Lucifer vs. Ahriman: Why CHRIST Is the Only True Way | ft. Edmund Knighton | Jesus Way Podcast 030

Steiner's picture is that these three forces that you're talking about, one of them is on the the side of freedom, extreme freedom to the point of even separating from evolution.

The other side is that a kind of materialistic view to say what's really true is just the material world. Those are the two characters. And in the center of that is what would be called the Christ extract. This part in the cosmos that saw a need in our particular evolution a couple thousand years ago to enter in.

Jesus famously said, "Narrow is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it." So he pulled no punches, as you said, that this path is very hard. It's a combination of you need to live free enough that you're honoring free will, but not that you're sliding into debauchery and self-aggrandizement and degeneracy and all that. And then you also need to keep the commandments. You need to live by the law of God and obey universal laws, but not to the point of control and weaponization and all that. And so, it's the path between the two, right, that Christ represents. And I just love how that's such a unique take on the Christ principle that you don't really see in any other model.

I would invite the listener to take an open view. This is what Steiner encouraged everybody to do, never to take what he said at face value. It's controversial. It's controversial. He didn't pull any punches. He definitely said what he thought. And some of these things are something that you might have to tinker around with in your consciousness for a little while to see separate the wheat from the chaff.

Shalom. Peace be with you, my friends, and welcome back to the Jesus Way podcast. Today, I'm excited to be joined by a friend of mine and an amazing guest, Mr. Edmund Knighton, who is actually a guest speaker at our upcoming summit, Awaken the Christ Within, which is a free 7-day summit coming up in about a few weeks from the time of this recording. And you can register for that down below if you're interested. But Edmund has a doctorate in transpersonal psychology and has practiced the works of Rudolph Steiner and the Law of One for over 40 years. Edmund was the president of Rudolph Steiner College and worked with the Waldorf schooling system for many, many years and just has a wealth of knowledge on all things Christ consciousness, Law of One, and of course, the amazing work of Rudolph Steiner, which I'm particularly interested in seeing how that bridges with the teachings of Jesus. Um, I thoroughly enjoyed our interview for the summit, brother. So, I've been really looking forward to having you on the Jesus Way podcast for another epic conversation. So, uh, thanks so much for joining us today, man.

Ah, thanks for having me. I'm I'm super excited about whatever's I have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm excited about it.

That's what makes it exciting, right?

That's right. That's right. Open slate.

Yes. Well, let's open the slate with this because you are um a unique expert in the Steiner material and the Law of One as well. And I love the way you show all the parallels in the cosmology of Steiner and the Law of One. And so I think the most interesting um aspect of Steiner's sort of cosmology was these three archetypes you hear about whenever Steiner's work gets brought up and that is the Ahriman, Lucifer, and Christ archetypes. And um I'll let you extrapolate on it, but correct me if I'm wrong that Steiner basically purported that the universe is sort of comprised of these three archetypes in terms of the sort of thought structures that humanity falls into as civilizations evolve. And these archetypes play within one another and catalyze one another. And I think that has a lot of interesting things to say about the sort of time period that Jesus lived in in the first century, which was this incredibly chaotic, you know, period of turmoil that was very difficult to live in because these three powers were kind of all duking it out in such an enormous way in Jesus's day that of course ultimately led to his crucifixion. So, I'd love for you to just take us from the beginning of this concept as Steiner lays it out and explain these three different archetypes that he describes.

Okay. Um gosh, there's so many different ways to to step towards something like that. One of them that might be helpful and let's just as a caveat say in the beginning, Aaron, that um I would invite the listener to take an open view, you know, to take what I would call a phenomenological stance, uh, an open scientific attitude. This is what Steiner encouraged everybody to do. Never to take what he said at face value. Which is why he gave dozens, maybe hundreds of exercises and practices so that you could have your own experience and say, "This is now true for me," rather than, "This is what Steiner said." Um, I think a lot of the shadow of of Steiner and spiritual science is that individuals have gotten a little sleepy in their thinking and thought, "Well, this guy seems to be right on so many fronts. Why don't I just accept him wholesale?" And I think there's nothing more dangerous. So, I just want to be thoughtful about the fact that he's a human being like we are. He did his best and he did an amazing job. Uh, and also it's incumbent upon us to take this kind of a real scientific stance which says, you know, "I've never experienced that before. Anything as outlandish as, you know, I don't know what. Somebody said I was an alien the other day. I said, 'I have no idea what that means.'" You know, uh, I've never heard that. [laughter] Um, but you know, can my mind be open enough just to entertain the possibility that whatever the perception is, and maybe it's not direct, maybe it's symbolic in some way, right? In what way am I alien or alienated? And so that's that's the sort of lens I would encourage um your listeners to to take Steiner's work because um it's it's controversial. It's controversial. He didn't pull any punches. Uh, and um, yeah, he he definitely said what he thought and some of these things are something that you might have to tinker around with in your consciousness for a little while to see separate the wheat from the chaff. So with that caveat, I'll jump right in.

Great. Thank you for that. Yeah, Steiner's picture is that these three forces that you're talking about, one of them is on the the side of freedom, uh, extreme freedom to the point of even separating from, uh, from evolution. The other is on the side of a kind of living in a cage or living in a cave, uh, and just being entirely contracted. And so each of them are sort of these um these caricatures of what we can as human beings become if if we get tempted, if we get enticed to either think that we're gods or angels before our time and more brilliant than we are, more loving even than we are, more capable of service. It's like it's like the hopefulness in us, the wannabe in us gets gets pulled into basically becoming like like a pitifully stunted angel because we haven't developed the faculties, not even close to become an angel right now. We're ways off. Yeah. [laughter] It should be clear, but sometimes I think people we fool ourselves. um, yeah, the other side is that a kind of materialistic view to say, "Oh, that side is overly spiritual and freedom-oriented and expansive, but what's really true is just just the material world or e maybe just the senses as well as the material world, but not much more beyond that. Maybe just mathematics, but not sacred mathematics, not sacred geometry, just simply, you know, earth-centered uh mathematics, not projected geometry, but Euclidean, for example, and and a very clever way of being with that." And so those are the two characters. And in the center of that is what would be called the Christ extract or the Christ principle, which is this this part in the cosmos that that as as part of the cosmos saw a need in our particular evolution a couple thousand years ago to enter in. But that need has to be enscconced in what's on both sides of that, which is, and here's Steiner's picture, that Lucifer incarnated 2,000 years before that in China, and that was a physical incarnation, but there had been incarnations long before that in in epochs that he would call, for example, the periods of uh of Lemuria, even 50,000 years ago, where this offering was given to human beings that you have a choice. And this was the whole notion of the the so-called fall, which is the result of freedom, which is that you have to be able to choose good or evil, and in making that choice, that the fall takes place, but also freedom is there. And so Lucifer is called the lightbringer or the freedom-bringer, but there's the shadow side, there's a counter-image to everything. And so the counter-image to Lucifer is that we we move too fast, too far um in our choice points, or we actually believe that we are separate. Um, and so the tricky thing is, how do we remain interdependent rather than feeling like we're either dependent, which as you know from your work, this feeling that we've been dependent upon someone else, some intercessory, some priest, someone holds the keys to the kingdom besides us. We don't have a direct line to God. That's been that's been age-old until really recently. And Steiner gave a picture that that had to had to reach its kind of darkest point in about the 1850s, the middle of the 19th century. But it was a blessing that that happened so that we could begin to consciously take steps toward our own individual work, toward seeing what he would call the return, the second coming of Christ, which he explains as not a physical second coming, but something that takes place in the etheric body, uh, beginning in 1933. And so his incarnation was a preparation for that. It was a a shaking people in their armchairs to say, "Stop reading. Start experiencing. Create experiments for yourselves. You can see into the spiritual world. You can hear in the spiritual world." And eventually that seeing and hearing will lead to meaning, will lead to understanding in the spiritual world. And that will happen for the next 3,000 years, starting about a hundred years ago in in 1933, according to him. And the counter-image to that would be something like the the Carnegie Rockefeller plan in the US. Carnegie, I think domestically, and Rockefeller internationally. Um, I may have that backwards, but to to create a kind of consolidation of resources. And that's much more an Ahrimanic point of view. And so to to kind of frame this, you have Lucifer incarnating 2,000 years before Christ comes through Jesus. You have Christ coming at the sort of the turning point in time, which Steiner says is the moment for humanity. And I'll get to that in a minute because he didn't grow up Christian, and this was hard sell for him. Um, and then getting into the incarnation of Ahriman, which Steiner uh very clearly suggested is now, is actually right now in the beginning of the 21st century, with some indication that he, his intellect or his individuality, that's no longer Steiner, but the the entity that he that he is, that individuality may incarnate as well at this point, 100 years later. Uh, and the the reason for that is because we've opened ourselves now to the cleverness and and and artificial intelligence is is really the the birth of that, which started in the 50s, really, is that sort of data source and has evolved since then, or devolved, probably both cases. um to where we can accept, not only accept, but actually in a way worship, worship this kind of scientized mind worship, an empirical way of being, uh, which Ahriman always guarded against. Uh, said that's how Moses depolarized himself, for example, in letting the people who were following him, uh, entice him into proving that God exists. And so we're in that place now where it's very likely that these these these beings are with us incarnate, and the work is, how do we recognize that Ahrimanic presence in ourselves, that that incredible um materialistic gift that we have? We're human beings who, never before have we been able to permeate so deeply into the substance of matter with the CERN collider and um looking, you know, at these at these quirks and and right, we can see things infinitesimally. But the idea is, can we be in the world, right, but not of it? Recognize that we are beings witnessing this, rather than, well, maybe we're all just tied to this materially, and this is what this is what Ahriman seeks for us, is to cut off the spirit entirely. And this is the the nature of a lot of the pollutants and so forth that are occluding the pineal gland, which then affects the pituitary and these master glands which are are spacious enough to include soul and spirit capacities inside of us. And and so the idea is to be, you know, walking through the the valley of the shadow of death, but fearing no evil, not being concerned that an adder's sting will bite us, because consciousness trumps all. And that's the goal, is to remain that Christ extracted principle in the center and to notice the tendencies that we all have to move toward expansion or to move toward this kind of contraction, like just like money in the bank experience for me, uh, and not being able to to see that we're not serving others in that way. So maybe I'll just pause there because I know that was a lot.

