No problem.Federica wrote: ↑Sun Jun 19, 2022 11:26 amAshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 11:51 pm Basically I was trying to say, don't worry if the details are hard to follow now, especially in my posts (because I include a bunch of details that are not particularly helpful). It's not a reflection on your lack of ability to keep up, i.e. it's not "foolishness", but simply on the nature of what we are exploring. Even when I thought I had grasped many concepts in this stream, I later found out they had quite a different significance than what I had thought from an earlier perspective.
Also, I didn't realize I had already shared the Barfield quote.
That’s much easier to read, thanks for the thought, and for clarifying Ashvin! To be fair about the Barfield quote, I am not sure you already shared it to me specifically, you probably didn’t. It’s just not a new quote for me on this forum.
re: Barfield quote - I will just say here, from our hundreds of interactions on this forum, and our own personal experience, it never hurts to be reminded of the thinking-perceiving polarity, because the intellect simply cannot grasp it for very long. Thinking inevitably gets set up against perceiving, experiencing, awareness, is-ness, etc. People tend to feel "dualism" is simply a metaphysical theory which we can choose to accept or reject, but really it's an ingrained mental habit which has swamped Western culture for hundreds of years now. It will always resurface in our psyche, so all we can do is remain vigilant and remind ourselves not to divide them as much as possible when considering any new line of inquiry.
Sure, I will try to keep this in mind.On a side note, about the nature of the exchanges entertained here. Having not the least idea who you all are, what your contexts are (not exactly accurate anymore, now that Shu mentioned age, and your profession, but almost) and having no clue either what brought you to philosophy or spirituality, the only indicators I can navigate by are your ideas - which I am learning - and then the tone and intention through which they are conveyed, to the extent these are transparent to me in a language that, if it wasn’t enough, is unevenly shared. For example, I use the word ‘foolishness’, still I’m not quite sure how it lands on your side. It's a dead precipitation on my plate even more than on yours, if you will.
For myself I find it all quite interesting, still these are well known traps inherent to this kind of correspondence. Now I have no idea what Initiates can gather from thinking imaginatively about it, but for me, all I can make sense of is in your words, so yes, informal language would be best : )
AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 11:51 pm The higher spiritual capacities of the human individual have been known for many millennia by the Mystery schools and their Initiates. The latter really founded all the major religions and philosophies - for ex. Krishna, Confucius, Lao-Tsu, Zarathustra, Hermes, Buddha, Moses, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus. They have been preserved in various esoteric streams from the time of Jesus, and Steiner was an Initiate of one such stream who also integrated the Wisdom traditions with Western philosophy and science in a comprehensive way. I don't want to bog you down in more details about the various epochs right now. Suffice to say, spiritual (cognitive) evolution follows a rhythmic pattern where later epochs recapitulate earlier ones (not repeat, since there is truly novel progression). What was experienced mostly subconsciously and instinctively is experienced more consciously. What was revealed from without is produced from within. After considering this, you may start to notice how much in modern culture expresses things familiar from ancient Egypt. I have lived near DC for some time now but just recently began to consider how much of its design imitates Egyptian architecture. Which goes to show how much what we know in a living way feeds back into what we can perceive and take notice of. Much more can be said on this topic, but we can leave that for a later time - I will provide a graph from Barfield for now.
Alright. May I say this sounds slightly mindboggling (another word I’m throwing in, let’s see how it bounces back).
Just please tell me the next slide is not going to point to another galaxy, because it’s something in that fashion I think I read around, somewhere at the intersection of ancient Egypt, clairvoyance, spirituality and present day world order, if I remember correctly.
Well, on second thought, what major difference could that even make at this point... : )
It's always a fine line when people ask about these things - I will never distort the truth of the matter as I know it, or completely blow off the question, but it is probably wise not to throw in too many details without the holistic context. Even that graph was too much, it seems, looking back on it and your response. When we speak of the logical structure underlying both outer and inner experience, we mean it very literally - there is a lawful relation underlying absolutely every experience we can imagine. Others have commented on this particular pattern before:
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." (Marx)
But the above is very abstract and broad. If there is a lawful structure to historical and cultural progression, then we should be able to discern it with precise detail, if we avoid inserting dualities and discontinuities which block the capacity of human reason.
Speaking of galaxies, here's another favorite quote of mine. It's important to remember that spatial dimension as most people currently experience is intellectualized Time-experience. This is an ontological conclusion, but I think we can all agree on it for purposes of discussion. If not, I am happy to provide more argument.
[Schopenhauer and Schelling] did not see that intellectualized time is space, that the intelligence works upon the phantom of duration, not on duration itself, that the elimination of time is the habitual, normal, commonplace act of our understanding, that the relativity of our knowledge of the mind is a direct result of this fact, and that hence, to pass from intellection to vision, from the relative to the absolute, is not a question of getting outside of time (we are already there); on the contrary, one must get back into duration and recapture reality in the very mobility which is its essence.
- Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind