Slacik Sophia, Mary Magdalena & the divine human being

A path of spiritual integration
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-7557-2050-8
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 188 Seiten

To listen to your heart and live your true self is a venture presenting sometimes a challenge in our fast paced and performance oriented everyday lives. This book offers a sound discussion based on religious-philosophical wisdom, gnostic scriptures, the gospels, the Nag Hammdi scrolls and the antique Greek archetypes bringing forth the eternal tension between the human ego and his soul. For that, Mary Magdalenes gospel shows the seven inner forces and how to overcome those. The Anthropos-Method was consequentially developed presenting a path of spiritual integration towards a divine human being, the child of mankind. Based on many examples, personal experiences and antique wisdom, a practical methodological guide shows how to discover your divinity and realize your self for a joyful and healthy life.  This book is a present for all readers. Regina Auer, Editor It is a wonderful collection of valuable content. For me, a must have. Karin Labner, Awareness-Coach

Born in Austria, Dr. Johannes Slacik owned an award-winning restaurant in Florida when in 2002 he first learned about the gospel of Thomas which induced his religious-philosophical recourse. He studied business economics thereafter and completed an education program to be a practicing psychological and business consultant. During his PhD, his affinity for structure and detail grew. However, his religious-philosophical interests never stopped. With his book SOPHIA, Mary Magdalene & the divine human being. Johannes Slacik combined his life experiences and knowledge of spiritual integration in the Anthropos-Method. He is a senior expert at the Energy Institute at the Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria. His free time is joyfully spent with his wife and son while constantly working on himself trying to gain self realization for an improved spiritual integration. www.johannesslacik-selbsterkenntnis.com

Autoren/Hrsg.