Yeah, thank you for that. That's a great breakdown and I'm going to try to translate this into layman's terms for our viewers then. Um, the way I would describe how I understand the Luciferic archetype is that which moves towards almost excessive freedom, like licentiousness, degeneracy, whatever you want, sex, drugs, rock and roll. Woo, let's party.

Yeah.

And then Ahriman is kind of the opposite of that side of the spectrum. More power, control, severance, separation, domination. Is that correct?

Yeah, very much so. I should have just asked you. [laughter]

Hey, I'm learning on the fly here, man. So, we're we're tag-teaming it.

Um, so so this is why I wanted to pull that out because this is a really cool comparison or parallel rather. Jesus famously said, "Narrow is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it." So therefore, strive to enter through the narrow way. And that word "strive" in Greek is, who knows what the Hebrew word was, but in Greek, it's agoniz, which means it's where we get the root word agonizing, right? Like strenuous, striving with with incredible effort. It's agonizingly difficult. So he pulled no punches, as you said, that this path is very hard.

It's not [clears throat] this easy believism. "Confess me as Lord and your ticket to heaven." It's a combination of you need to live free enough that you're honoring free will of other beings, loving your neighbor as yourself, but not that you're sliding into debauchery and self-aggrandizement and degeneracy and all that.

Yeah.

And then you also need to keep the commandments. You need to live by the law of God and obey universal laws, but not to the point of control and weaponization and all that.

And so it's the path between the two, right, that that Christ represents. And I I just love how that's such a unique take on the Christ principle that you don't really see in any other model.

Yeah. Yeah. You don't. And and you know, I mentioned that Steiner, for him, this was hard-won because his mom and dad were were free thinkers, but they weren't Christian thinkers. And so when he started to look at uh the Akashic record, sort of the living scroll of humanity, and he saw that this was the decisive point in humanity, and there is no other, like I said, he had a lot of difficulty absorbing that and really really worked with it for uh a number of years to make sure this is what I'm seeing. But isn't it perfect and beautiful that somebody with such a scientific mind, because that's he came to it really, he was studying Goethe's works, and Goethe never really exceeded to the the sort of spiritual presence of things. He he had what's called um a loose etheric, and that gave him a kind of a genius. Uh, it's the sort of thing that happens in baptism, the etheric body is separated from the physical so that a higher presence can come through, as as John did did very very beautifully with that Christ presence.

And so Steiner hard-won his way toward that, and then he was working with the Theosophical Society, which was an Eastern stream. And so he he then started to encode in everything that he brought, the notion of the Christ, but without saying the Christ's name, without using Jesus. And so he was already in a place where he was needing to bridge East and West, uh, because he started with Blavatsky and Bannett and Leadbeater and so forth, and and then when they thought Krishna Murti was the reincarnation of Christ, for him that was the necessity, not just the opportunity, to step away and form his own stream. And so he did that at that point. So that's that's sort of a brief history of how he moved into this this esoteric Christian space.

And then from then on, basically everything that you can imagine was always infused with the Christ presence, whether he was talking about it or not, once he recognized that that was the stream that moved through him. Uh, and so that esoteric stream is why a lot of people say, "Well, in the Waldorf school, isn't it that they teach Christianity?" No, we don't teach Christianity, uh, at all. U, we don't teach anything.

Confess and believe.

You know, we teach everything, but we certainly don't teach Christianity because he wasn't an exoteric Christian, and we wouldn't teach any kind of esoterica until age 21. Steiner's strong suggestion was not to move into that until someone was fully present as an adult.

Yeah. So, just just to mention those.

That's very wise.

Yeah. Do are you interested in the um Steiner's conception of the Christ? You know, what he saw?

Absolutely. Yeah. I want you to unpack that for us. And then I also want to get into another topic of um the parallel with the Law of One and catalyst, with what Steiner said about needing to be fed experience and how that's important for soul evolution. So um let's first finish up with the Christ archetype as Steiner described it, and then we'll get into that next.

Okay. Um, so so his conception of of the Christ is that the Christ was a sun being, and that that being held itself in sort of a a watching for Earth's evolution for for eons, for a long period of time. And that simultaneously there was what might be called the original human being, the the original Adamic being. And that being also was sort of held aside. So it was when the ego was formed in Lemuria and Lucifer gave this temptation to that ego. All of humanity that stream entered into that space of freedom, but also that space of falling in toward matter, and then needing the redemption moment, the redemption possibility. But one ego sort of, it's like the kid that held back, you know, he just like, you know, "I'm just gonna watch." And that that ego being then was never affected by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic temptations, those those falls, because it never experienced human evolution. And Steiner's picture is that is the ego then that, along with this Christ presence, recognized that the moment for actually them to come together had come, and that was when Jesus incarnated on the planet. But that moment, for for Steiner, was precipitated by 42 generations of the Hebrews building a a human body, a physical body through generations consciously, that would be able to sustain the formative force power of the Christ principle.

Can I pause you there?

Yeah.

Because that that's that's why I said let's hold an open mind and see what happens.

Yeah. Yeah. This is amazing stuff. Um, so I I sort of had this theory through studying the Essenes uh passionately and rigorously over the last few years that um you see this in the Dead Sea Scrolls in in very cryptic ways, but you see it more so in the first-century historians at the Essenes, that they were a highly messianic sect of um anti-temple Judaism, kind of a reform movement within Judaism that had split off from orthodoxy because they believed that the sacrificial system was the infiltration of paganism. That during the Babylonian captivity, pagan animal sacrifice got woven into the Torah. And they said, "Whoa, that's a corruption of the law. Moses never commanded us sacrifices when he brought us out of Egypt." Jeremiah 7:21. So they split off and they tried to keep um Nazarene literally means keepers, the keepers of the covenant. They tried to keep the original covenant of Moses, which was the Ten Commandments, right? And so, we see Jesus saying, "Oh, Lord, how do I enter eternal life?" He says, "Keep the commandments." And he lists them off, like this was the Essene type of Judaism's belief is this is the only law God wants for us, is to love God and love neighbor. And the first four commandments are the love God commandments, the next six are the love neighbor commandments, don't steal, don't kill, don't lie. So Jesus said the whole law, guys, is just summarized in this love God, love neighbor. You do that, you fulfill the entire law. So that the Essene type of Judaism, as well, and they were living these ascetic lives out in the Transjordan for many, many centuries. And by the time of the first century, Josephus and Philo tell us that the average age of an Essene was over a hundred years old.

And they had this rigorous discipline for physical health and asceticism because they believed they would baptize twice a day in the river Jordan because clearly, looking at these practices to me as a spiritual philosopher, I'm saying, "Oh, obviously they were trying to purify the physical vessel to increase its vibrational capacity so that the Messiah could actually incarnate."

Yeah. Yeah. If the Messiah is going to incarnate, it can't be in this dirty, sick, low-vibrational body. So the the Messiah's waiting on us, you know, up in heaven. Like, we got to prepare a good body for that. And so the Dead Sea Scrolls show this expectant coming of the Messiah among them. And they believed this is why Jesus had this widespread movement following him because he was of the line of David, first of all. And then number two, he was who they were expecting to come along, some extremely anointed person who would come and teach the true law of God to the people. And so the Essenes clearly understood what Steiner said, what you just described, that the physical body is the foundation of it all. And so we have to commune with the earth and upgrade the body for successive generations um until that's possible. And I love how Steiner actually names how long the Essenes were doing that, in 42 generations. I just find that to be remarkable.

Yeah. And what you're what you're describing is actually, there's um you're pointing to what the Essenes certainly were were aware of, which is Steiner talks a lot about the physical body and then the life body or the energy body, the the body that animates the physical body, and that Christ, the etheric. What he doesn't talk about so much, but is clearly uh present, is that there's a body in between those two bodies. And it's what it is, is it's a body that connects, that that levity life body that's just incredibly light, that's the ether body, to the physical body. It's the linking formative body. And that formative body is, it's, it's a horrible name. He calls it a phantom body. I think it might be a bad uh translation in the German, but but basically,

Ghost body.

