Essay: Beyond the Flat M@L

[Federica]

Ashvin,
I see that you are doing your best to help me square the circle. Circles just can't be squared but I really appreciate the gesture.

May I ask, what aspects of the relevant posts do you feel are the 'square' and 'circle' here?

I have some more work left before I can properly answer that.

[Federica]

Ashvin,
I see that you are doing your best to help me square the circle. Circles just can't be squared but I really appreciate the gesture.

May I ask, what aspects of the relevant posts do you feel are the 'square' and 'circle' here?

I have some more work left before I can properly answer that.

I've been struggling a lot with the n-times"stop the free fall now" vs. "maybe put it on the side, actually don't rush it just yet" type of seemingly irreconcilable messages. That's been 'advanced' work for me. Not the ideas in themselves. But now it's OK, I could wrap my head around that.

[AshvinP]

May I ask, what aspects of the relevant posts do you feel are the 'square' and 'circle' here?

I have some more work left before I can properly answer that.

I've been struggling a lot with the n-times"stop the free fall now" vs. "maybe put it on the side, actually don't rush it just yet" type of seemingly irreconcilable messages. That's been 'advanced' work for me. Not the ideas in themselves. But now it's OK, I could wrap my head around that.

I'm glad you are resolving it on your own. As you can imagine, esoteric spiritual practice is a highly individualized endeavor, as it should be to engender inner freedom. To give someone really specific advice like "do this exercise now, do that one later, stop the exercises and study" or anything similar, would be as irresponsible as a doctor giving tailored medicinal and nutritional advice without having spent a lot of time with the patient. So I hope that's not what it sounds like I am doing. I just want to point out various broad conceptual considerations, which will integrate into a more holistic tapestry over time, even if it's not evident at first, and perhaps the most general counsel which will be helpful for anyone. From there, our own trial and error and living feedback from the rhythmic alternation of meditative and sensory-intellectual life, which it sounds like you are already receiving and discerning, will be most helpful

On that note, I just came across yet another lecture which has something directly relevant to offer on the topic of 'rushing' or not rushing, as the case may be

The essence of Rosicrucian training may be described in two words: true self-knowledge. The Rosicrucian pupil has to distinguish two things, not merely theoretically but practically, so that they become part of his everyday life. There are two forms of self-knowledge — the lower form, called by the Rosicrucian pupil “self-mirroring”, which should serve to overcome the lower self, and the higher form of self-knowledge which is born out of self-renunciation.
...
You can get out of the habit of self-admiration by a particular method which can be practised whenever you have five minutes for it. You must start from the principle that all characteristics are one-sided; you must learn to recognise in what respects yours are one-sided and then try to balance them. This principle may not amount to much in theory, but in practice it is highly effective. If you are industrious, you must ask yourself whether your activity may not be wrongly applied. Quickness, too, is one-sided; it needs to be supplemented by careful deliberation. Every quality has its polar opposite; you should cultivate its opposite and then try to harmonise the two extremes. For example, make haste slowly; be quick and yet deliberate; deliberate and yet not slow. Then the pupil will begin to grow beyond himself. All this is not part of meditation, but must be acquired alongside it.
...
It is by attention to small details that this harmony can be achieved. If your tendency is not to let anyone finish what he is saying, you must keep a watch on yourself and make up your mind that for six weeks you will keep silent, as far as possible, when someone else is talking. Then you must accustom yourself to speak neither too loudly nor too softly. Things such as this, which are generally not thought of, contribute essentially to inner self-development, and the more attention you pay to quite insignificant characteristics, the better it will be. If you try not only to acquire certain moral, intellectual or emotional qualities, but to get rid of some external habit, this will be particularly effective. It is a question not so much of investigating your inner self as of endeavouring to perfect the qualities which you have not yet fully developed, and to complement those you already have by cultivating their polar counterparts.

[AshvinP]

I must admit to struggling to understand where you were going throughout this post. It was only when I got to your very last sentence that a few of the threads came together.

So we have:
"However, a necessary condition for the serene state to be a conscious state is that when thinking is re-engaged, the serene state can be brought into memory and reconstructed to a degree by thinking."
vs
"The question is whether the spiritual forces that explain the past state are brought to consciousness in our present state."

