are constructed and the indigenous people begin to loose their culture. Your edition ofEyewitness is out of date and your paradigm can no longer function. It has to be replaced by a mutually exclusive paradigm.

Paradigms do not build on each other; the new paradigm annihilates the older one and renders useless all of the knowledge gained through research conducted according to the earlier assumptions. Kuhn tells you your book is part of an old paradigm and suggests you go back to the island and begin your research anew. If you can write a paradigm breaker he will consider writing a foreword. You feel a little agitated when he mentions that he will support Lonely Planet. #@% Lonely Planet!

You board a ship to the island. One evening, while on deck watching a beautiful sunset, you notice four teenagers texting each other and listening to music on their smart phones. You think to yourself about what Kuhn told you and realize that the development of knowledge is much like the development of computers. In 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed a loom in which the pattern being woven was controlled by punched cards. In 1936 Konrad Zuse developed and built the first freely programmable computer called the Z1. In 1946 Eckert and Mauchly built the ENIAC 1 Computer using 1500 vacuum tubes. In 1955 transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computers. In 1958 the integrated circuit (chip) was developed and in 1971 the floppy disk was first used. Computer technology has progressed, but not in a cumulative manner. Each operating system annihilates the older one and renders it useless. Chips made transistors useless, transistors made vacuum tubes useless and vacuum tubes made punch cards useless. The teenagers on deck are playing Angry Birds on their smart phones, none of which are equipped with punch cards or vacuum tubes.

The sun has set and you can faintly hear the sounds of the latest songs coming from the teenagers’ headphones. You realize that music progresses much like science: New styles of music borrow from older styles but they differ fundamentally from each other: Folk, Blues and gospel, Jazz, County, Rock, Metal, Punk, Pop, Hip Hop, Rap and so on.

You realize that with The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Kuhn too was a revolutionary. Just as Einstein was not building on Newton, but proposing a completely incommensurate explanation for the same phenomena; and just as Hahnemann was not building on allopathy but completely superseding it; so too, Thomas Kuhn was not the logical extension of the classical philosophers, his paradigm does not seek to supplement their work, but to overturn it with a new explanation that makes their views obsolete.

You disembark from the ship and say goodbye to the teenagers you met on board. You find that the island’s white beaches and tropical backdrop have become popular with the tourists. Hotels have sprung up all over the place. The coastline is well mapped out but the interior is a mystery; it’s a large, flat, featureless semi-desert. Occasionally a few experienced native travelers head out into the interior to collect medical herbs, but it’s a dangerous trip and some of them don’t return. You have a map showing the outlines of the coast in detail but the interior is a blank. Against the advice of the locals you set out on a mission to create a new paradigm. After less than a day’s travel you discover that you are hopelessly lost. No problem! You set up tent, make a campfire and sit down to think. You know that something that Descartes, Kant, Comte, Popper or Kuhn have told you will be the clue to finding your way out of the desert.

You sit down to relax and think. The sky is cloudless and a beautiful deep blue colour. You are surrounded by dry shrub land and in the distance all around you are some large dunes. An hour later a man wonders into your camp. He is well dressed and has a confident look about him. He introduces himself as Sir Dr. Prof. Jones. This man knows his stuff. You sense that you won’t be lost for long. You explain your situation and he immediately has a solution. He pulls out a complicated looking gizmo, scans the horizon and then takes your map and draws in some features. He gives them some fancy Latin and Greek names and tells you which direction to go. Fascinated, you ask him which principles he used to determine the way out. He tells you none so you ask him how long he has been in the desert. He says that he has been here since the time of Galen, maybe even longer, but due to his latest gizmo he is on the verge of finding his way out. He then writes out an expensive bill for his services and leaves.

As night falls you notice a group of travelers on camels. You rush after them sure that they know the way out. You are relieved when they pull out a large map of the island. You are delighted to see that the interior of the island is mapped out in detail. You are a little surprised when you see a copy of Descartes’s Principia Philosophiae, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Comte’s A General View of Positivism stacked into the camel’s side pack. You are a little perturbed when you see the latest copy of Lonely Planet but you know that these men with their many years of accumulated experience will point you in the right direction. You should be out of the desert by sunrise. They tell you that they too are lost. The map was indeed a great work put together by many mapmakers over several decades. It was a reliable guide for many years but then a great earthquake occurred and the island’s interior was irreversibly changed. They head on their way and you return to your camp.

While gazing at the flames of your campfire you think of Popper. How can his wisdom help you navigate your way around this desert? If you cannot determine your location you will end up walking in circles bit if you can find three sets of coordinates you can determine your exact position. Your mind drifts and you start thinking about the Fundamental Constants. These constants are essential for scientists to measure reality. They are the landmarks that scientists use to determine where they are on the map. For example, the speed of light in a vacuum, commonly denoted c, is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second. According to special relativity, c is the maximum speed at which all energy, matter, and information in the universe can travel. Such particles and waves travel at c regardless of the motion of the source or the inertial frame of reference of the observer. In the theory of relativity, c interrelates space and time.

There are many constants listed in handbooks of physics and chemistry, such as melting points and boiling points of thousands of chemicals, going on for hundreds of pages. However, some constants are more fundamental than others: Velocity of light c, Elementary charge e, Mass of electron m_e, Mass of proton m_p, Avogadro constant N_A, Planck’s constant h, Universal gravitational constant G and Boltzmann’s constant K.

The fundamental constants prove Popper wrong, don’t they? We can use experiments to discard false claims but we can never know the truth for sure. Don’t these these constants that are fundamental and unchanging refute this claim? Are they the irrefutable landmarks on the map of science? In Science Set FreeRupert Sheldrake states that the eight fundamental constants are not as constant as scientists would let you think.

In 1676 Olaf Römer first measured the speed of light at 200,000 km/s and in 1929 Birge concluded that c was 299,796 km/s. After 1928 the velocity of light appeared to drop by about 20 km/s and in the late 1940s it went up again by 20 km/s. In 1972 the speed of light was DEFINED at 299.792.458 km/s, NOT measured. No effort to measure the speed has been made since then. Moreover, the meter and second are both defined based on the speed of light, so no change in the speed of light can be measured anymore!

The value of the universal gravitational constant (G) has also been shown to change. For example, in one set of measurements in the Hilton mine in Queensland the value of G was found to be 6.734, as opposed to the currently accepted value of 6.672. The biggest change in Planck’s constant (h) occurred between 1929 and 1941, when it went up by more than 1 percent.

These variations are not simply a matter of experimental error since different investigators using different methods have all measured the same variations.

The implications of fluctuating fundamental constants are enormous. It means that there are fluctuations at the very heart of physical reality. And if different fundamental constants vary at different rates, these changes create differing qualities of time, not unlike those envisaged by astrology, but with a more radical basis. Maybe Popper was right after all. You realize that reality is not as solid as you once believed but shifts like the sand dunes in the desert around you. You drift off to sleep somehow knowing that you are lost but that you are safe in all of this fluctuation.

You wake up to a beautiful sunrise and now at least you know where east is. As your breakfast of bacon and eggs and coffee is cooking on the fire your thoughts turn to Thomas Kuhn. After reading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions you get the idea that paradigm shift in science is a very gentlemanly thing. It’s like a game of cricket where one group of polite and chivalrous scientists representing one paradigm competes with another group of civil and gallant scientists representing a different paradigm. They follow the strict rules of the game of cricket until one team wins, and after the game get together for tea and scones to politely discuss the next match. My impression is that paradigm shift is more like mob warfare. Once you step out of the prevailing paradigm the mob comes at you with everything they have. It’s like the latest Robert De Niro movie, The Family where ex-mafia boss Fred Manzoni (Robert De Niro) and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the witness protection program after snitching on the mob. The mafia then does everything to find him and stop him.

The school I teach at is located in allopathic heartland and the majority of my students are medical researchers. When I ask them what they’d like to want to achieve, many answer that they want to win the Nobel Prize for finding a cure for cancer. I wonder about the improbability of this ever happening. Since its inception in 1901 not a single person has ever been awarded a prize for the allopathic cure of any disease. This is not because there is no one deserving of the prize. Dr. Wilhelm Reich, Dr. Royal Raymond Rife, Dr. Ryke Geerd Hammer, Dr. Tullio Simoncini and Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, to name a few, have done amazing work.

In the unlikely event that one of my students were to step outside the allopathic paradigm and actually find a cure then I would tell them, “Don’t expect the Nobel Prize. Don’t even think you will get fair debate and rational discussion from people who disagree with your results. Expect far worse than a dismissive Wikipedia article. Your work to be attacked and ridiculed, your books to be burned and your name and work to be smeared! You might be imprisoned or even killed.

What The Structure of Scientific Revolutions tells me personally is that there is no absolute objective reality. People, as a collective, create the reality around them. Scientific, philosophical and artistic geniuses are not simply inventing new technologies or creating new art, they are creating a new consciousness and awareness of the world. Most artists have the skill to paint a picture as good as a Picasso or a Pollock but it’s not art in the true sense of the word if a similar painting has been painted before. Anyone can prove a remedy but it’s not the same as when Hahnemann proved China. He was not only creating a new science but a new consciousness.

You decide to pack up and head east. As you are leaving camp you see a woman gathering herbs so you approach her and ask her what she’s doing. She tells you that potent medical herbs grow in the interior and she has come to collect them. You ask her if she’s lost, she looks at you a little surprised and says that of course she isn’t. You ask her what she does and she tells you that she is a Heilkunstler. Never having heard the term you ask her what it means and she explains. Realizing that this woman actually knows her way around the desert you ask her to lead you out but she tells you that you have to find your own way out of the desert. That’s the lore. She gives you some encouragement and then leaves. After walking a hundred meters she turns around and calls out to you that the answer you seek is not in the sand but in the sky. She turns around and within a few minutes has disappeared behind a dune. What an interesting woman. At least she didn’t have a copy of Lonely Planet.

You look up at the sky and notice it is a magnificent blue. You remember from high school that the wavelength of blue light is about 475 nm. Because the blue wavelengths are shorter in the visible spectrum, they are scattered more efficiently by the molecules in the atmosphere. This causes the sky to appear blue. You think of Isaac Newton and how he set out to try to quantify color. He found that different colors had different angles of refraction. This allowed him to manipulate colour precisely to technical ends, but tells us nothing about the quality of colour. Dry abstractions are useless in the desert. They have no meaning here.

As you gaze at the sky Newton fades from your mind. You notice that directly above you the sky is a brilliant blue, but that it becomes lighter closer towards the horizon. The sun overhead is yellow, and you remember that this morning, when it was on the horizon, it was redder. You remember the sunset from the evening before; the sky was a magnificent red but on the opposite horizon the sky was magenta and pink.

According to Goethe the light of the sun is for the most part colourless. This light, when seen through a semi-transparent medium, appears to us yellow. If the density of the medium is increased the light will assume a redder hue. If on the other hand darkness is seen through a semi-transparent medium a blue colour appears: this becomes lighter as the density of the medium is increased, but on the contrary appears darker and deeper the more transparent the medium becomes. Goethe discerned that black, violet and blue belonged together as did white, yellow, orange and red. Goethe explained that the sky is blue because nature produces blue when dark (universe) is lightened by light (sun). Similarly, Goethe saw that yellow and red are the result of the darkening of light. The darker the light becomes, the redder it becomes. So, when the sun is overhead, it is yellow (some darkening of the light); when it sets, the thicker atmosphere darkens the light even more and it produces red. In effect, Goethe had discovered a dynamical or functional relationship between dark and light, which produced color.

Goethe understood that the blue colour of the sky is produced by the boundary of the light of the sun (colorless light) against the dark of the universe, and the degree of darkness or lightness determined by the thickness of the atmosphere.

You find that instead of passively observing the sky from a mechanistic mode of consciousness you are now actively seeing, or participation in the experiment. You have shifted away from Geist-Sinn or intellectual mind into your Gemüt or intuitive mind and begin to see the endless variation of nature. Instead of abstraction, you contemplate the desert around you through the imagination. Suddenly, the blue of the sky and the yellow of the sun are not merely analytical but holistic.