Yeah, the ghost body. It's it's a body of light that that amalgamates, amalgamates, accretes, draws together, the elements and then forms this incredible physical body. And yet the purpose of this phantom body is to be able to be free of the physical body. But but Steiner's picture is that with this Lemurian temptation from Lucifer, that body sort of, it's a a little bit like when those from the angelic realm fall in love with those, you know, when gods and angels fall in love with human beings and and step backwards in their evolution. It's like, "No, it's okay, you know, I'll do this." It's like, "Well, no, it's you're going that way." Um, this the phantom body, as human beings became more attracted to matter itself, became more attracted to matter, and in Steiner's picture, particularly to the element of ash rather than the element of salt. And that element of ash then began to corrupt that phantom body and degrade it, whereas salt, there's a dissolving that takes place in a freedom of that body upon death. Steiner's picture is,

Oh, man. It's amazing.

The Christ came into that phantom body. And the Nathan line that you're talking about, this is where it gets a little more wild, that there was there was actually a a second birth. There were two Jesus births. One Jesus birth was of the the Solomon line of David, and the other was the Nathan line. The Nathan line is the one that we're always shown. The Solomon line was

Through Mary. Yeah.

And that that Solomon line, that individual who incarnated in that line, that individuality was the individuality of Zarathustra. Zara

Zarathustra at at age 12 in that body then moved into, gave up his separate existence and moved into the being of the Nathan child. This is why the Nathan child at age 12 was able all of the sudden to be filled with wisdom and to teach, whereas before he had been just a loving, very simple child. And Steiner's picture is that the Nathan child had that quality of love because the nurmonaya body, which is a uh the the Buddha body, is what inhabited his his lower sheath. So starting with his astral body, which is the the feeling body or the soul, was actually Buddha, not like Buddha was that being, but over overlighted that being, just like Zarathustra. And so it gets a little tricky because there's this overlighting presence then of the Zarathustra wisdom, the Buddha's love, weaving together. And basically, when you think, you asked a little bit about Ra, it's this weaving together of wisdom and love, of love and light. And it literally was a weaving together of those bodies. And then that Zarathustra consciousness from age 12 to 30 was able to prepare that consciousness to be overlighted by the Christ consciousness for for the next three years, because that was the amount of time that that consciousness could actually inhabit that body without completely destroying it. So, just want to give you that picture that that Steiner also.

Oh, man. You mentioned a lot of things in there that were making light bulbs go off for me. So, it sounds like the the

Yeah. Did you see them going like? [laughter]

He's like, he's getting him.

Yeah.

Um, the uh, the phantom body sounds a lot like the Hindu conception of the subtle body or the energy body.

Would you [clears throat] say that's kind of accurate? Probably.

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you also mentioned salt versus ash. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

I was just going to say that's why Mary saw him as the gardener and didn't recognize. She what she saw was the phantom body. And the reason why the reason why the shroud, first of all, has an imprint, it's because the phantom body was alive and well, and that phantom body is the the part that arose and was still in a forming phase. And what that gave us as human beings was the possibility after all of these eons to reinhabit our own phantom body and to move from ash to salt. And this is an alchemical picture.

Wow. Well, that's interesting as well because um if you study scholarship, scholars know that even Paul, who's the earliest written source we have, Paul didn't believe Jesus had a physical resurrection. He notoriously believed it was a spiritual resurrection alone, that he was raised up in a new spiritual body. And I think Paul was could have been right about that. But um where he went wrong is he said that very soon Jesus is going to come back and we're all going to be raised up and transformed into these spiritual bodies. He didn't quite understand the cosmology of our universe the way that Steiner does. But nonetheless, the earliest attestations show a spiritual, not a physical resurrection, even in Mark, um, as well, which is interesting. But um, the ash-salt thing is really interesting because the attestations we have of the Essenes from Josephus and Philo and Pliny, they say that they had Josephus says they ate a dish of vegetables with bread and and the condiment of salt and water. And [snorts] then another attestation says that they eat bread with salt. So it seemed like salt was a big part of their diet. And of course, they famously abstained from all flesh consumption because that kind of represents the ash element of death and decay. And they they were doing this to raise the vibration of the subtle body, the energy body, which I believe is why they could live these extremely long lifespans. Um, even Jesus's brother Simeon, who succeeded his brother James, there was like three, there was two Jesus brothers that continued the line after Jesus, James for almost 30 years, and then Simeon, who's listed in the Gospels as Jesus's younger brother, carried it on until the early 2nd century, about 114 CE. And the uh, the historian who recorded his death, his name Hegesippus the Nazarene, he was the like historian of the Nazarene church. He says that Simeon was martyred by Rome, crucified at 120 years old. And he says that the Roman centurions who murdered who martyred him on the cross, all were marveling at how much torture and torment he could endure at his incredibly old age. And so the brother of Jesus, Simeon, was still leading the church at 120, showing that he must have had some pretty sharp mental acuity.

Yeah.

And I can't find any other way that that's possible under our current world environment, or at least of their environment in the first century, other than this incredible um expansion and increasing of the subtle body through these disciplines, spiritual practices, and inner purification, and their diet, and all these things. So it sounds just point for point what Steiner is describing there.

Yeah. And and yes, and to go further, that etheric body is also the holder of memory. And so as you as you mentioned being sharp, when that etheric body is is lively and mobile and flexible, so is thinking. And the the idea is that as you move through the seven stages of Christian initiation, that the capacity to bear suffering, for example, the crown of thorns level, the scourging level, um, you know, that takes place after the washing of the feet, that individuals who move through that are able to bear almost patiently and peaceably, uh, any kind of uh discomfort, even to an extreme. And that level then makes you ready to uh accept this phantom body. That's actually the preparation for being able to recognize the body, your own, and then to receive it toward yourself. Uh, and so that quality of thinking, Steiner's picture is that that that quality of thinking takes place in an evolutionary pattern through through 12 stages of the senses, which are also each one is a is a particular quality of thinking that you can develop. And so it moves from

From the sense of touch comes first. And so thought enters the sense of touch. We call it, this is a lot, but we'll we'll get back to it some other time. The physical body alone was formed. It didn't have an ether body. It didn't have a soul, and there was no spirit. There was only a physical body formed. And touch was the sense that we had at that point. And thought was very, very dimly able to enter into touch. And then it progresses there into the life body during a sun evolution, during a moon evolution, where the the soul body can come in, and then movement comes in. And each one then represents a connection to the mineral realm first, the plant realm second, the animal realm. And this is the washing of the feet, which is to turn back toward the shoulders that we stand on, that we're built on this mineral realm, our body is that, our life is built on the plant and its purity, that our ability to move and have desire comes from the animal realm. And all these can be exalted. And as they're exalted, then these higher bodies of life spirit and spirit self and spirit man develop as an outgrowth, a purification of the physical body, the astral body, the ether body. And then the ego is able to reach to this higher I, Christed principle that it's always had available to it. But it's like if you if you don't understand something, you don't see it. It's it's actually always been around us.

Um, and all we have to do is open our eyes, but we have to have done the preparation to be able not just to see it, but to absorb it.

Yeah. Yeah. And and Ra describes these bodies in the Law of One in pretty good detail. I can't remember which lesson or um, uh, question it is that he's asked this, but he goes into the full, they go into the full gambit of it. And even they mention the Buddha body as like the highest one. So this is, and there's many different systems that describe these different bodies. Hinduism has a much simpler system of just kind of the four bodies,

Which they call the gross body, which is physical.

Subtle body, which is energetic. Causal body, which is pure spirit with no form.

And then the great causal body, which is like the ultimate divine eternal body or essence that we are. But it's like, you could probably, it's all a spectrum, right? You could probably dice it down in a number of different ways.

But when you understand these bodies function together, it does make a lot of sense out of a lot of things and explains a lot of things. Like I love how you pulled out the resurrection of Jesus and the shroud of Turin maybe being a phenomenon of the subtle body. Like Jesus, Yeshua, was probably trained in how to keep these bodies active through physical suffering and different things. There's all kinds of esoteric mystical systems that would teach these things. Yeah, Kabbalah being the main one I'm thinking of, but uh, there's so many different theories I have around the resurrection, uh, that are all kind of plausible explanations of it. But um, I'm curious if you could just unpack that a little more and maybe even if Steiner gives his analysis of what he thinks happened at the resurrection and what your thoughts are on it.

Yeah. I mean, his his picture of the resurrection is um that he says something like, it it wasn't what Jesus did, but what he gave.

And what he gave was his body.

What he gave was his body. And so a lot of focus was on again, the polarities, sort of the the Ahrimanic polarity of death and um, and burial, and this sort of corpse consciousness, and the other side on just incredible light and ascension, and you just go, "Well, I would never want this one thing, and I there's no way I can reach the other. I'm not even close to it." But what what got missed in the quietness there was that the body that he left is an incorruptible body, that is this phantom body, that because he permeated mother Earth, he he made love to the Earth and made a commitment to the Earth that until she moves from planetary to star status, he'll be here, and his consciousness will overlight her. That that incredible willingness to sacrifice and to place that kind of hope in humanity, that humanity will get there, and we will, is the most beautiful thing. So the the notion of sort of the ascension, in a way, was secondary for Steiner. He says, "Guys, don't miss the work. This is the work. Ascension is so far off. The work is the phantom body. It's right here and right now. It's available. Wake up tomorrow and begin." So this is this is, I think, the biggest offering for Steiner, is he's always so practical. It's like, "Wake up and get the work started." Ra says the same thing. You know, he says, "People see uh individuals as white magicians and luminous beings and all that, but you know what? They wake up the next day, and the work goes on, and it's actually quite normal. And let's normalize it as soon as possible and get back to work, because that's that's the love that we get to offer." So Steiner and Ra, I think, are very practical in that way. Um, and yes, they're they're they both see Malkuth as the start and working all the way through the chain. They both mention Malkuth very explicitly as this is how creator comes through underneath, starts at the base, and then rarifies coming up until that ascension takes place. But that that ascension is, you know, it's so far off from where we are. And I I often hear this sort of focus on, you know, "I'd like to be enlightened." And it's like, I I understand that, but you're trapped. As long as you'd like to be something, then you're not who you are. And you've already lost all the

Because it's you've placed it in some future bizarre Luciferic haze and dream. And and a lot of, I I would say a lot of men that I work with, I have that experience of them. They have a strong fantasy life of wanting to serve. "I want to give. I think I'm here to give something big." And it's like, "Well, just start with something small, you know. It's you don't start with saving the world, you know, and then go on to another planet. You start with, you know, being kind to your wife and doing the dishes."

Right. Yeah. That's the uh, the true gospel of Jesus, right? If you can be faithful in the little things, then you'll be given the bigger things. But if you can't be faithful in the little things, why would the universe give you the bigger things? You know, the other part I love about what we're touching on here is this is like a really important um topic to unpack of why people feel so much cognitive dissonance in religion and the cosmology religion paints. People just go, "Ah, there's something's off about this." Versus like the cosmology of Steiner or the Law of One. People read these models and just like, "The soul comes alive and says, 'Wow, this is like what I've always known has to be true.'"

And I I think that distinction would be that religion paints a very dualistic view of the universe that is built on the idea that it's this kind of incomplete system that's slowly evolving towards completion one day. So the kingdom of heaven, one day we'll get there, once we're all perfected and saved and all that. Or uh, "Let's get out of these horrible Earth bodies and descend to heaven, you know, Earth bad, heaven good." And it's this continuing picture that God's universe is not complete. There are problems in it. There are accidents in it. And God's trying to clean up the mess through Jesus and blood sacrifices and all kinds of stuff. And it, it, it rings true only if you have a certainty addiction and you want to feel like I have the right beliefs because all these church fathers have said it, and so it must be true. Other than that, it rattles the mind to think that this is the universe we live in.

Yeah.

And so on the other hand, the Law of One paints a different picture, right? That no, no, God's kingdom is a finished kingdom. The universe is already complete, and it is perfect in every way.

But we are experiencing it in a gradient format. You know, as we evolve, we experience higher and higher levels of that perfection. So it's not that the universe is evolving, but that we are. And so, you know, Paul, for example, on whom the entire New Testament is basically based on his teachings in the Christian religion, he was a diaspora Jew from the Greco-Roman world who was deeply entrenched in Hellenistic philosophy. And when you read Paul, you just see Platonism all over it. You see Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, all these Hellenistic philosophies. It was part of the world Paul grew up in. So it's how he thought. It's the way his mind worked. So it's not like he was doing something wrong or malevolent, but he he wove in this dualistic idea in everything, which is the foundation of Hellenistic philosophy.

Earth bad, matter bad, heaven good, spirit good. And of course, that's why Paul's teachings became the foundation of Gnosticism. Gnosticism was actually the first, as you probably know, the first real branch or movement of Christianity that took off before the Orthodox tradition really took off. And then they started competing against each other for many centuries. And the Gnostics had this idea that matter is inherently evil and spirit is inherently good. And so we need to escape one to get to the other. And this belief, although there's some truth to it, right? The Ahrimanic presence is in matter, in the material world. That's what it runs and it dominates.

Yeah.

Spirit would be like

Yeah. Yeah.

Spirit being the Luciferic side of things, pure light, pure spirit, you know, non-duality and all of that. And actually, the two have to become one. Not one is bad, one is good. And so that's why the Christ path has to be the middle way between those two. And um, I want to get your thoughts on this comparison now too, or this parallel that Ra talks all about this idea of catalyst. That this is the only way we grow and evolve is through actual life experiences that we learn from and grow from. And I think this is very congruent with Jesus's gospel because yes, he was a philosophical teacher of truth and righteousness, but he also admonished his disciples, "If you love me, keep my commandments." Put this to the test in your life. Right? Put these teachings to work in your life. "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say?"

Yeah.

And then we have his brother James, who is his successor, saying the same thing. "Faith without works is dead." And he sort of rebukes Paul's teachings and says, "Do you want to be shown, oh vain man, that faith without works is dead?" And he goes on this whole monologue. So this was an early Christian idea that we actually only grow in righteousness by applying truth to our life, not just by learning it and feeding our mind on it. And I think that that's the Luciferic temptation, right? Is just get really fattened up with spiritual knowledge.

Yeah.

Be uh spiritually intelligent and you're free, you know, secret knowledge and gnosis.

And so there's an imbalance on both sides of the spectrum, right? So maybe you could comment on that a little bit.

Steiner clearly is in the same camp. His picture is is don't take one step on any spiritual path until you've taken three steps morally, and make those moral steps very discreet and clear, not vacuous and and vague, you know. Uh.

So good. And so his other admonition is that as you sort of, you know, fatten your calf of spirituality, it's very, very um likely that you'll go through a stage where you lose your love for humanity, where you look down on these poor suckers, and you know, "If they could only um," and and so this spiritual kind of gluttony, this superiority takes place. And and it's a stage in spiritual growth where um you just start to find yourself retreating and not wanting to be in the company of others. And

Um, uh, so I had a spiritual teacher who was who was um, uh, he's the one who turned me on to the Law of One when I was uh 18. And and he said, he said, "You know, that tendency, I can see that in you, and I can see you meditating on a mountaintop. That's why I love to lead dark retreats, for example." He said, "You know, you're welcome to do that, but you're you're actually sort of needed in town." And so, if you choose to do something like that, the likelihood of you contracting cancer or some sort of other horrific disease is high because you're you would be that would be a a gentle reminder that like, "Hey, stupid, you're supposed to be serving folks and not meditating on in an ashram or on a mountain. This is not the lifetime for that. We all need"

To be together. Wow. And uh, that was helpful to hear at at 18 because I, I, I could have seen that part of me wanting to do that. And so then I started teaching, you know, kids. I started, that was the last thing I wanted to do, but I recognized that I needed to do something that I really didn't want to do. And Gerta has this wonderful expression. He says, you know, in order to start to take these moral steps, do one thing every day that you don't want to do. That's so good.

So that would be Steiner's picture of, you know, please don't move forward unless you've taken three moral steps. His other admonition is, if you don't have common sense, you have no place in the spiritual world. You have no place on the on the spiritual path. Don't do anything spiritual if you have no common sense. Because if you can't see what's in front of you and make good decisions, try to work with beings that you can't see and determine whether they're there for your benefit, for the benefit of humanity. So stay clear unless you have good common sense and a sense of humor was also very helpful. So I think those would be his admonitions of this is how you stay grounded and loving. Keep on checking yourself.

Steiner's clear uh uh offering was, you know, Ross said this too, step back every once in a while. Take stock. It doesn't have to be, you don't have to do it for a week or even a day or an hour, but just take five minutes to just say, "Okay, where am I now? I'm 58. How's the last decade been?" [laughter] "How's it going?" Right? "Where am I headed?"

And just t take these moments and uh don't overdo it. If you're going to write in a dream journal and try to access dream time and the spirit world, be pathy tur and succinct. Don't go on for pages and then do nothing with it. Figure out what the main mood was and then see if that plays into the next day's events and how. So do some work, think, and Rob starts his whole piece with, "Have you been connected to the original thought today?" Steiner says, in a hundred years, the only thing that will be left of my work is my philosophy of thinking, my philosophy of of thinking, which is also freedom, which is also spiritual activity or intuition. Those are all the same thing for him. And it's not thinking with the intellect, and this is the most important thing. It's the capacity to read something and be affected in your heart, be affected in your whole body. And now that we have access to all this esoterica, the the web is filled with it. What's needed is not stuffing ourselves, but discernment and taking one exercise and staying with it.

So the there's the a phrase that the true master is self-limiting. And that's the idea that we we choose something and we for Steiner, it's very simple exercises. Is this a real seed or a fake seed? Can I string one thought next to the thought I just had and not think of any other thought for five minutes? Can I live in one feeling mood for five minutes? Can I have no thoughts and simply be in silence for five minutes? Ross says the same thing. The adept or the initiate is one who can have a steady state of silence for five minutes. And so working up to that and and and being in communities where we share practices like that this practical nature of making everything spiritual practical and embodied because we have bodies right now. Let's use them. They Gerta says our bodies are the the finest most exact sensory instrument we have, you know, for for taking data. No other instrument gets close. Sure, a telescope or microscope can see things we don't see, but we can also see things inwardly that a microscope will never see. So, that's a little bit of Steiner and Ra's confluence in how they would approach moving toward um, you know, spiritual wisdom. It always should be turned around and offered all, you know, like the like the loaves at Kaa, right? Just always offer whatever you get, radiate it forward. Don't hold knowledge. That will destroy you. That that stagnates energy and and eventually just, you know, leaves you feeling full and other people feeling like, yeah, he's full of himself.