Is not being "brought to consciousness" equivalent to "reconstructed to a degree by thinking"?

Perhaps we can try to dimly conceptualize the superimposed Time-rhythms which constitute the 'now' as follows. The reason we experience linear Time-flow as we do now is because there are periods of 'blackness' in our experience, as Cleric referenced in the initial post - "It seems that nothing happened there, that we went through darkness. Probably the only thing we can recollect is that we spent time in that darkness". As soon as we endeavor to move our experience into qualities beyond the 'present moment', we must venture into increasingly grayed out pictures, dim memories. Eventually we reach a time in childhood where it plunges into complete blackness. Likewise, if we try to picture our soul-experience in upcoming hours and days, to the extent we are not simply extrapolating routine daily acts we engage, we gray out into blackness. When the Light of the 'now' seems to encompass different inner qualities, while others fade into grayness/blackness, we have the sense of linear time flow. This contrast between the present 'lightness' of the now and the surrounding blackness permeates all experience.  

We experience it in the contrast between, not only temporal relations like prenatal and postnatal existence, night and day, waking and sleeping (also at the collective pole, like prehistory and history), but also spatial relations like inner experience and outer perception, our immediate surroundings and far distant lands, the surface of the Earth and deep outer space. The similarity of these relations shouldn't be treated as metaphors - there is a direct link between the blackness of our inner volume and the blackness of outer space (which is blue during the day), as the former modulates all outer perception. Even secular science of GR tells us that, when we look out into the depths of outer space, we are peering into relatively 'faster' Time-rhythms. Because modern science is one-sided, it ignores the correspondence of this with our inner world of spirit-soul-body activity. It ignores that our nervous system, rhythmic system (blood and air), glandular system, metabolic system, all possess forces functioning according to distinct relational Time-rhythms and it fails to make the connection between that and relative Time-experience in the outer perceptual world. 

What is the soul significance of darkness or blackness? It's the thought of uncertainty and associated feelings - dread, fear, anxiety, etc (or sometimes an unknowing peace and comfort). Our experience of Time-flow is a direct manifestation of how much and how well we know, in the deep, living sense, the ideal principles and laws of the world which allow us to remember-anticipate its inner movements. The intellectual soul evolved to bring greater remembrance-anticipation to humanity of this inner dynamic, to more holistically encompass the nested Time-rhythms of our Being with our cognition, but in the modern age it has separated the inner-outer poles of existence so far from one another that they are practically felt as unrelated. It endeavored to 'tame' the darkness and reduce the fear by fitting anything and everything about the Earth and Cosmos into its tiny thought-marbles, settling for the bare minimum of light it could shed. The ontological concept of 'linear time' and existential questions which presuppose such a concept - "was I conscious or unconscious, thinking or not thinking, at this particular moment in time?" - are examples of that. Now the darkness/fear is creeping back up as the thought-marbles simply don't shed enough light on the inner dynamics.

What if the Light of cognition permeated the spatio-temporal blackness so that it was increasingly One with what we know as the 'lightness' of the present moment, the 'now'? This is the goal of the 2nd approach, which we often refer to as 'spiraling' the poles of existence together, bridging the continuity of thinking Consciousness between sleeping and waking, death and life, Cosmos and Earth, inner and outer. Of course it is a very gradual and effortful approach, but even the first steps in this approach will reveal to us the inherent meaninglessness of framing our evolving existence in terms of linear sequential moments of experience. When it comes to existential questions of our Being, we shouldn't expect such a framing to yield any meaningful answers, because it is only an artifact of the dualized intellect. The 1st approach is to practically give up at this point and say, 'I can be perfectly happy, within my merely personal limits, living in fleeting moments of Oneness and waiting for death to bring all the deeper answers', while the 2nd approach points to how we can experience new thinking skills which expand our personal sphere of interests and our living knowledge out into the higher-order Time-rhythms of the Cosmos which are always modulating the linear intellect.

When the Light of the 'now' seems to encompass different inner qualities, while others fade into grayness/blackness, we have the sense of linear time flow. This contrast between the present 'lightness' of the now and the surrounding blackness permeates all experience.