You see sand blowing from the tops of the dunes and you notice the wind direction for the first time. You notice some antelope grazing uneasily in the distance. Downwind from them you don’t see, but you sense a predator stalking them. The antelope are uneasy. Suddenly, you become aware of tracks all around you. At first, you see the hint of a track – the earth shifted a little here, a broken twig there. As you move further away from the analytical and deeper into holistic everything begins to connect. Although you hadn’t been aware of the antelope and the hidden predator you realize that they are acutely aware of you and that they are purposely downwind from you. You remember what the Heilkunstler told you about pathic and tonic disease, about medicine, regime and therapeutic education, and you begin to see how they all fit together. You notice your own spoor for the first time; you came from the west and need to head back in that direction to get to the coast. You laugh to yourself because you realize the coast is just over the next sand dune. You notice Sir Dr. Prof. Jones’s spoor too. He has been walking in the same circle for years and you predict that he should be coming over horizon any moment now. You consider waiting for him and leading him out of the desert but you know he won’t listen to you.

An hour later you are back on the beach. After a refreshing swim you sit down on a beach chair to write the next edition of your guidebook. The Heilkunstler you met in the desert spots and strolls over to congratulate you on finding your way out of the desert. You chat for a while and as the conversation drifts to Thomas Kuhn you ask her what relevance his work has on treating patients. She explains how Hahnemann’s paradigm replaced the allopathic one. You find Kuhn’s ideas interesting in general but you want to know how they apply to the daily treatment of her patients. She tells you that it’s not enough to use the intellectual mind and base your ideas of treatment on abstractions. You need to observe the patient carefully with your intellect and with your imagination.

The Biology of Mind and Consciousness

In the middle of the 19th Century, biology emerged as a discipline in its own right, based on the views of Rudolf Virchow and the idea of the cell as the basis of life. The old humoral approach to life of Hippocrates was finally discarded in favour of a cellular foundation. And this cellular biology, in keeping with the prevailing mechanistic view in natural science more generally, soon came to be confined within the rigid walls of genetics, much as Darwin’s concept of the origin of species was reduced to genetic mutations (Neo-Darwinianism).

Genetics meant that one’s fate was fixed in the genes, that the only hope for change was genetic engineering, which led science to the human genome project, to map all of human genes, and to link each living process and function to a given gene, as medicine had earlier sought to link each disease to a given offending microbe. Just as the bright hope of medicine to reduce all disease to a germ, and to then find a specific drug to kill the germ, has foundered on the rocks of chronic disease and disorder, so has the bright promise of genetics to reduce life to genes, with a drug to control each gene, been dimmed by the advances of quantum physics and by new findings of cellular biology itself.

The new genetics is more about the field than the particle. As Einstein stated, the field determines the particle, and as quantum physics has amply proven, the particle is not the foundation of reality, but an outer (natura naturata) expression of it, and then uncertain and discontinuous at best. This insight into the nature of reality has also affected the new research in biology. Far from being the determinants of life, health and behaviour, genes are but the repositories of the blueprints for replicating protein, the very building ‘stuff’ of cells, tissues and organs. Far from being self-regulating, which the ‘primacy of genes/DNA’ position requires, genes are essentially passive, and controlled by various signals from their environment, signals both physical and energetic in nature.

As Bruce Lipton has shown in his account of the ‘New Cellular Biology’, Biology of Belief:

This new biology takes us from the belief that we are victims of our genes, that we are biochemical machines, that life is out of our control, into another reality, a reality where our thoughts, beliefs and mind control our genes, our behavior and the life we experience.

As H.F. Nijhout explained in an important article in 1990 (Metaphors and the Rile of Genes in Development, BioEssays, 12:441):

When a gene product is needed, a signal from its environment, not a self-emergent property of the gene itself, activates expression of that gene.

Indeed, the cell has the capacity to alter genes in response to environmental signals.

In 1988, geneticist John Cairns published what has since become a revolutionary paper entitled On the Origin Of Mutants (Nature 335:142, 1988) detailing experiments where a defective gene was repaired in order to survive.

Signals may be of a physical, chemical, or energetic nature, including thoughts and perceptions. In fact, energy signals are more powerful than chemical signals according to Lipton. Negative signals can be shocks and traumas, toxins, pathogens, inherited patterns (chronic miasms), beliefs, delusions, etc.

These signals affect the membranes of each cell, which is receptive to them, such that our psychological sense of self, mind and consciousness, are a function of the stimuli (signals) we receive or allow in. As Bruce Lipton states:

The identity keys on the cell membrane respond to environmental information. The biggest ‘Aha!’ was this: that our identity is actually an environmental signal that is playing through the keyboard on the surface of our cells and engaging our genetic programs; you are not inside your cell, you are playing through your cell using the keyboard as an interface. You are an identity derived from the environment.

What this means is that our very perceptions dictate or biology and our health, and that the capacity to perceive the world correctly is essential to our health.

We are very much involved with shaping the world we are in. While mass events shape mass reality, we also participate in shaping our local reality and experiences through our own thoughts [New Thought]. This becomes important because if thoughts are giving rise to the material world, which according to physics they would be doing, then we have to start thinking about what kind of thoughts we are generating. Physicists have now come to owning that we all collectively create the world we live in through our observations: the world that we observe is the world that we create.

The source of our perceptions are from the unconscious (instinctual) mind, the sub-conscious (habitual, customary) mind, and the conscious mind. Each of these is subject to error, and both the unconscious and sub-conscious minds are far more powerful than the conscious mind.

But here comes a problem: the conscious mind can process about forty bits of data per second but the subconscious mind can process forty million bits of data in the same second. The relevance is simple. The subconscious mind is one million times more powerful as an information processor than the conscious mind. We all believe that we run our lives with a conscious mind. This is what I want from life. I want to do all these wonderful things. Yet our life doesn’t match our intentions; as a result there is a tendency to say, “I can’t get the things that I want, the world is not providing them to me.” We take on the role of victim. New insights have completely revolutionized this idea. We now recognize that ninety-five to ninety-nine percent of our cognitive activity comes from the subconscious mind; less than five percent is influenced or controlled by the conscious mind.

What is needed is the emergence of the ‘superconscious (lambda-gamma) mind’ (Noosphere, Christ consciousness) to master the subconscious (theta-delta) mind via the conscious (beta-alpha) mind. This is the essence and heart of the therapeutic educational aspects of true healthcare (Heilkunst).

Epistemological Foundations: From Experience to Reality

Rudolf Steiner is mostly known for his work in education (Waldorf Schools) and biodynamic agriculture in particular, and in general for his writings about the cosmos order beyond the material world. In short, Steiner is more known as an eccentric or a mystic than as an epistemologist, and yet, that is what his first work was about (Truth and Science), and that is what his final work (The Course of My Life) emphasized as the crux of his life’s mission, namely, the rectification of man’s cognitive capacity so as to be able to use it to go beyond the outer appearances, or subjective experience, into a science of nature, man and spirit.

Truth and Science is based on his PhD dissertation. In this small, yet profound, and tightly reasoned work, Steiner set out to challenge the Kantian orthodoxy, which essentially stated that man’s cognitive capacity could not really know the objective nature of a thing or object (Das-ding-an-Sich, or Thing-in-Itself), only a representation created by the mind.

As Steiner summarized:

According to this view, our whole world-picture is composed of subjective sensations arranged by our own mental-activity. Hartmann says: “Thus all that the subject perceives are modifications of its own mental-condition and nothing else.”

This condemned man to a world of his own making, forever cut-off from truth and reality. While Kant had originally sought to preserve a legitimacy to scientific inquiry and reasoning against the gathering forces of relativism (Hooke, Hume and Berkeley), he had done so only at the cost of giving up all claim to scientific truth beyond a consensus of representation about reality or an empirical efficacy.

Steiner’s analysis revealed that Kant’s influential conclusion about knowledge and reality was based on two presuppositions, both hidden, and imported without any scrutiny from his predecessors. Any world-view, to be taken seriously, must perforce be epistemologically sound, that is, not be based on presuppositions.

The two presuppositions were:

One presupposition is that we need other means of achieving cognition besides experience, and the second is that all cognition had through experience is only approximately valid.

Steiner’s initial point is that for something to be independent of experience is impossible. Experience is the sine qua non of the human condition. Both the nature of experience and the nature of human knowledge must be closely examined. While man clearly experiences, he cannot experience without some thought process acting upon the experience. There is no such thing as “pure” experience, that is, without a form of judgement (conscious or not) taking place so as to provide meaning regarding the experience. Thus, it is not the experience itself that is the source of error, but rather the thinking about the experience.

Error, in relation to cognitive knowledge, i.e. epistemically, can occur only within the act of cognition. Sense deceptions are not errors. That the moon upon rising appears larger than it does at its zenith is not an error but a fact governed by the laws of nature. A mistake in cognitive knowledge would occur only if, in using mentation to associate the given perceptions, we misinterpreted “larger” and “smaller.” But this interpretation is part of the act of cognition.

So we must somehow address experience without any judgment or pre-conception. That we experience the world is a given, without saying anything about the nature of that world. That we also think about the world we experience is another given. The one experience gives us separation – self-object, and the other experience gives us a unity – self experiencing self, or a passive versus an active experience. Both are part of Being, or the “given,” that is, they just are, and are, without further comment, the starting point for all inquiry. That I am me and not you is the conclusion of the one, but that I even am is the conclusion of the other.

Our sense-experience is one of separation, of a split in the world, of being on the outside looking in. This experience is a fact. It is also a fact of our thinking (mentation), as thinking makes us aware of separation. Thus, the split in world-content, of Being, is a fact of our experience, but we cannot necessarily conclude that it is a fact about the nature of the world-content, as did Kant. Our thought-experience tells us that there is a unity to the world-content.

 So, while the one experience persuades us that the world is split, the other holds that this is only a result of our experiencing of the world content (‘given’), and that this separation can be overcome through our cognitive capacity.

But there is something even more profound that impresses itself from Steiner’s epistemological inquiry: the world-content can itself not be all that there is, that is self-contained. If it were, we would automatically know all in experiencing it, and there would be no epistemological issue. Also, reality is not a fabrication of our cognition, for since this is internally experienced, we would then know all that there is to know. Kant’s work implies that the objective reality of the world is self-contained, but we cannot know it, ever, and that reality as a consequence is that which our mind says it is, leading to a science of abstractions divorced from any true observation of nature (modern material science) and a relativism as to the products of the mind doing the perceiving.

Instead, Steiner makes the profound point that reality is the product of the one experience of the outer world being brought to and worked on by the other experience of our cognitive activity.

This view is the only one possible: first, if the world-content is self-contained we would know all there is to know in meeting the given; second, if not, and we produce all the content from mentation alone, then there is no need to know, as “what we ourselves produce we have no need to know.” The only view possible is that the given presents part as sense experience and part through the act of mentation. Reality is the bringing together of these two aspects of the world-content.

The world-content can be called reality only in the form it attains when the two aspects of it described above have been united through cognitive knowledge.

In fact, the first picture of the world as presented by pure experience, the sense-object, is actually subjective, as it is not the whole. It is only when the living content of our mind confronts this given that the true picture, the real, which is that of meaning and relationships, emerges.

And the meaning of this cognitive knowledge is that the world of the real emerges out of the world content, out of Being. Being needs the process of cognition, which exists in man, to manifest itself to itself. Thus, man is a co-creator and God is within us (I AM THE I AM).

What does the possession of cognitive knowledge mean for us? This was the question to which we sought the answer. Our discussion has shown that the innermost core of the world comes to expression in our knowledge. The harmony of laws ruling throughout the universe shines forth in human cognition. It is part of man’s task to bring into the sphere of apparent reality the fundamental laws of the universe which, although they rule all existence, would never come to existence as such. The very nature of knowledge is that the world-foundation, which is not to be found as such in objective reality, is present in it. Our knowledge, graphically expressed, is a gradual, living penetration into the world’s foundation. A conviction such as this must also necessarily throw light upon our comprehension of practical life.

