Federica wrote: ↑Sat Jul 16, 2022 10:46 pm
...
Hi Federica, thank you for your thoughts. There're so many things to elaborate here that I'm worried this will turn into another long post.
Federica wrote: ↑Sat Jul 16, 2022 10:46 pm
Maybe he had reached right at the center of the sphere, while maybe the bridging of outer and inner life you point to consists of a partial dive into the sphere - That’s the easy, rationalizing wayout I’m tempted to take. Which nonetheless matches the idea of a death engine operating a gradual process, and not a one-time awakening, a process that remains partial across many incarnations.
Here I'll leave it to you to think about what it could be if one was to go right into the center after death. Could we even conceive of such a state?
Federica wrote: ↑Sat Jul 16, 2022 10:46 pm
Are imaginative thinking and ego-death the same thing? Is the subconscious the ugly buffer that keeps our inner life dual between the life as dream character and the life as co-creator of the dream landscape, so that, as we uncover it, life is sucked out of our ego automatically? I don’t know. Well, there must be more than thinking training, for you to call for a mental and emotional preparation for death before death…
Personally I don't prefer the term ego-death, because it is loaded with a lot of misunderstandings in today's popular spirituality. Probably the worst illusion is for one to imagine that just because they have glimpsed some aspects of their dream character from a higher perspective, then they are no longer an ego (an "I"). The ego never dies. The "I" is experienced differently at different levels. For example, at the highest level presently accessible to us, the "I" is known in Eastern terminology as Atma, in Western terminology it's called the Spirit-Man. There's only one Atma for all humanity. It's the archetypal Man (not to be imagined as Earthly human figure) going through evolutionary development in the Solar environment. So through Initiation the ego doesn't die and disappear. As long as we operate within the sensory spectrum, we always have an Earthly ego. It can be said that the Earthly ego is how the higher self experiences itself when it recognizes its self-image within the bodily complex. In this sense, what must die is not the ego but all the forces which pull the ego off-center. In religious terms this has been known simply as 'sin'. And in this sense, you're quite correct to speak of the ugly buffer.
The main point is that the ego doesn't die but it conceives the possibility to gradually die for its lower life which simply perpetuates the bouncing around, which brings temporary satisfaction when desires are fulfilled but one still remains hollow afterwards. Maybe it will be helpful to remind here that we don't know the "I" as such - as some pure element of reality. We know the "I" through the way it thinks, feels and acts. If one asks "what is the 'I'", we can't point at something and say "That's it". Instead we must take the whole panorama of thoughts, feelings, actions along time, and say "The 'I' is the invisible center of gravity around which all this revolves". Thus the center doesn't die but we can die for certain ways in which the flow swirls and instead cultivate more harmonious, more symphonic flows. When the nature of thoughts, feelings and actions change, then the self-image also changes, the invisible "I" knows itself differently.
Now let's return to the topic of 'how' is this magnetic oscillation tamed and thus aspects of the higher being can be brought to consciousness. The short answer is that all kinds of ascent towards higher orders of being are attained through corresponding forms of concentration of spiritual activity. Here concentration shouldn't be mistaken for immobile stagnation. We can think of it thus: our thinking, feeling are normally in certain rhythmic relationships. As I write this I remembered that years ago the idea of biorhythms was in fashion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorhythm_(pseudoscience) Of course, reality is much more complicated than that, the rhythms are not governed by simple fixed day periods but it's still practically the case that we swing between different proportions, where our will dominate or our thinking, or our feelings. We swing around these like the magnetic pendulum. Concentration doesn't aim to bring these rhythms to a halt. Just as we can't exist on Earth without breathing and circulation, so these rhythms of thinking, feeling and willing are completely natural. Yet through concentration we can find the harmonious center of these oscillations, such that they can alternate musically instead of fighting each other. But there's also another aspect to it, which is more difficult to explain because there isn't anything from our ordinary life directly comparable to it.
Some time ago I made a quick
visualization through which I wanted to illustrate what we're here speaking of (if the visualization doesn't work properly - it requires working 3D hardware -
this prerendered version can be used).