That is very useful. it is possible to have some understanding of that, there are levels. Even if one cannot experience that perception, like I can't, it's still possible to have some level of understanding, by making the internal gesture that is described here. By trying, even if one does not sense it, it becomes a potentially accessible experience. Not as wishful thinking, but as a seeing. Of course, if one is skeptical that will never happen.

This was one of the most useful posts I ever read here.

Thanks, Federica, for the high praise on such a condensed summary!

I can't take much credit, because it really borrows on many concepts already employed by Cleric in various essays/posts. The nested Time-rhythms come from his TC spectrum essay. What I called the 'lightness of the now' is what he has referred to as the 'aperture' of consciousness in various places, for ex. here. And of course much of it can also be found in Steiner's work.

If anything, I would say this simply reflects my growing ability to grasp a certain wholeness of various concepts which have been employed previously. The fact is, even if someone feels the above is understood pretty well, that understanding probably won't last very long. Modern humans like to assume their capacities are the best they can possibly be, especially the memory capacity. But actually our memory is terrible. Or, rather, our intellectual memory serves its function well but we invest in with abilities it simply can't fulfill. We could even say the concepts of calendar and clock time are ways in which the intellectual soul has spread its concepts over the inner-outer darkness to alleviate anxiety with minimal amounts of light. Then it forgets what it had done and starts thinking of minutes, hours, days, years, etc. as actual entities existing independently of our cognitive life.

We will keep defaulting to that forgetfulness until we begin evolving our creative thinking skills so that our soul experience naturally resonates with archetypal, holistic Ideas up the TC spectrum.

[Federica]

Perhaps we can try to dimly conceptualize the superimposed Time-rhythms which constitute the 'now' as follows. The reason we experience linear Time-flow as we do now is because there are periods of 'blackness' in our experience, as Cleric referenced in the initial post - "It seems that nothing happened there, that we went through darkness. Probably the only thing we can recollect is that we spent time in that darkness". As soon as we endeavor to move our experience into qualities beyond the 'present moment', we must venture into increasingly grayed out pictures, dim memories. Eventually we reach a time in childhood where it plunges into complete blackness. Likewise, if we try to picture our soul-experience in upcoming hours and days, to the extent we are not simply extrapolating routine daily acts we engage, we gray out into blackness. When the Light of the 'now' seems to encompass different inner qualities, while others fade into grayness/blackness, we have the sense of linear time flow. This contrast between the present 'lightness' of the now and the surrounding blackness permeates all experience.  

We experience it in the contrast between, not only temporal relations like prenatal and postnatal existence, night and day, waking and sleeping (also at the collective pole, like prehistory and history), but also spatial relations like inner experience and outer perception, our immediate surroundings and far distant lands, the surface of the Earth and deep outer space. The similarity of these relations shouldn't be treated as metaphors - there is a direct link between the blackness of our inner volume and the blackness of outer space (which is blue during the day), as the former modulates all outer perception. Even secular science of GR tells us that, when we look out into the depths of outer space, we are peering into relatively 'faster' Time-rhythms. Because modern science is one-sided, it ignores the correspondence of this with our inner world of spirit-soul-body activity. It ignores that our nervous system, rhythmic system (blood and air), glandular system, metabolic system, all possess forces functioning according to distinct relational Time-rhythms and it fails to make the connection between that and relative Time-experience in the outer perceptual world. 

What is the soul significance of darkness or blackness? It's the thought of uncertainty and associated feelings - dread, fear, anxiety, etc (or sometimes an unknowing peace and comfort). Our experience of Time-flow is a direct manifestation of how much and how well we know, in the deep, living sense, the ideal principles and laws of the world which allow us to remember-anticipate its inner movements. The intellectual soul evolved to bring greater remembrance-anticipation to humanity of this inner dynamic, to more holistically encompass the nested Time-rhythms of our Being with our cognition, but in the modern age it has separated the inner-outer poles of existence so far from one another that they are practically felt as unrelated. It endeavored to 'tame' the darkness and reduce the fear by fitting anything and everything about the Earth and Cosmos into its tiny thought-marbles, settling for the bare minimum of light it could shed. The ontological concept of 'linear time' and existential questions which presuppose such a concept - "was I conscious or unconscious, thinking or not thinking, at this particular moment in time?" - are examples of that. Now the darkness/fear is creeping back up as the thought-marbles simply don't shed enough light on the inner dynamics.