To the extent that we succeed in penetrating to the inner essence of our actions, and we become aware of their cause in inner ethical concepts and ideals, we both come into harmony with ourselves and become conscious of our true (objective) desires, and thus, free.

Ignorance is compulsion and knowledge to guide our voluntary will (volition) is freedom. Freedom is not freedom to do what we want outside of law, but freedom to carry out our inner spiritual purpose in life.

If the I has really penetrated its deed with full insight, in conformity with its nature, then it also feels itself to be master. As long as this is not the case, the laws ruling the deed confront us as something foreign, they rule us; what we do is done under the compulsion they exert over us. If they are transformed from being a foreign entity into a deed completely originating within our own I, then the compulsion ceases. That which compelled us, has become our own being. The laws no longer rule over us; in us they rule over the deed issuing from our I. To carry out a deed under the influence of a law external to the person who brings the deed to realization, is a deed done in servitude. To carry out a deed ruled by a law that lies within the one who brings it about, is a deed done in freedom. To recognize the laws of one’s deeds, means to become aware of one’s own freedom. Thus the process of cognition is the process of development toward freedom.

To become cognizant of the impulse behind the deed is to become free and to become free is to then take responsibility for one’s actions, which means man becomes an ethical creature.

Jesus and Tolerance

The prevailing view we are given is of a Messiah/Christ that is all about love and tolerance, forbearance of the wrongs of others, etc. Jesus Christ is presented as a pacifist, and one who is above anger and violence. This view does not accord with the scriptures themselves. It is true that Jesus Christ was not interested in worldly power, and that His anger is not subjective, but an objective one (righteousness), directed at the archons and principalities of the cosmos who seek to block man’s evolution of consciousness back towards God. Jesus is also presented as bringing salvation to the world at large. Again, this does not accord with scripture.

The following quotes are prayed into evidence:

Luke 19:27 But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

John 2:15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;

John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Matt. 23:31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.

Matt. 23:32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.

Matt. 23:33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

Matt. 15:24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Matt. 25:30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matt. 25:31 ¶ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

Matt. 25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

Matt. 25:33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Matt. 25:34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

John 10:14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.

John 10:15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.

John 10:16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

Matt. 25:14 ¶ For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.
Matt. 25:15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.
Matt. 25:16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.
Matt. 25:17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.
Matt. 25:18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.
Matt. 25:19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.
Matt. 25:20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.
Matt. 25:21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
Matt. 25:22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.
Matt. 25:23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
Matt. 25:24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
Matt. 25:26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:
Matt. 25:27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.
Matt. 25:28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.
Matt. 25:29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
Matt. 25:30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Rev. 2:6 But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Rev. 2:15 So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.

John 8:37 I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.

Matt. 11:21 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

Matt. 18:7 ¶ Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!

Matt. 23:13 ¶ But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Matt. 23:14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Matt. 23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
Matt. 23:16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!

Matt. 23:23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

Matt. 23:25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

Matt. 23:27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

Matt. 23:29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,

Matt. 24:19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

Matt. 26:24 The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.

Luke 6:24 But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.
Luke 6:25 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.
Luke 6:26 Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.

Luke 10:13 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

Luke 11:42 But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Luke 11:43 Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets.
Luke 11:44 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.
Luke 11:46 And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.
Luke 11:47 Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.
Luke 11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.

Luke 17:1 ¶ Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!

Luke 21:23 But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.

Luke 22:22 And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed!

Jude 11 Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.

The Betrayal of Judas

The Betrayal of Judas

Who does not know the story of Judas and his venal betrayal of Jesus for 30 pieces of silver? On this story rests the ever-smouldering resentments of “anti-semitism”, as well as a deep, barely conscious suspicion of those closest to us, who might at any time deliver us to evil for base and selfish reasons. The epithet, ” a Judas,” has entered the secular lexicon as one of the greatest attacks on a person’s character.

And yet, as well-known and entrenched in the Western mind as is this story of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, it is apocryphal, both in its secular and religious meaning. The OED defines apocryphal as both “Of doubtful authenticity; spurious, fictitious, false; fabulous, mythical” and  “Of or belonging to the Jewish and early Christian uncanonical literature.”

The story  we think we know so well is false on the very face of it. We also know that the Christos comes to earth incarnated in the man Jesus of Nazareth of the lineage of David, with the precise mission to be crucified and through this final and ultimate sacrifice to redeem man. Had this not happened, there would be no redemption. Jesus Christ set about to arrange the crucifixion and even foretold of it, and yet somehow the misconception persists that this was a tragedy and that the Jews were to blame for its occurrence, that Judas, the one who undertakes, at Christ’s bidding, to deliver him to the authorities, becomes the scapegoat, and Peter, who resisted what Christ had planned and executed, becomes the foundation of the institutional church founded on the very fact of the “betrayal.”

Why is the rational story at variance with the story we emotionally hold to despite what is in scripture?

The scriptural passages abound with the true story of the crucifixion, which should be the basis for celebration, being but the completion of the spiritual mission of the Christ, yet which is treated as a tragic event, for which someone must be made to bear the cost.

Let us examine first what scripture, the revealed word of God, tells us.

The story starts with the second “Genesis,” pre-dating even the first Genesis.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:2 The same was in the beginning with God.

John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

John 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

John 1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Thus, the Gospel of John sets the stage for what is to happen: the Christ, the Word, the Logos, the Life and the Light, seeks to enter the world of darkness, that is, the earthly domain. However, this domain, under the suzerainty of Satan, the Prince of Darkness, granted such by God Himself, refuses to receive the arrival of the Christ, the “light of men.” The KJV states “and the darkness comprehended it not.” The Greek term translated as “comprehended” is katalamba¿nw katalambano, which has the meaning of “taking” or “receiving.”