Slacik, Johannes

Leseproben

1. INTRODUCTION
Man knows more than he understands.
Alfred Adler Before the spiritual integration of the soul can be addressed, we must first define what the soul is, or at least what is understood by it. Many religions and philosophies give explanations and definitions, and despite different points of reference (such as Alfred Adler’s approach, which anchors the soul as spirit versus body, or Freud, who recognizes the superego in the soul, or Plato, who ascribes immortality to the soul in the sense of Socrates) there are also commonalities. The soul is the origin of our self, taking a liberal view of Plato’s philosophy, the teachings of Jesus Christ and C. G. Jung’s insights. The “self”, as C. G. Jung put it, is equivalent to the concept of the soul as used in this book. Accordingly, the soul or anima is something supersensible, intangible, yet comprehensible, subconscious and is, in essence, the self from which we were born. Here the term points to something supernatural, eternally existing, which lies far from all that is physical or material, and accordingly cannot be confused with anything physical. Some authors such as the psychologists Alfred Adler, C. G. Jung, and Theodore Flournoy, but also Goethe or Nietzsche, ascribe “God-likeness” to the soul or the spiritual condition. Some gospels, such as the Gospel according to Thomas (3) or according to Luke (17:21), also point to “the divine in you.” In this sense, Far Eastern wisdoms like Buddhism and in particular Taoism are also receptive to this divinity in oneself – in the self. If we now consider the self – our soul –, then the question inevitably arises as to the meaning of our existence, what the soul wants, i.e., the self that is embodied in us here on earth, and how we can ultimately satisfy the requirement of spiritual integration of the soul in order to be happy. How can we be true to ourselves in our daily lives and realize ourselves despite the difficulties and challenges of everyday life? To realize our self means to realize our soul – to give expression to our soul. Many ancient writings, wisdoms and reflections have already dealt precisely with this core issue of wo/man. Thus, the wisdom of Jesus Christ, transmitted through the gospels of his apostles, also aims at living a happy life. He also taught us how to achieve this. Unfortunately, the Church, with its pronounced and millennia-old claim to power, took away many, of the texts and the wisdom that already existed in society at that time. Knowledge was systematically abridged, withheld and even completely erased from published writings, including the Bible. Many texts were burned and the preservation of texts was sometimes even punished by burning at the stake. Knowledge is power and politics, and some religious leaders, such as all historical popes or agakhans in Islam, know this and have reacted to it since Antiquity. The sum of the old wisdoms disappeared and what remained were texts with only half their original expressiveness and half-truths. No-one can make sense of them, let alone use them to improve their life. There were some prophets and spiritualists who did not need these texts and the wisdom hidden in them to discover the same knowledge with similar results, such as Marguerite Porete, Francis of Assisi or Teresa of Ávila. Some of these historical figures were burned at the stake by the Inquisition, some hid and lived and taught in secret. For teaching was important to these people. Those who have grasped and comprehended such all-encompassing wisdom must teach and make their contribution to redeem the world, one would hope. If we should all be one and belong together, then the wise wo/man must teach the ignorant in order to care for the common good of all and thus, in turn, for their own good. This would be in line with the principle of self-preservation and, more abstractly, follow the love of the soul. History hands down to us insights and wisdoms, which are guidance and help us interpret our individual access to the soul and thus to recognize the soul once again. I say “to recognize again” because we are before birth, and also still as babies, one with our soul, and because this connection, according to neurological and psychological research, detaches at a certain degree of consciousness of one’s self within the first six to 15 months, so that we can live consciously with our senses. Without separation from the soul, life in earthly consciousness becomes impossible. For in the space of the soul everything is One and everything is eternal and interconnected. There is only what C. G. Jung and other psychologists of his time described as the collective unconscious. This means that the soul, our soul, our self, feels infinitely at ease in this state, but cannot express itself and de facto cannot live. However, the reintegration of the soul is as crucial as the separation from it. Here, there are two possibilities: 1) Through death we return to our original state, allowing a reconnection. 2) Through an increase in consciousness, which we achieve through much reflection, meditation, discipline and of course awareness, and with which we can recognize our original spiritual condition, a reconnection becomes possible. For it is only through this reconnection that we are able to recognize who we really are and what we should experience or do here on earth. But this means a change of consciousness in our lives. Jesus said: “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3). Happiness in this life, so to speak, lies in our self, in our soul ... and access to it is available only to ourselves ... within us. The religious-philosophical journey that sets the framework for this book describes the path of spiritual integration of the soul. On the one hand, from the perspective of theosophy, which approaches occultism as an epistemological, spiritually structured foundation. On the other hand, the theosophical world view is extended by the clearly more recent anthroposophical perspective, in order to be able to grasp the holistic, i.e., divine human being theoretically and practically. The collected insights and personal experiences described in this book ultimately help to show and describe the theoretical guidance in a way that is practical and can be implemented in today’s life choices. From the ancient Greek theosophical point of view, the ancient interpretation of the word anthropos, which means human being, was already based on the fact that the latter seeks their origin in the heights of life. The one who looks to the heights here also defines the human being.1 In order to describe and recognize this human being striving for higher things, there is theosophy (theo = Greek for God and sophie = wisdom), i.e., wisdom of God or divine wisdom, which aims to explain where wo/man comes from and where wo/man is going. Unlike occultism, which explains the transcendence of wo/man together with their occult experiences (see shamanism or clairvoyance, esotericism in general et cetera) outside the physical body, theosophy reveals the spiritual process. According to this process, wo/man strives for higher consciousness and must consciously go beyond themselves in order to realize their being. This mode of cognition is different from the occult practical approach. Theosophy, however, especially through its structural possibility, offers the possibility to describe the journey towards a higher, divine human being, in comparison to occultism, which can enable wo/man to see, hear or feel things in order to experience the primordial reasons of our existence that cannot be grasped with ordinary consciousness. Occultism, therefore, has no structure or explanatory patterns or potential, but can only be experienced and not wholly described in its transcendence. However, theosophy recognizes these occult phenomena and specifies, differentiates and structures insights thus acquired, but specifically in the respective cultural and linguistic context. And it is exactly with regard to this issue that various religions differ from each other, because most cultures and languages interpret and describe occult messages and insights differently. The starting point of the development of religions is therefore theosophy. However, Christianity and Islam are most differentiated in the interpretation of theosophical findings and clearly depart from theosophy in their own dogmatic religion. Here it can be seen that the structural interpretation of theosophy has its limits when compared to occultism. But precisely at the point of interpretations, where theosophy splits into religions, one can also re-unify the religions and find common denominators and epistemological phenomena to elevate the consciousness of wo/man in a generally valid way. This makes theosophy comprehensible to common sense, if one makes an effort, as Rudolf Steiner writes. In other words, it is not only the occultist who can understand, but through abstraction also the theosophist and thus the non-transcended and, in essence, ordinary wo/man. As Rudolf Steiner aptly writes: “If occultism strives to become theosophy, it will have the aspiration, and will be able to achieve it in a certain sense, to speak to every human heart, to every human soul.” This, dear reader, is precisely the approach explained in this book and supported by practical examples. Thus, finally, from theosophy (focusing on the divine, supersensible) can be derived anthroposophy (focusing on human, conscious experience of the supersensible soul condition of one’s self)....