What if the Light of cognition permeated the spatio-temporal blackness so that it was increasingly One with what we know as the 'lightness' of the present moment, the 'now'? This is the goal of the 2nd approach, which we often refer to as 'spiraling' the poles of existence together, bridging the continuity of thinking Consciousness between sleeping and waking, death and life, Cosmos and Earth, inner and outer. Of course it is a very gradual and effortful approach, but even the first steps in this approach will reveal to us the inherent meaninglessness of framing our evolving existence in terms of linear sequential moments of experience. When it comes to existential questions of our Being, we shouldn't expect such a framing to yield any meaningful answers, because it is only an artifact of the dualized intellect. The 1st approach is to practically give up at this point and say, 'I can be perfectly happy, within my merely personal limits, living in fleeting moments of Oneness and waiting for death to bring all the deeper answers', while the 2nd approach points to how we can experience new thinking skills which expand our personal sphere of interests and our living knowledge out into the higher-order Time-rhythms of the Cosmos which are always modulating the linear intellect.

When the Light of the 'now' seems to encompass different inner qualities, while others fade into grayness/blackness, we have the sense of linear time flow. This contrast between the present 'lightness' of the now and the surrounding blackness permeates all experience.

That is very useful. it is possible to have some understanding of that, there are levels. Even if one cannot experience that perception, like I can't, it's still possible to have some level of understanding, by making the internal gesture that is described here. By trying, even if one does not sense it, it becomes a potentially accessible experience. Not as wishful thinking, but as a seeing. Of course, if one is skeptical that will never happen.

This was one of the most useful posts I ever read here.

Thanks, Federica, for the high praise on such a condensed summary!

I can't take much credit, because it really borrows on many concepts already employed by Cleric in various essays/posts. The nested Time-rhythms come from his TC spectrum essay. What I called the 'lightness of the now' is what he has referred to as the 'aperture' of consciousness in various places, for ex. here. And of course much of it can also be found in Steiner's work.

If anything, I would say this simply reflects my growing ability to grasp a certain wholeness of various concepts which have been employed previously. The fact is, even if someone feels the above is understood pretty well, that understanding probably won't last very long. Modern humans like to assume their capacities are the best they can possibly be, especially the memory capacity. But actually our memory is terrible. Or, rather, our intellectual memory serves its function well but we invest in with abilities it simply can't fulfill. We could even say the concepts of calendar and clock time are ways in which the intellectual soul has spread its concepts over the inner-outer darkness to alleviate anxiety with minimal amounts of light. Then it forgets what it had done and starts thinking of minutes, hours, days, years, etc. as actual entities existing independently of our cognitive life.

We will keep defaulting to that forgetfulness until we begin evolving our creative thinking skills so that our soul experience naturally resonates with archetypal, holistic Ideas up the TC spectrum.

Yes, much of the reason why your post has been particularly useful to me is because I've read it now that I can better glimpse these concepts, compared to when I read the T-C essay. I'm reading the essay again just now, and it makes much more sense, especially the inversion horizon. A few months ago, the gaps between the stones were a bit two wide for me, so to speak, as I was trying to follow along. Also, Cleric chose to deploy a broad front and bring it forward all at once, maintaining the big picture view from start to finish. That’s of course the most truthful and logical approach, but maybe too ambitious for the reader I was at that point. But even today, I think the two slightly different conceptualizations, Cleric's and yours, are complementary, both in the choice of logical pattern and vocabulary. Concepts like aperture (interesting post at the link!) and lightness of the now, exhort the reader to stick to personal time experience, prompting them to observe it from within, exploring its boundaries timewise. The larger concept of nested Time-rhythms must be more accurate but also easier to get lost in. The tantalizing image of a 3D fractal lies in the background. That image can throw one back to vantage point, staring at the amazing panorama, lacking the necessary grasp to bring the nestedness to the inner space.