Clearly, all this should be taken as symbolic and not as picture of the literal experience (which would make it look as if I'm speaking of inducing psychedelic visuals).
The first part of the animation symbolizes our swinging of attention when, for example, we try to meditate. We're thrown around on the waves of memories, hopes, dreams, problems, fears. At our stage of development concentration is an act of thinking. We don't know yet how to concentrate feeling or will. So that's why inner work begins with concentration of the mind. This is symbolized by the gradual spiraling of the spotlight into the center.
Initially this looks like quite boring activity, it's like we have forsaken the richness of inner life for the stagnation of a point. But this is only temporary. When we manage to prolong this state of concentration (the ideal and feeling atmosphere of this concentration are of utmost importance. It's not all the same if we concentrate on just any one thought-image.) something very specific begins to occur. It can be remotely compared with the tingling sensations when a limb goes to sleep, except that here it starts from a point of concentration which we normally feel in the head and gradually expands to encompass the whole head space. Later this experience spreads even further. Yet this sensation is only for an analogy. In reality these tingling sensations are really
thought-like.
It's difficult to reach understanding for this simply because it is not something our ordinary life presents us with. But we can try to approach it through analogies. One way to think of it is by picturing that these tingling sensations are like potential thoughts that we can think but it is like we feel intuitively what the meaning of that thought will be even without unpacking it into a verbal sequence. This can probably be roughly compared with the techniques for fast reading. As it is known, the speed of reading is limited mainly by the speed of inner verbalization as we read the text in our mind. The techniques of fast reading are rooted into developing the skill to suppress the inner verbalization. It's a matter of smoothly gliding our gaze through the text - one might say, in slightly defocused manner, without going through the jerky jumps of attention from word to word (usually called 'soft gaze') - and gradually we begin to feel how we simply see the meaning, in a way similar to the way we grasp the meaning of a picture. In a similar (but not identical) manner, through concentration we learn to withhold the inner unpacking of thoughts in linear symbolic sequences and instead we begin to grasp this head thought-volume as pictorial meaning. It's important not to mistake this with intellectual interpretation of inner imagery. That's why I keep saying that the psychedelic state has nothing to do with what is here described. In visionary states we're flooded with imagery that our intellect tries to interpret with its thoughts. Here instead, through our concentration we expand the spotlight of our spiritual activity, so to speak, and discover a thought-organism, of which normally we think only mineral fragments.
For anyone who has made intimate observations of the thinking process, it soon becomes clear that we know the meaning of our thoughts even before we have finished pronouncing them. This is different compared to listening to external speech where we must perceive the sounds in order to connect the corresponding meaning. But when we think it is the other way around. We weave in meaning, we intuitively navigate the ideal space. Our verbal thoughts are only artforms through which we incarnate the meaning into concrete symbols. The goal of concentration is to learn to weave consciously through meaning even without unpacking it in sequences of words.
I'll allow myself to share a personal example here. Most of the time when I'm to write a post here, if I have the chance, I try to start with meditation. Usually I focus on the question and simply contemplate its meaning. Ideally, this question shouldn't be taken as something isolated but as something which emerges from a living soul on the other side. A soul which evolves along a unique path and reaches the position to ponder such questions. This soul feels certain void that must be filled. I try to thoughtfully feel this soul landscape in the mood of prayer, try to feel the meaning which can complement the landscape - in other words, not what I want to say but what the soul
needs. Speaking figuratively, if there are concave forms in the landscape they need to be filled with convex meaning. These forms of meaning stream into their complementaries. One such form may need one or several paragraphs to be put into words. With the time on this forum I began to sense approximately how much words I'll have to use to unpack these forms. Usually these forms stream in the matter of seconds but through their felt density I can quickly say to myself "Man, that will be a long post again".
I would like to point out that this process is not something extraordinary. It is actually what happens all the time, that's how everyone unpacks their innate chatter. The difference is that in the course of development we begin to gain consciousness of these processes and even learn how to navigate them.
So the basic point of the animation is that through concentration, once we cease the linear unpacking of thoughts, we begin to feel as flashes paired with meaning, all the things that we may be thinking but that we don't need to verbalize. Gradually these flashes prove to be not random but they follow certain inner geometry, inner soul curvatures. This inner geometry and dynamics is really what higher cognition reveals to us. As a simplified example, we may perceive in this way our desire to go on a vacation but on the other hand we perceive also certain family duties. These two interfere like the two domains of the Mandelbrot set and in their interaction a whole multitude of flashes of possible thoughts are perceived. In our ordinary cognition we're simply experiencing inner conflict of desires and duties and we keep chatting with ourselves about it. In Imagination we perceive this conflict as actual interference of soul processes, that may extend beyond our personal sphere. Yet these processes are not something mechanical. They are pieces of our own being - a being that we barely know from our ordinary life.
Now after this, one may think that the sooner we get rid of verbal thought, the better. But this is incorrect. We should always remember that our life consists of inner rhythms, alternations of states of consciousness. Every state has its proper place. It would be very wrong to imagine that we should all transition to higher cognition ASAP. This is not how it works. This would be like suggesting that everyone should be sleepwalking. Our normal consciousness (perceiving and thinking in concepts) is in its proper place when we interact with the sensory spectrum and it will be so for much more time to come. Delving into the higher forms of consciousness should happen in the proper time, they shouldn't be mixed with our worldly activities, just like we shouldn't be sleepwalking. This however doesn't mean that the normal cognition won't be changing and becoming upright, so to speak. In this sense, we haven't even found the true power of spoken word yet (for this reason it's my personal opinion that techniques as fast reading shouldn't be undertaken as one-sided ideal). As crazy as it may sound, in the future, speech should attain, what from present perspective may seem as, magical powers. Today we're tragically careless in our speech but in the future, rude, ugly words will act like poison in the etheric world and for example plants will wither in these conditions. On the other hands, words that express the good, the harmonious, will act like fertilizer for life processes, flowers will bloom. It is not the sound vibrations themselves that have such effect but the fact that when our thoughts, feelings and will are united, our spiritual activity ripples through all worlds. Actually, the garden that suffers first from our ugly words is our own body. Some of the diseases from which we suffer are caused by the cacophonic waves that we spread in our organism through disorganized thoughts and speech.
I once shared the following metaphor with Ashvin.
Our meditations are like launching these toys. The longer we keep concentrated the more altitude we gain. Then on our way down we begin to unpack the dense meaning into thought sequences. It is important to understand the nature of these dynamics because otherwise, especially in our early explorations, as soon the thought-field begins to expand around our point of concentration, our intellect is like "Wow! That's amazing!" and we're immediately back to our linear cognition. We should learn to speak with ourselves. Our intellect says "But this is so interesting, I want to unpack it!" Then the wiser being in us should respond "Don't worry, you'll unpack it on the way down. As a matter of fact, the longer you stay focused, the more you'll have for unpacking later. So it's in your own best interest to keep concentrated for a while."
Another illustration we could make, can be linked to the faces of Deep MAL. As said, when we pass through the point of concentration, our conscious volume begins to expand again and within this volume we find also our body. Yet this volume is thought-like. So we're not conscious simply of bodily sensations. The face is especially rich part of the body to experience in this way. Most of the time throughout the day we're not very conscious of our mimics, grimaces, smiles and frowns. They are like semi-automatic expressions of our soul life. When we gain the consciousness of the head we also become more conscious of our face and it indeed begins to feel as a mask that portrays our soul life. But these sensations are not merely somatic. The face is experienced from the side of the soul forces which are active through it. It looks like the face is weaved out of flashes of our inner life. It's like it becomes a gallery of our soul life. We begin to grasp traits of our character which run like force lines, like threads and stitch together snapshots of our life.