Yeah. Yeah. Spiritual narcissism, man. It's it's a rampant thing for sure.

It's alive. I like how you that it's kind of an unavoidable part of spiritual development. You know, when you start learning the basics of metaphysics and how you who you are and how to operate spiritually in the universe, you start to feel like, hey, man, I'm like next level. You know, the ego just grabs onto it.

Um, and it's it's also funny how you said Steiner says common sense is a prerequisite for, you know, true spiritual growth. The problem with that is that people who don't have common sense don't know that they don't have common sense. Right.

Right. That's where you need a friend. That's where you need a friend to say, you know, I love you, brother. And [laughter] sure, dumb as a doornail, or you're so smart and you don't have any common sense. You're intellectually smart, but man, you, right, you have no idea what the priorities are in life or how to get there. And that's, you know, if Steiner offered a lot of processes, you know, not just giving you answers or content, but but engage this process and then come back to me and tell me what are your ideas that arose, what are your experiences, what are the obstacles of the practice? And so leaving an individual free to have their own experience, but then commenting on their experience and asking questions about it was the nature of his teaching, and I found I find that very beautiful and very, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, Steiner really had this thing figured out, I think, in a unique way and uh, just amazing how it lines up with the law of one and just almost point for point. But um, this is the other the other reason I am passionate about teaching what I teach to kind of help reform Christianity being that it's my whole background and upbringing, you know, as a pastor's son and all that. But I I experienced this myself and I've seen it myself ever since leaving religion is just the kind of brain rot that it causes in people to be fed certainties non-stop. Here we're just going to dish out to you everything that's true and whatever we don't say, it's all false and wrong. And it that framework causes calcification of the mind that otherwise very intelligent people become almost dumb in the way that they approach the philosophical issues of life with this dogmatic certainty that just never maps on to reality and yet they just seem to never be able to see it. It's a product of the religious programming. And a good example of this is that my friend Cameron Waters and I um, we've done some debates with Christians and we just talk with Christians in our comment section all the time who have obviously big problems with the things we teach. And the primary thing is the whole idea of animal sacrifice that we show, hey look, half of the prophets angrily condemn the practice of animal sacrifice. There's a clear dual narrative in the Old Testament which scholars call the priests versus the prophets. You have the priests kind of representing the Sith and the prophets representing the Jedi who are fighting against the evil empire of the temple cult. And they're weaving in animal sacrifice, pagan pagan traditions from the Babylonian Empire and stuff. And the prophets are saying, "No, God never commanded sacrifices."

Uh, Jesus quotes some of these prophets in the New Testament, right? Chief of all being Hosea 6:6. "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."

And that's the Hebrew word vell. And not or no or never. Never sacrifices. [snorts] And when we show Christians these verses, it's the craziest thing how they'll say, "Oh, well, that just means he wants mercy with sacrifice, but you just have to have the right mindset about it."

Yeah. And you're just like, "Wait, how do you get the word and from the word not?" Not. Not. "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." That means he desires mercy and sacrifice because their mind will not allow them to accept the contradiction they're seeing because of the certainty addiction and certainty bias. And the again, these are otherwise intelligent people and they mean well, but they are trapped in this arommonic thought system that religion portrays onto people that's you have to believe this or you're evil and your afterlife experience is going to be really bad. So it's fear and control and all these armonic forces that I think really does epitomize religion. Right? You have religion representing the arommonic side of things and the kind of new age world kind of representing the luciferic side of things, right?

Where uh, you have a lot of great ideas and freedoms being espoused and practiced and yeah, let's break away from religion. Let's be free and a lot of good comes out of that. But as I've commented on this podcast many times, I've seen just like rampant moral and integrity issues in the new age world where everyone's cheating on each other, sleeping with everybody, addicted to psychedelic drugs, no discipline, and they're like, "Ah, we're all one."

Yeah. And you're like, "Ah, that's See, that's the overabundance of freedom that you're talking about with the luciferic archetype, right?"

Yeah. That's the irony is there's no freedom in that. They're completely trapped in it.

True. And they think they're free, you know, and that's, you know, this this the whole the whole sort of new medicine craze, the kind of rebranding of what the 60s was, you know, now if it's medicine, you know, then but the idea that Steiner very very clearly brought RAW was a little bit more gentle with it when Carla took some LSD. Um, but clearly he said, you know, there Ra said there are synaptic gaps that are that that occur through the use of marijuana, for example. And you haven't suffered him for this moment. And the LSD was an attempt at negative entities to to to co-opt you, but your your faithfulness and your will uh allowed you to overcome that. But that statement in itself lets us know, you know, when we open ourselves to those forces and we're not aware of who the beings are who stand behind those forces. If we don't have a relationship already with those beings, that's the nature of shamanism is that spiritual person has a relationship with the being, not with the plant itself. The plant has nothing to do with consciousness. It's simply a chemical. And so moving into saying I have some kind of a relationship with shrooms or whatever it is, but no relationship with the one who stands behind that and animates it, the one who created it.

That's that's just foolishness. What you're doing is you're creating the possibility of something that you you're you're not it's not under your own power. And neither Steiner nor nor Rah would recommend that. I mean, Steiner didn't recommend mushrooms for anyone. uh even even uh cautioned against eating too much of mushrooms because for in his etheric sight, it densified the etheric body and actually held it to the planet more than was healthy because it's the nervous system of the earth. Uh and because it represents that system,

it's so interesting how there's such a mushroom craze now. There's a hunger to have a kind of a thinking quality, but we're looking for it externally when it's internal, but it takes effort internally rather than being given to us. It's it's self-generated conscious thinking that's needed. Um, so anyway, um, it's just a picture of it's a step-wise discipline path and this newageness has has nothing to do with that. In most cases, there are individuals who are able to to stay more in the middle. But the funny thing is you don't usually hear about them because what's sensationalized is the uh, you know, the other and we all see the ridiculousness of that, but there are those who who quietly are advancing on that path.

But the path is one of balance. It's not it's not this picture of the new age is already here and we're all already one. Um, those people are mixing dimensions for God's sake. They're mixing. We're in a space-time continuum. There's no doubt about it. Duality is here and it's here to stay for as long as we're here.

And so, our work is to engage that and not to imagine that we need to superimpose that or be somehow deeply into the future, which ironically a lot of that throws us back into the past. Um, but Raw talks about this clearly that we as we're moving toward this new age, individuals who lack inner certainty and are looking for the certainty of the church or in medicine or in a new new age someone to tell them or the latest podcast rather than testing everything against themselves tend to move back toward a second density kind of protectionism and tribalism in their thinking that's based on fear. And so there's a natural moving back from this sort of godlike, maybe luciferic on the shadow side, but the positive side is we'll all be in each other's heads and hearts and actually like it. And then this feeling of my god, I don't want people to be in my head. I don't want them to know what I'm thinking or feeling about them. And that scares the heck out of me. And I don't I don't want to do that. So I'm going to move back toward this kind of prepper mentality. Yeah, so much good stuff here, man. More light bulbs going off while you're talking, which is why I like talking to you, man. Um, the one that's going off for me is the idea of bouncing back and forth between these two polarities that if if we hold in mind a concept of evil as an ontologically real force that exists in God's universe and the universe is good and evil fighting it out, then we we will always bounce back and forth between these two polarities if we think that there is something inherently evil in God's universe. And so this is why I love the work of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas who kind of refined Aristotle's ideas a bit on privation theory, which is that evil is an absence, not a presence.

And Raw talks about this right by calling the negative polarity the path of that which is not. Exactly. The path of illusion. So it's just it's just the privation of good or truth, not the presence of a second and opposite force equally powerful. So you see how in the religious Aramman archetype of the universe, the cosmology is everything and matter is evil. We got to get out of here and escape. And then that runs its course for millennia. And that has led to this new age movement, which is the opposite of that, which says no, no, it's all fine. It's universe is perfect. We're all one with God. Which that's true. But it's still not meeting in the middle point to say, yes, it's true that God has already made a perfect universe and we are technically already perfect beings dwelling in it. But we are nevertheless experiencing the process of physical lifetime and incarnation to gradually evolve into that full awareness. And so you still do have to meet the human experience. Just because you know you're a divine being doesn't mean you can do whatever you want and all this stuff. There are consequences in time and space to violating the law of one and doing harm to others or harm to yourself. So again, we come back to the middle way, the narrow way. And this again is the oldest Christian teaching that we that scholars know of, which is called the two ways. There's a Dead Sea scroll from the Essenes called the two ways, 4Q414, I want to say. And then the oldest Christian text is called the Didache, the teaching of the 12. It's uh dated to the early mid early first century 40s-50s AD and it's purported to have been written by the disciples and it opens up by saying there are two ways a person can choose: the way of life or the way of death, and there's a great difference between these two ways.

Yeah. And Jesus of course teaches this when he says, "The way of life is narrow, the way of death is broad, and there are many who find it. So strive to enter the narrow way." So we have the this two polarities, two ways philosophy. I'm interested now in seeing Steiner's model of polarity, if you can unpack that for us a little bit.

Yeah. How did Steiner describe these two ways or these two polarities?

Yeah, it's a that's a good question. [clears throat] You know, one of the things he did was mapped out um macrocosm microcosm and so whatever plays out on the macrocosm, it's a little bit like David Bohm's concept of holism, if you've if you've looked at what a whole lot is, that that what takes place microscopically takes place macroscopically and uh, so so a picture of of this would be that there are epochs that we live in and there is a kind of a mission or a task for the human being when they're in that epoch. And I love that you said, you know, "I know that we're all one, therefore I can do anything." You have to be able to do oneness. It's easy to know something. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but if you can't do oneness, then what you're doing isn't matching what you're knowing. And it often doesn't match what you're feeling either. And so it's very different to know about evil and to experience evil. And so for for Steiner, what he suggested is that during the last epoch, it was a period of of thousands of years, the human being's task was to know life and death. So this is what you're talking about. And a lot of the the different cultural streams were in touch with that and to say this this is something, hey guys, we need to focus on this. And then what happens is when the next epoch comes, then you actually have to deal with it and work with it with life and death. And if you look at our epoch, that's the epoch we're in where we're learning to actually feel and deal with what we knew. So we got a concept of it and now we're practicing it. At the same time, what's happening, the polarity that's happening right now in Steiner's eyes is the idea of good and evil. That we know good and evil and we get to know it very intimately. And in the next epoch, we will have to very, very much deal and feel good and evil. And that's where the choice will come very clearly to which direction am I moving? Right now we've been in this sort of like, "Oh, it'll be okay." Now I'm working with this particular piece. You mentioned you mentioned evil as kind of a a war or a skirmish happening at perhaps different dimensional levels. And Ra's picture, for example, is that that war between light and dark, between that which is not and that which is, um, or that which denies or that which absorbs, or all of those different sort of ways for the left in service to loving oneself. Those those individuals think that loving oneself is actually the way to the creator, and it is for a while. Those those individuals are actually having that sort of thought war on our behalf so that the planet can continue to exist and so that this bellicosity doesn't translate into third density and that we don't repeat what other planets have done to themselves and made their environments inhospitable to to life. Um, and so I those I'd say would be two pictures. Raw as, you know, the whole reality is polarity. So that's uh, you know, that would be a whole treatise in itself to to explore that. But for Steiner, that picture of this uh, this dual path is inherent, and it's our opportunity to notice good and evil and then get to work with it. To notice life or death and then get to work with it. He doesn't use terms like service to self or service to others. Uh, but his life was clearly a testament to service to others in in every way possible.

Yeah. Yeah. It really was. And and he was figuring out a lot of the codes that that Rod dropped on us in the 80s. I don't know. I can't remember when Steiner lived between what was his life period?

1861 to uh, 1925.

Okay. Wow. So um, yeah, about a hundred years prior to the law of one. And he's saying all the same stuff that this this realm density, as Rob would say, is about the choosing. You got to choose a polarity, and you don't get out of here until you make that choice.

Yeah. And so I'd like to kind of um, land the plane of this conversation here on on what's happening today in our world and how how does this map on to our world today? And what I'm particularly curious about to hear your thoughts on is the technology side of the Aramman archetype that you've touched on.

Yeah. Because I feel like we're seeing something remarkable in our lifetimes that we don't always appreciate, take time to appreciate, which is, man, when I was a kid, there was no cell phones yet. I mean, there wasn't even really internet when I was a young child.

Yeah. And I was going to Blockbuster to get VHS tapes and stuff. And I could just think about the the leaps in technology we've made to today with AI and quantum computing and um iPhones, and I would have never been able to imagine the world I was going to live in in a very short period of time.

Yeah. Because the way that our technology has quantum leaped and I I just can't help but wonder, Edmond, if this isn't an archetype on all third density planets. You know, at some point there's a zenith that's reached in technology where the planet either that destroys itself with that technology or it uses it for ascension and enlightenment.

Yeah. And peace on earth. And I feel like we're at that juncture where we're going parabolic now with technology. We're going to have robots pretty soon in our homes that are programmed by AI that I think somebody said in 10 years they'll be able to have robots that look indistinguishable from humans.

Yeah. You know, that you'll talk to them and you'll not notice that it's actually a robot. So, it's just crazy what we're going to see in our lifetimes and we may be reaching that zenith point. So, how does Aramman use technology to create that destruction and then what do you think we can do to turn the ship at the last moment and actually not be destroyed by our own technology but use it as a pathway to ascension or enlightenment?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, from from Raw's perspective, Atlantis certainly reached that technological zenith and then went right back down to to to under the ocean as a result of that. Um, yeah, wipe out. So, so we have been there before and the individuals in in Steiner's perception, the the seven Reiches who had the diaspora and other individuals who were warned that that would take place and to, you know, get off a sinking ship did so um, and then tried to really start communities that would recognize our connection to nature and be be able to do that um, and stay with it. And I I think the natural tendency um, of the human being is a kind of comfort. And if we can, you know, America has exported all its labor, for example, tremendous amount of it, like Rome exporting its labor and then lapsing into decadence and bizarre entertainment. So we're we're copying Egypt in our sort of love of the human body and are trying to preserve it through a thousand different supplements and all this craziness. Um, when as you said, the ether and phantom body is the way through and suffering and and actually pain is the way through. And I don't mean as a martyr. I mean as as wisdom. There's wisdom along that path. And individuals are doing that.

But the the predominant uh sort of mode is this kind of a sleep and a forgetting and a need for for comfort and the in the face of uncertainty uh and the potential for doom and gloom. This fear and analysis paralysis. It's rampant. And Steiner named that that anxiety would be at about 100% by now. Uh, and it would be concomitant with this um absence of a connection to soul and spirit. And he names the the eighth ecumenical council that that decided to collapse soul and spirit into one so that the three-fold human.

Yeah. And and he names that as the beginning, you know, more than a thousand years ago of this great loneliness that would happen for humanity that started actually the moment when the perception that the Christ had left because the physical leaving and the materialistic conception of of those on the planet at that time, feeling that that being had left when actually he was closer to them than he had ever been when he was alive because now he had suffused the planet and was available inwardly to everyone. On but a great loneliness occurred at that moment, and that loneliness has grown for some, and others have maintained and developed that connection with that Christ principle and have been luminaries for us along the way. So there are people dropping breadcrumbs in the last 2,000 years and we we can find those breadcrumbs. The the picture of Aramman is really the master of of artificial intelligence and the mimicking of thinking. And this is this is where Steiner wanted to help us understand so strongly. He said the quality of thinking that we developed since the 15th century is beautiful, heavily scientific, very intellectual, but it's abstract. So it's desiccated and it'll lead us to death. That'll lead us to exporting our thinking powers onto something else and letting that think for us, and that is a dead path. And so his his advice was, can you move into a place of of living heart thinking and recognize that the 40,000 neurons in the heart, for him, he he clearly said the heart is the brain. The heart, we think it's been happening here. This is only a mirror. It's a reflective apparatus that reflects down to the heart, which makes unmistakably beautiful discerning decisions. And stay with that level of thinking because the processes of um of deception are going to be so beautifully and cleverly crafted. God, they're going to be gorgeous, and these human beings that you're going to see that can look like human beings will be beautiful, and their voices will be beautiful, and they'll be articulate, and they look like just someone you'd want to become, and it's a it's a robot. It's not alive. And how do you know? Feel the difference between how do you even know how alive your friend is right now, for example? How present are you talking with me right now? Are you 100% with me, or is part of you still with what you said at breakfast, or what you're going to do for dinner? You know, that quality of really sussing that out and being honest with each other about how present we are to each other, that's where our sovereignty is in in the presence. And so Steiner was offering that full-bodied heart thinking as the way through because you'll know if a being is real. You'll know if a being is present, and you'll know even if a being is real, if what they're offering you is real. If it's truth, because the the tendency of our will be to try to reverse every truth and turn it into a half-truth, and then less of a truth than that, until there is no truth left. But it's sort of like the frog being heated up in the water. You slowly turn up the heat until you're fried, and then it's too late. And so there is this turning up the heat that's happening on this planet. And some are like, "Oh, this is nice. It's a little hot. Oh, that's still my muscles are even softer now. I can't move much." But so it's time to get out of the water.

Well said, man. I actually used the frog analogy, frog in the pot of water analogy for the idea of how the creator decides which beings are going to be positive or negatively polarized.

It's a very good analogy. It's like some frogs like the hot water and they're like, "Hey, I can I can chill in here." And the creator says, "Okay, this is probably this is clearly a negatively polarized soul." And then the frogs will go, "Get me out of here." And they want to jump out of the boiling water. Oh, that's a positively polarized soul. It's like the universe is just that. Like we're being thrown into the maelstrom of third density, you know, and the creator just wants to see which polarity do you want to choose, you know?

I like it. And um, the last thing I want to comment on that you said, well, really the whole picture you're painting here, and thank you for just laying it out so beautifully with Steiner's model, is now I get a different picture on the meaning of the crucifixion. And as uh Jesus is quoted as saying, "I've come to give my life as ransom for many." Lots of people have given their life as ransom for many. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. We could go on and on. But if humanity, and I think Ross says this, right, that the soul of Yeshua saw that humanity was really stuck in this monolithic religious structure that was not allowing for spiritual evolution. And something someone needed to go into that system and galvanize it to save these people from this broken system. We have the armonic and luciferian systems on full display all over the world, even, you know, in the first century. And humanity had plenty of demonstrations of what those two archetypes are like.

Oh yeah. And probably thought, "These are the only two archetypes, you know, this is the only two ways." And somebody needed to come and be the demonstration of the Christ archetype.

So that if it's not demonstrated, nobody knows that it exists and therefore can't follow it or imitate it.

Yeah. So now you see this new beautiful reason why Yeshua chose to come and become the Christ, realize his Christ nature, and then give his life as ransom. Is that people needed something to pay attention to, right? When when you see a holy man like Jesus be brutally torturously murdered and crucified at a young age,

Yeah. The whole world for all of time reading the history book says, "This was a great the greatest travesty." You know, and so it's like calling attention to who was this man Jesus? Why was he so holy? And now, of course, he's been the most studied person who's ever lived. So clearly, his idea worked out. And he became that demonstration of the Christ archetype that even in John 1, the Logos, which pre-existed, you know, the earth and everything. All things were created through the Logos, which Christ embodied and incarnated, the word become flesh dwelling among us. So I I appreciate that that idea of Steiner laying out the incarnations of Aramman and Lucifer and the Christ, that all of these have and need to appear to humanity at different times so that we can see the choices that are available.

And as Ross says, it's all about balance, not um the overabundance of one side or the other, but you need to balance all energies within yourself to truly polarize to the positive. And Jesus to me just represents that perfect balance between the two. We need some rules and regulations and things like that, or we just fall into licentiousness. But as Ross says, too much control is inherently negative.

Yeah. And so religion has become inherently negative because it's inherently overly controlling. So we're seeing a lot of the armonic forces through the AI and the technology and all of that. We're seeing a lot of the luciferic forces in our world as well, wanting us to go towards um, I would say like almost like radical leftism or something like that, where it's all about me and freedom and whatever I feel is true and that kind of thought system. New Ageism falls into that bucket.

Also the highest rates of suicide for particularly for white males, for example.

Right. Exactly. So that I mean, that's not a a path bearing good fruit either. So what are some practical ways and maybe you can give some of Steiner's practical applications, which you've already laid out a few of them, like what are some of the most practical ways that we can people listening to this can embody the Christ archetype in their life um in the most beneficial way possible?

Yeah, I think the piece that comes to me first when you ask that is is a willingness to be with whatever arises. Knowing that what often arises in our current world is something that feels like loneliness or helplessness um or suffering or uncertainty or anxiety or even terror. And it's causing a lot of people to feel like they don't want to be here and and that all of that leads to a feeling of hopelessness. Um, and and they want it to stop. You know, sometimes I I find people I'm working with saying like, "God, I've worked so hard on myself for so long and it just feels like it keeps getting worse." And um, Steiner has a a verse and at the end of the verse um, he he starts the verse with with something basically saying like, "When I feel my destiny, my destiny finds me. When I feel my star, my star finds me. When I feel my soul, my soul finds me. My soul and the world are one great unity." And then he says something really telling. He says, "Life grows brighter around me, life becomes harder for me, life will be richer within me." So I know that what I often use is what Steiner calls his thought mantras. And his thought mantras are distinct from say the mantras of India, which took place through the use of Sanskrit because the vowel was this beautiful created a feeling life and and was the architect of the feeling life in the universe manifesting that uh, the the Hebrew sounds more sculptural and more consonantal uh, and yeah, sometimes not even having the vowels shown, right? [clears throat] And his picture is that we've we've moved from that level of understanding or groing the world through uh a repetition of a nonsensical sound, right? Like M. So there was a tone and the thought process at that level of development thousands of years ago was was at the level of the tone, but there wasn't any meaning in it at that point in terms of, yes, there's meaning, there's deep meaning in it, but what he means is in terms of the Logos, in terms of the word. And he why he calls his work thought mantras is, for example, the Calendar of the Soul, which is available free online to anyone, gives 52 verses that are thought mantras, one for each week of the year, and they're they're polarized. They're opposite. So each one has its opposite across from it for another part of the year. And they come together at at Easter, and that's the start of the year. And these thought mantras are thought mantras because we've evolved from the capacity to just notice in our thinking what sound does for us and how we connect with spirit beings through sound, to then moving into the life of the word and having word meaning be able to be spoken aloud. And his suggestion is that we're able to live in that, and that that brings us a connection beyond that loneliness and that terror and that uncertainty that that again, this Christ consciousness has actually never been closest to us. The whole reason we feel all of this other is because the Christ consciousness is so close. They they work together. Lucifer and Arman and Christ have always worked in tandem uh throughout all of eternity. They they come together. They're from the highest level of perception. They're friends. It's bizarre to think about, but they they work in a way where one says, "I'm going to tempt in order to um, you know, really test you." If you've ever read uh, "The Nine Faces of Christ," you're familiar with that book?

Yes, I know the book.

Okay. So Eugene Whitworth was a was a pretty high uh pretty awake individual, and he he used uh an individual in order to test Jesus, and Jesus felt like he was just being harangued and torn apart until he slowly started to recognize, "This is actually the greatest teacher who's working with me. The others love me and care for me, but th this individual is setting me to task and I'm growing the highest because of this." So you can see Lucifer and Aramman, if we're working with them in the right way, the idea is actually to redeem them inwardly. That is the redemption point. It's not to get rid of them, and it's certainly not to fight against them. That just makes us more energetically them. Uh, and then we recognize there isn't any them. It's been us the whole time. So stepping along that path can help us move out of this feeling of artificial everything and so busy and what what is the use? Recognize that that's there and and don't fight against that. It gets stronger. What you resist persists. Just be with it and notice it. And then invite this other also to be present without pushing away. So that there is the balance that then exists. It's it's all about the harmonizing. And Steiner has the same picture. He has six basic exercises, and he says, "Do these exercises. They'll protect you from all the other stupid meditative exercises that you've been doing. They'll make sure no harm comes to you as a result of that." Ra has similar.

Yeah. Similar piece. You know, at some point we could talk about those six exercises because they're they really are prophylactic in that way. They protect uh from our our own ignorance uh and from our poor choices.

Wow. Well, would it would it be possible to like quickly summarize them?

Sure.

Or is that too much for?

No, it's funny that you say that because this guy Jared that I work with, and we're doing this thing on um um uh being human in the springtime in in February. Uh, this is actually the the progression that we move through with individuals is the development of living thinking is stage one. Then the development of will is stage two. So a basic exercise like uh turning turning a plant 25 degrees at 12:01 each day. Can you remember to do that? Can you discipline your will? And then after you've done thinking and willing. So act, you know, thinking and behavior or cognition and behavior. The third stage is starting to step into the feeling realm, and can you can you balance can you balance equanimity when you feel sadness? Can you bring joy to that right in that moment and let them both be present almost like two friends and interact together until a third space arises, and that's the middle way, which is found in Buddhism as well as Christianity. This middle way.

Yeah. Spiritual balancing.

Yeah. So the spiritual balancing then takes gives way to uh to a kind of positivity. So for for a month, can you focus entirely on positivity and even turn anything that's which is not into that which is. So for example, the Ten Commandments that that Ross suggests, well, there was some negative Orion influence in that. Anytime there's a thou shalt not, there's there's a sort of a doom and gloom rather than how about this, thou shalt something that's encouraging. Uh, and so the picture is, can I can I turn anything that comes to me? Can I harvest the fruits of that and turn that into something positive, not as a spiritual bypass, but truly authentically.

Right. Feeling what's what's true. Like a picture for that would be, if I'm dealing with a really challenging client and um, I'm just not finding a way through, I look for some little thing that I can appreciate about them authentically and I focus on that thing. And if I can't find that thing, then I have to refer them out because I'm not I'm not doing them a service if I'm not able to find that. So that would be an example of positivity. And then the the last one would be um, openness. Am I able to be open? Uh, and I and I sort of started this whole process with you suggesting, you know, I've never experienced this thing before. It's the weirdest thing I've ever heard of, and I'm open to the possibility that it could exist and that I could experience it. And so that level of openness is actually on a, it's called a big five category psychologically. If you have openness, then you have a tremendous capacity to be a seeker and to grow. The last stage of all that is to tie all of those things together and and work with them basically in your life with everything that you that you come toward, that you're thinking has this quality of life in it, that your will has discipline to it, and that you're you're equanimous in all things, unsued as Ra would say, that you're positive, and you're able to be positive without being like luciferically positive, and then that you're simply open and you harmonize actually those things as the final stage. So that's in a nutshell, that's it.