Strong’s Concordance has the following:

from 2596 and 2983; to take eagerly, i.e. seize, possess, etc. (literally or figuratively)

2983. lambano, lam-ban´-o; a prolonged form of a primary verb, which is use only as an alternate in certain tenses; to take (in very many applications, literally and figuratively (properly objective or active, to get hold of; whereas 1209 is rather subjective or passive, to have offered to one; while 138 is more violent, to seize or remove)): — accept, + be amazed, assay, attain, bring, x when I call, catch, come on (x unto), + forget, have, hold, obtain, receive (x after), take (away, up).

Thus, in the beginning, the plan was to devise a way for the Light to be received by the darkness. It had to be done in a deceptive manner, that is, one that would take advantage of the very nature and character of Satan against him.*

*When he was accused of using Satan to cast out demons, Jesus Christ answered that that was indeed what was needed to defeat the Prince of Darkness, as a house divided cannot stand, that is, in using the very powers and laws by which Satan rules against him, Satan not having the power of free choice, as does man.

Matt. 12:24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.
Matt. 12:25 And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:
Matt. 12:26 And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?

In various passages of the Gospel, Christ also makes clear that the crucifixion was pre-ordained by God for a purpose.

John 15:25 But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause. [gratuitously = as a gift]
John 15:26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
John 16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. John 16:8 And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
John 13:1 I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me. John 10:17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.
John 10:18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.
Matt. 16:21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.
Luke 24:6 He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,
Luke 24:7 Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.
Luke 24:8 And they remembered his words,
Mark 8:31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
Mark 8:32 And he spake that saying openly.
Matt. 17:22 And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men:
Matt. 17:23 And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again.

But, the Prince of Darkness, Satan, would not readily accept the light, that being against his nature. Thus, the situation is in deadlock.

So, what was the plan? The last passage sets the stage. First, it is a critical fact that the Christ comes from a domain and with a wisdom that is higher and greater than that possessed by Satan. As Paul explains:

1Cor. 2:5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
1Cor. 2:6 Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought:
1Cor. 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:
1Cor. 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Second, Jesus, the Christos, who cannot be directly received/accepted by Satan, will use a body-double, much like a stunt double, to accomplish what could not be accomplished otherwise.

John 13:18 I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.
John 13:20 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
John 13:21 When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray [paradidomai] me. John 13:26 Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
John 13:27 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him [Satan], That thou doest, do quickly.

It is not simply that the authorities, the powers-to-be representative on earth of the darkness (resistance to life), could not catch Jesus without Judas’ actions, but that they were constrained in so doing. As one observer has noted:

Jesus repeatedly, but in vain, tried to have himself arrested. He openly challenged the other rabbis: he attracted enormous crowds; he violated the Sabbath; he raised a scandal in the synagogue; he was socially subversive; and all having been of no avail, he chose to set the Last Supper in the habitual place where he always met his disciples, instead of escaping as he was begged to do.

Are we really supposed to believe that the officers and men did not know that place? That they had not had many better opportunities of arresting Jesus? That they had to be led in the night by Judas? Of course not!
(Carlos Suares, The Cipher of Genesis)

Thus, Satan received/accepted Judas (“entered into him”), not knowing that thereby he was receiving He who had chosen and sent this representative. This spiritual law is reflected in human law in terms of the laws of agency (that done in a person’s name by a designated agent is as binding legally as if done by the person himself; it is also the basis for representative democracy).

There remains the issue of the nature and character of Judas. If the above is granted, it would still seem that he was a bad person, betraying his master. First, on the matter of his character, it must have been exceptional, that is not of the other disciples, as he was specifically chosen to carry out this very critical, delicate and momentous mission, acting as the chosen representative or agent of Jesus Christ. That the other disciples were not up to the task, and of lesser character is underlined by the public protestations of Peter, speaking for the other disciples (all, as the gospels recount, sorrowful at hearing the news of the impending death of their master).

Matt. 16:21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.
Matt. 16:22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
Matt. 16:23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
Mark 8:31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
Mark 8:32 And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. Mark 8:33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

 

These passages echo the statement made to Satan when he tempted Jesus Christ in the desert, as Peter’s protestation was like a temptation to Jesus, whose human self was troubled and hesitant in the face of his divine task.

Luke 4:6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
Luke 4:7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
Luke 4:8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
John 12:27 Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.
John 13:21 When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.

Another aspect we must take into account in assessing the character and nature of Judas is in the name. Names in ancient times, and particularly in scripture, have a deeper soul-spiritual significance, revealing much about the person.

The Hebrew names of Jesus (YHSHHW) and Judas (YHWDH) both derive from the unspoken name for God, the tetragrammatom, YHWH, or life in the process of becoming and unfolding itself, the I AM that I AM name (YHWH) God identified Himself as to Moses on Mount Sinai. The difference is that YHSHWH (Jesus) has a Sheen (ש) inserted before the Waw indicating an action of being, and Yhwdh (Judas or Yehouda)having a Dallet (ס) after, a resistance to the flow of life, and in particular to the flow of the action of life brought by the Light, the Christ in the from of Jesus (YHSHWH).

It is in the joining of the polarity of action (Sheen) and resistance (Dallet) that is produced, leading to the action of violence, ruin and the opposite of life, that is, the death of Life brought into darkness, the first part of the great drama of the entry of Life into the realm of the earth, so as to provide not just life-death, but Life triumphant over death, Light over dark, and Life everlasting, from the God of the living.

Mark 12:27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living:
John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

But first the darkness must receive her King, and for Life to enter, it must have a darkness within itself so as to be received. Judas plays this role. He cannot be a traitor, a betrayer. There is first no great protest from the other apostles when Jesus announces that one among them will “betray” him. Why? What does the scripture state? First, it makes a distinction between those who have no trust (pisteo, often erroneously translated as belief), such as Peter, and who resist what must happen out of their own ego needs, and the one who obviously had faith and would “betray” (paradidomi) him. Just as pisteo is erroneously translated as “belief” instead of trust, so is paradidomi falsely translated as “betray” when it’s meaning is more the sense of deliver, Judas then being the one who becomes the deliverer, chosen for this purpose, hand-picked by Jesus Christ himself.

If we examine the term paradidomi in Strong’s Concordance, we find:

3860. paradidomi, par-ad-id´-o-mee; from 3844 and 1325; to surrender, i.e yield up, intrust, transmit: — betray, bring forth, cast, commit, deliver (up), give (over, up), hazard, put in prison, recommend.

1325. didomi, did´-o-mee; a prolonged form of a primary verb (which is used as an alternative in most of the tenses); to give (used in a very wide application, properly, or by implication, literally or figuratively; greatly modified by the connection): — adventure, bestow, bring forth, commit, deliver (up), give, grant, hinder, make, minister, number, offer, have power, put, receive, set, shew, smite (+ with the hand), strike (+ with the palm of the hand), suffer, take, utter, yield.

At this point, when Jesus transfers his action (sheen) to Judas (the negative polarity of Life), his agent, Satan enters into him (Judas) according to his nature and the laws that govern his nature (he can do no other, that is, he has been played by the Christ possessing a wisdom beyond that of the cosmos, the wisdom of  God, a hidden wisdom for the archons or cosmic rulers such as Satan). In effect, Judas and Jesus are one in the act (“believe [trust] that I am he” – Judas).

John 13:18 I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.
John 13:19 Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he.
John 13:20 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
John 13:26 Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
John 13:27 And after the sop Satan entered into him.

Now the game has been activated. At this point Jesus orders Satan, who has taken over Judas (Judas having sacrificed himself as agent for his master and the higher, grander divine plan, alone among the apostles to understand that the crucifixion must happen) to do what must be done quickly, that is, to deliver him into Satan’s world via the earthly powers (the priests), and Satan has no choice, given his nature, but to obey the command. Again, via a deception (Judas as agent for Jesus) and through use of the law of similar resonance, Jesus Christ, operating from a higher wisdom, hidden by God from the cosmic rulers, of whom Satan is one, sets Satan against Satan, and he is powerless to resist. The tarp is set and now needs to be sprung. Jesus/Judas/Satan is the bait and Satan is the rat.

John 13:27 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.

John 13:30 He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.

And then, Jesus speaks not in the negative, but in the positive, to emphasize the greatness of the deed that Judas had undertaken, in his sacrifice of himself. The trap is sprung. The rest is history.

John 13:31 Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
John 13:32 If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him.

Why then, is there blame and recrimination around an event that was planned at the highest levels, the pleroma of God himself, and executed through God, the Son, come down to earth in the flesh to carry out the plan, conceived at the beginning, before the world was, to bring Light and Life into the earthly domain of man, so as to provide for the possibility of redemption out of the servitude to the Prince of Darkness? The clue lies in the reaction of Peter, who represents those forces in us that seeks to resist any change, to choose security, continuity over the radical possibility of Life out of death, despite the assurances of the Christ that this will lead to everlasting life, to the possibility of heaven on earth. The human psyche favours the static over change, the known over the unknown. To fully accept the implications of the crucifixion as a necessary and fundamental event for human life, as the condition for that life to defeat the forces of death, is too much for the ordinary consciousness to bear. In the enduring interplay of life and death, we tend to choose death (security, status quo) over life (change, risk, transformation).

Genesis and Biology

I had the pleasure recently of reading a book by a biologist, Dr. Shiv Chopra, regarding the relationship between the account of creation in Genesis and what biology currently understands about conception and gestation, or embryology. In addition, Dr. Chopra has discovered a connection between Genesis and the unfolding of animal classes over time. It is indeed refreshing to meet a modern scientist who is also prepared to look at things in a true Baconian manner. However, Dr. Chopra notes that when he was studying cultural anthropology (humanities) later in life, and became interested in the interpretation of scripture, he experienced a negative and generally dismissive reaction on the part of his professors at university. He had been able to undertake a study involving ancient Indian texts, the Ramayana and Mahabarata, and discovered that these reflected “a most detailed and intimate knowledge of the reproductive processes and genetics.” However, attempting to study the same issue with respect to Genesis, Dr. Chopra met with responses from his professors which “ranged between polite evasions to hostile refusals.” He discovered what happens when a scientist crosses the line between material natural science and anything to do with the supersensible and/or religion, a great divide within Western thought and development for over 500 years.

I could never understand why such a biased indifference should prevail at academic institutions. Had it been justified with a scientific rationale or on the basis of religious sentiment I could appreciate, but to find that a scholarly investigation of one of the most eminent literary marvels was inhibited bothered me,

On the second issue, Dr. Chopra points out in his book, Four-Five, that these numerals are found in the male-to-total chromosome index, the brain-to-body weight index, as well as the “time periods at which the most primitive chemical molecules to the most intellectually advanced human beings emerged” which “were observed to have followed a historically descending, logarithmic scale, between: 4.5 x 10 [power of 9] to 4.5 x 10 [power of 3].”

… the earth and first life forms at 4.5 billion years; chordate species at 450-million years; mammals at 45-million years; hominid primates at 4.5 million years; anthrpoid man at 450,000 years; intellect ridden man at 45-thousand years; and noetically realized man at 4.5-thousand years.

It is held by modern science that the ratio of 1:45, has “been constant during the entire 4.5 million years of human existence.” Finally, the beginning of human development in terms of modern man, Australopithecine sapiens, took place 450,000 years ago, which happens to be the same figure arrived at by taking the dimensions of the Ark – 30x50x500 cubits.

According to anthropologists, the cultural aspects of human evolution trace back to the following three hereditary stages when:

1. out of the culturally oriented Australopithecine family of the great apes arose a typically human species, called: A. sapiens, at approximately 450,000 years ago;

2. out of the A. sapiens species emerged a culturally mature and artistic people called A. sapiens sapiens, at approximately 45,000 years ago;

3. out of the artistic A. sapiens sapiens arose a highly noetic humanity, called: A. sapiens spaiens sapiens, or “A. noeticus“, at approximately 4,500 years ago.

In essence, Dr. Chopra found through analysis that Genesis 1-5 provides an account of the development of life on earth, and that Genesis 6-9 provides the embryological account, both in accord with the discoveries and understandings of modern material science.Through this process of discovery, he also reached a conclusion regarding the story of the Flood, Noah and the Ark that is breathtaking in its justification of ancient texts on a timeless basis.