This is something to keep in mind not only about the face but about higher cognition as a whole. The force currents of our soul are grasped in their temporal dimension. In our ordinary consciousness we think of memory as snapshots of experiences that are, well, in the past. But as soon as we approach Imaginative cognition Time becomes something organic. Think of the growing tip of a plant. In our ordinary consciousness it is like we consider only the tip to be real, while everything else to be only a floating memory of the past. When we pass through the pinhole, Time becomes something different to us. It is like our life is an organic being spread before us. It is very difficult to convey this because it doesn't match the intuitions we have from living in fragmented snapshots of Time. As you said before when we were speaking of Time, ordinary memory feels much like floating imagination. It's only in our thoughts. Only the present state seems substantial. But when consciousness expands through the point of concentration, it is precisely this substantial reality that fills our world. Time becomes a living organism for us. It's roots, stalk, leaves exist simultaneously and no one part seems less real than the others.
Here's another visualization.
It's taken from the Electric Sheep screensaver (
here's some video capture of it) which evolves fractal flames.
This may remind you of your teacup carousel metaphor. Our ordinary life metamorphoses through states of being which can be thought of as the focused part in the center. But this part is what it is only because it is embedded as an organ in the Time organism (which seems to be subconscious from our ordinary state). In other words, we can't understand our present state in isolation, just like we can't understand a leaf in isolation. And herein lies the beauty of evolution - to understand ourselves as we are now, we need to set on a journey that will lead us to understand the whole Cosmos - in fact - to become the Cosmos. The human being makes sense only when it's encompassed in the full context of the Time organism. Every momentary state of being is like a specific holographic perspective of the whole Time Being of the Cosmos.
Much like gears, these rhythmic processes are in certain musical ratios. In certain sense, gaining higher cognition consists into attuning the gear ratios, which are currently out of sync. I tried to hint at this with the post to Jim
here. Today our thoughts, feelings and actions are quite dissonant with respect to the Music of the Spheres. Imagine being in a noisy café, speaking to a friend. When we focus on the conversation, we live in a meaningful bubble of communication, while everything around us forms background noise. In a similar sense, the consciousness of modern man is like a noisy café, where we understand only our own thoughts, desires, actions. Everything else is background noise. Consciousness expands when we begin to develop interest in living the Divine Life. This demands to attune ourselves to the depth rhythms, to make our Earthly activity self-similar to the Cosmic development.
Here's a picture from a draft for an essay I intended to write.
This presents a hint about the way our understanding about the soul organs (chakras) should transform. The picture of the soul organs as glowing orbs along the spine is fully justified yet it stands as a hinderance for modern man. The reason is that once again we secretly assume the third-person perspective which looks at the human being from the outside. Today the soul organs have to be discovered in their inner reality. The image above is like a third-person view of the funnel from the previous animation. When the soul organs are developed they form this depth axis of our spiritual being. Here 'axis' shouldn't be taken as strictly geometric extension in space. In deeper meditation the soul organs can be experienced like concentric spheres within spheres, which in turn are directly related with the Cosmic Spheres. Through the axis we approach the living understanding that our Spirit springs from the Center of All and manifests through the Time layers. In various occult images we can see man depicted as inverted tree, where his roots are in the Sun, while the branches one Earth. This is really how it feels like when something like the animation above becomes experiential fact. We feel how our spirit dips down through the layers of destiny (the heart world), through the larynx organ where our thinking gestures are formed, into the head organ where everything assumes pictorial form and finally we dip our spiritual activity in our hands, through which we reach into the delaminated Cosmic Imagination. The fact that the hands proceed from spiritual activity may sound strange but it may be helpful to remember that we can think with our hands too. That's what people born deaf are doing, who think in sign language.
That's a lot of material to take in a few paragraphs but I just wanted to trace a general feeling for the depth axis, which is in my opinion probably the most important thing that modern man should begin to gain consciousness of. The takeaway from all this is that concentration of spiritual activity is the means through which the depth layers are brought in harmony. Of course it is not a matter of mere technique. We need to work on all fronts at the same time. We need control over our cognition but we also need work on our moral feelings and our actions. It is pointless to try to concentrate if our inner life is torn apart by conflicting desires. These are the larger gears which through us around.