Oh, that's great. I love those six um different dichotomies of things to focus on as a spiritual adept. It's so it's just so practical and grounded. And um, I love how you said the positive side of things is important that too much control is inherently negative. So let's not just focus on do not, do not, do not, but uh what we should be doing, and that was Jesus's greatest commandments. We're positive. Love God with all your heart. Thou shalt love the Lord your God, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Because built into that is obviously all of the do nots. If you're going to love someone as yourself, then you literally cannot do to them what you would not want done unto you.

And the and the the corollary to that also is pretty beautiful. You know, when when you meet your wife, if you were to look at all the things that thou shalt not, you'd never take the next step in a in a relationship with her. You'd never ask her out on the first date. You're just looking for all the things that aren't working.

No, you're looking for what works, you know, and then what doesn't work arises in the in the sphere of love because the more we love, the more the obstacles to love surface and get to be worked through in the mood of love. And that's what Christ brought.

Oh man, there's so much richness in this uh this framework you've helped us to understand today of these three archetypes. And I'm even thinking it it probably parallels to what the Hindus have as uh the three, you know, Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma. You have creator, sustainer, and destroyer. The god of creation is Brahma. Vishnu is the sustainer. Shiva is the destroyer. Um, I went to a Halloween party a few weeks ago and I dressed up as Shiva, and this guy approaches me and he has these like two four arms hanging out and he's like, "Hey, my brother Shiva." And he was dressed as Vishnu. And we were laughing together and we were like, "Where's Brahma at, man? Where's our third brother?"

He's nowhere.

I It sounds a lot like that's the Yeah. Aramman, Lucifer, Christ. It's like Aramman is the destroyer. That which goes towards separation, destruction.

Yes. Christ the sustainer, the middle path, right? And then um uh Brahma is the creator, which is the luciferic side of like, do whatever, create whatever, be whatever, infinite freedom.

Yep. You know, you have to have that balance between the two.

Yeah. Very much so.

And last time we talked about Sorat.

Interesting.

Uh, we talked about Sorat and the Azoras as as actually being like Christ being in the middle of four four spirit beings. Each one of them trying to tempt a different body. One of them the ego body, the the thinking body, one the feeling body, one the subtle energy body, and one the physical body.

So at some point that might be fun to unpack.

Yeah, because Steiner's work is so all-encompassing and it it really does lend itself to so many other systems like Hinduism, Law of One, Jesus's teachings. Um, we didn't even get into the Zoroastrian parallels. I wanted to touch on that, too. So yeah, we'll have to have you back again for sure.

Yeah. I mean, we could get into the Zend-Avesta and this the like. And and also Yeshua who came in the Essene.

community a hundred years before uh Christ came, before Jesus showed up. Uh, Steiner's picture is that that individual was was a Bodhisattva and an emanation of Buddha, preparing for Jesus to show up to the Essenes so that they knew he was coming and uh, were preparing space uh, and teachings a hundred years earlier.

>> Yeah.

>> Incredible man.

>> Yeah.

>> I gotta, I gotta get into Steiner's work now.

>> Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah. Yeah, if you want a couple of suggestions or references to get you started, I'm happy to happy to do that because that would be just super fun to start riffing with you on how does that interface with, you know, the work you're doing.

>> Yeah.

>> But I think for your, from where you're coming from, I think Christianity as a mystical fact might be a good place to start.

>> I got the audiobook on that one, but I haven't started it yet.

>> Okay.

>> So, I'll definitely do that. Sometimes, sometimes people resonate with it and it's funny, like Steiner can have a title that you're like, "Oh, that's exactly what I want," and then he starts, you know, going on, you're like, "This is not what I want." So, so don't even [laughter].

>> It doesn't resonate, I have another recommendation for you because there's

>> Okay, nice.

>> another one, maybe like from Jesus to Christ, um, but sometimes it's

>> just to start at a particular chapter and move forward from there. Sometimes he can be a little, he can be a little polemic. He can be a little defensive. He can be a little bit, um, like a little bit finger-waggy, a little bit Victorian in short. Um, where he's trying to

>> Okay.

>> you know, and and I'm not interested in hearing him defend his territory. Uh, and he can go on like that for a good portion of a lecture. And so just know that that could, if you're not resonating, it's because I think he's off task. And uh

>> Yeah.

>> get back to the topic, brother. [laughter]

>> Yeah. Yeah. Hey, he's a human like us, I guess, right?

>> Exactly. Exactly. He, I mean, he was defending a lot of turf there. You can only imagine what this guy was trying to come out with at a time when people were just like this. Oh man, I completely resonate with that. I find myself all the time being too polemic in that way and being too defensive of what I'm sharing because I get so much negative energy at me for it and it just naturally puts you into that, "I want to defend what I'm saying."

>> So, I'm going to take some inspiration from Steiner there and just get back to what I'm for and what I'm about, you know.

>> Right. Right. And it's great because, I mean, I got to bring up all the sort of heretical things today and you didn't have to. So, they can they can do it at what they're going to do. [laughter] They can email me.

>> Gotta have you back on more then, man. I can't take all the heresies on myself, you know. [laughter]

>> Come on. Give Give some to this guy.

>> Yeah.

>> Plenty to go around.

>> That's right. Oh, yeah. Definitely. There are people who who don't want to. If they accept one tenet of what you're bringing, that means they've got to look at all the other ones. And that is what they're not even thinking about right now. They're just holding on to this one because, God, if this lets go, the foundation crumbles and who am I?

>> All coming down.

>> It's all coming down. What is the universe? And that's a step in awareness, but it's not a welcome one for many.

>> Yeah. I mean, I didn't enjoy it when I went through it. It was uh existentially horrifying to not have a framework of God or or no cosmology anymore. Just like, "I don't know what anything is anymore." It is very scary, but that's the deconstruction necessary before the reconstruction can happen. It just is.

>> You know, Steiner has a series of of trials. He has a a water trial and an and an air trial and a fire trial. And what you're describing is the air trial, which might be helpful to explore at some point because what those individuals are fearing is the air trial. There is no sense of ground beneath your feet. There is no sense of initiative that's coming out of you and you're just sort of in this limbo state and it is it is terrifying because the only initiative has to come from your inner being and it's not used to doing initiating, it's used to following.

>> Right.

>> And so, no knowing that there is a process that they could move through if they were willing to just bracket their bias for a moment, step into to this air trial as a process, open up the possibility that what you're saying could be possible.

>> It could be radically trans.

>> That's a great point.

>> For many of the folks because a lot of folks are fearing something but they don't have the skillful means and they then nobody showing them a way through. And so if there's a process they can do on their own and and that feels at least somewhat certain to them in the uncertainty, they they'll move forward.

>> And then you then you won't get so much. [laughter]

>> Yeah. Well, you can't do the the spiritual growing for people, you know, they've got to want it themselves.

>> Exactly. Exactly. But the cool thing is they're trying to do it themselves by fighting with you. If they were indifferent, they would be moving.

>> But that's just an effort toward trying to connect. And it's unskillful, but it's there.

>> Yeah, that's true. I often will say, you know, if if at the level of development someone's at where they need me to be their scapegoat, their heretic that they can project all their religious anger at, I'm happy to be your scapegoat. I'll I'll play that role for you and that's my service to you, you know.

>> Yep. Exactly. Well, Edmund, thank you so much for bringing all your wisdom and uh knowledge on the these amazing topics that Steiner has broken down for humanity because they are pretty complex and they there's a high barrier of entry for a lot of people with Steiner's work and you're somebody who's really making it more accessible and just the brilliant way that you are able to articulate it and more more especially what I appreciate about you is how you clearly embody it in the practical realm of let's not just get obsessed with learning all the cool concepts but let's really live them. And so I I just want to say thank you for demonstrating that today as well. And where can people find more about you and the work that you're doing in the world?

>> Yeah. Well, they could the um this beautiful thing I'm doing with a guy named uh Jared at he's he's at be herefarm.com um and being human. We do an online piece where we work with Steiner's. one of his processes that he says is really the the core piece to feel connected and protected around your your movement in the world that deals with how you think and how you feel and how you move. Uh and so we have some cool folks on there coming to join us who are uh, you know, sort of masters in their field. Kyle Kingsberry, Ashanayiah Swami, Gabby Reese, Dell Bigree, Joel Solatin. Uh and so each week we have uh either myself or one of them uh offering and we're either interviewing them or we're doing these practical exercises that we mentioned you and I on this uh on this podcast. Um, yeah, so those are those are probably pieces that I do and my if you want to reach out to me, I think it's in your show notes here, but it can just be 10th wanderer@gmail.com.

>> Nice. Love the email there. That's epic.

>> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah, we'll put uh we'll put all the links for Edmund's work down below so you guys can connect with him. And just want to say a big thanks to you again for coming on the show today, Edmund. And uh we'll have to have you back on for sure for round two.

>> It would it would be my pleasure. It's really enjoyable to talk to you. Thanks, Aaron.

>> Likewise, [music] brother. And uh we hope you were all blessed by this conversation today. And we hope you are ready to take these amazing principles and apply them to your life to help you better [music] love God and love people. And [snorts] we'll see you on the next episode of the Jesus Way podcast. Peace and love.