Let’s focus on the embryological account. In essence, the story of the coming flood is one of the development of the zygote formed from the union of egg and sperm. In the first six days, this zygote “must grow into a boat shaped, multicellular, embryonic, “ark.”  Further, when Noah was to make the ark with “reeds” and line it with “pitch inside and out” this refers to the massive population of reedy looking cells, which are called “woody epithelial cells” and that “the resultant structure will be lined both ‘inside and out’ with an impervious mucoid material.”

Noah was further ordered to build an ark with three decks, linking to the “actual structural evolution of the initial, unicellular, zygote into a triple-layered, multicellular, body, called: blastocele.” It is the blastocle that is generic to all placental species and man, applying to the six-day initial period of creation of a new life, and which is then implanted in the womb on the sixth day, previously having floated freely. The blastocele is made up of three germ layers: endoderm, ectoderm and a polarized mesoderm in the middle. All subsequent organs and tissues are derived from these three germ layers. On the seventh day of pregnancy, the blastocele sends out a network of blood vessels into the uterus (placenta). This phase for humans, in contrast to other mammals, lasts for another 7 days.

At this point, the story of the flood “waters” that would erase the previous creation and initiate a new phase in man’s evolution is compared to the “massive secretion of human-specific maternal hormones” (waters), which have the effect of “washing away” and causing to perish all “animal-related physical (‘flesh’) traces in the human offspring” allowing a new life to emerge, but one that still carries the influences of the past, now in the form of the recessive genes.

This is found in the command for Noah to include every kind of bird, reptile, animal, with two of each, male (dominant gene) and female (recessive gene).

At this point, Noah is to start to lay up stores and feed the animals in the ark and himself and his family, the human component. This refers to the yolk sac which nourishes the embryo for the first three weeks from conception.

Dr. Chopra further relates how the reference to seven “clean animals” and two “unclean animals” refers in the former, to the pervious seven stages of animal life, which had been fully “genetically cleansed” and the latter to the “yet to be cleaned, constituents of the current male and female gametes, so that a new, genetically fit, human offspring could be founded.”

YHWH then states that He will make it rain in seven days time for 40 days and nights. During this seven days there is the development of an extensive network of blood vessels connected to the mother’s vascular system, for nourishment and the carrying away of waste. The “rain” relates to the forty days of hormonal bursts after the initial and then second set of 7 days, that is after 14 days. There is also a reference to this event commencing in the 600th year, second month and seventeenth day. This is the day when in humans, “the ovarian corpus luteum, hypoathalamus, pituitary gland, and indeed the uterus itself” starts jointly to produced hormones necessary for fetal development. These secretions start to flow between the 15th and 17th day of the second month of the missed menstrual cycle.

… the ‘seventeenth day’ or ‘the second month’ as ‘the very day’ when the next menstruation stopped due to pregnancy and which coincided with the previous month’s shedding and fertilization of the ovum was of a great empirical significance according to Genesis.

As for a scientific signification of the above statement…This indeed was ‘the very day’ on which, if pregnancy occurred, an entirely new play of endocrinology would start to operate in the mother.

There is also a polarity between the hypothalamus-pituitary complex and the corpeus luteum-uterine complex, which Genesis refers to as “the springs of the deep” and “the sluices of heaven.”

By now we have reached day 54 of pregnancy, and when the rains/hormones cease, we have the developmetn of the human embryo with its gonadal development to the point of external sex characteristics.

Virtually complete on this ‘very day’ would be the inception of all the basics of the embryo’s future sexuality, including all the germ cells from which it will produce spermatozoa or ova as an adult human being. Within these germ cells will be contained a complete genetic memory of all the heritable information from all the previous ancestors.

Now the waters, after 40 days of rain, begin to rise and Genesis tells us they rose 15 cubits.

From the reported corporeal proportion which occurred between the one-day old and fifty-four old human embryo modern science informed that it was approximately 1:15.

Then the rising waters washed away “all things of flesh,” in contrast to the emphasis on saving animal life noted prior to the Flood.

… due to a selective gathering and saving aboard the ark of ‘one pair’ of the required genes from ‘every kind of animals”, the human embryo obtained a personal and first hand knowledge of both its human and animal ancestries.

However…there was no evidence in the womb for the actual presence of any kind of animals…Eventually, the ‘only’ information which would be ‘left’ aboard the embryonic ark, after the due process of ‘The Flod’, would be the anamnestic information which it received via the ancestral genes.

And the waters rose for 150 days, appearing to refer to the “total duration which the human embryo required for its sexual differentiation into a fully equipped male or female fetus.” Then Genesis refers to the waters falling “in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of that month” when the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.

The reason why Genesis strung together all of this information was that after seven and a half months the due hormonal requirements of the remainder period of human pregnancy must come to ‘rest’ on those of the placenta. It indicated that … the human placenta differed, in this regard, from that of all the other mammals…

Earlier Dr. Chopra notes that the ‘organ-like function of the placenta was only found in the human.”

Then the waters dried up, which relates to the completion of the pregnancy, the bursting of the waters and then the re-establishment of the menstrual cycle on the 27th day of the following month – “In the second month and on the twenty-seventh day of the month the earth was dry.”

Thus, as Dr. Chopra notes, we have a very precise understanding of human development as recapitulated in each new creation from conception to birth. That the language is written, or at least translated, in the form of images and symbols that are hidden from normal consciousness, makes this ancient knowledge seem somehow mystical, figurative at best, and not at all related to scientific knowledge. It is thanks to Dr. Chopra’s Baconian “forethoughtful inquiry” that we have a better understanding of the hologramatic nature of the rich symbolic language of Biblical Hebrew. The nature of symbols is that they exist in time, but are also timeless, coming from a source beyond man’s earthly knowledge and existence. Thus, the very nature of creation “in the beginning” and that of creation taking place in the present in the conception, gestation and birth of each individual are reciprocal and functionally identical. What was, is, and what is, was. This creation is the ever-present predicate tense of Biblical Hebrew, which is a present that has already taken place in the past, being viewed from the future of the creative imagination of the mind of the Divine Source.