Thanks Ashvin, for the suggestion to review the T-C essay! On first reading, I had overlooked the last part, on the link between inversion horizon and meditative effort. Now reading throught the explanation of that light-tip exercise. That part didn't really make the necessary impression on me before. I missed that essential piece at first reading! So it’s two simultaneous senses that should form, the focus on one central point, and the impressions on it of the incoming disturbances from all sides. It’s all clearly written in the essay... Ironically, such double focus is something I did start experiencing in my attempts, out of the corner of the eye, so to say. And I thought I was cheating… I thought it was a cheating trick to make it count as if I was still focused. So my mental comment has been: “Nice try, as if you could keep a foot in both camps! Just recognize you’ve lost focus and start again”. And I have been stepping out, believing I had to find a better way to enter the depth of the image, closer and closer to its core. It’s clearly explained in the essay, the “onset of Imaginative cognition”. Maybe by the time I reached that paragraph, my cognitive batteries were exhausted… The double focus I have experienced was on disturbances like thoughts of sounds, and of coming events of the day, and maybe it's not that, but at least I have a track to follow! As you say, today's understanding will probably also evolve, but at least now I have a clear insight by which I can try to correct the direction of my efforts


For those who might feel some skepticism at the idea of expanding the 'now' in meditation, I’d like to suggest this freshly published BBC Future article I just came across. It’s a nicely narrated reminder that current science recognizes there is indeed an enormous question mark lingering on the nature of time. The unresolved mystery can be pushed towards one corner or another of the problem space, but the fact remains that, regardless of the direction of the ‘combing’, inextricable knots inevitably cause the advances in reasoning to come to a dead end. The typical approach in such situations is to identify the paths of least resistance to inquiry, and set ‘working’ hypotheses, no matter how improbable, that facilitate the pursuit of those paths, just to see how much development it’s possible to build up. Then one becomes so absorbed in the details of such developments that it’s easy to ‘forget’ how conditional the whole construction is. Sometimes the starting condition gets even externalized to a bordering but separate scientific domain, so the inquirer does not have to worry with the hypothesis anymore. It’s not under their scope of expertise anymore. In a sense it’s like spending the whole parable of one’s work life confined in a ‘what if’. But some are concerned with the bigger picture and ask more fundamental questions. What a pity they have no idea what the T-C spectrum is...

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2022 ... -backwards

[AshvinP]

For those who might feel some skepticism at the idea of expanding the 'now' in meditation, I’d like to suggest this freshly published BBC Future article I just came across. It’s a nicely narrated reminder that current science recognizes there is indeed an enormous question mark lingering on the nature of time. The unresolved mystery can be pushed towards one corner or another of the problem space, but the fact remains that, regardless of the direction of the ‘combing’, inextricable knots inevitably cause the advances in reasoning to come to a dead end. The typical approach in such situations is to identify the paths of least resistance to inquiry, and set ‘working’ hypotheses, no matter how improbable, that facilitate the pursuit of those paths, just to see how much development it’s possible to build up. Then one becomes so absorbed in the details of such developments that it’s easy to ‘forget’ how conditional the whole construction is. Sometimes the starting condition gets even externalized to a bordering but separate scientific domain, so the inquirer does not have to worry with the hypothesis anymore. It’s not under their scope of expertise anymore. In a sense it’s like spending the whole parable of one’s work life confined in a ‘what if’. But some are concerned with the bigger picture and ask more fundamental questions. What a pity they have no idea what the T-C spectrum is...

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2022 ... -backwards

Yeah, it's sad how much non-sense is peddled and maintains staying power today simply due to egoic prejudices and habits, including shortsightedness and forgetfulness, while the deeper strata of the Spirit desperately desires to reveal itself to our inner thought-life. It reminds me of this anecdote:

If we consider it with a sufficient amount of self-observation we shall recognise that sensation is really of a will nature with some element of feeling nature woven into it. It is not really related to thinking-cognition, but rather to feeling-willing or willing-feeling. It is of course impossible to be acquainted with all the countless psychologies there are in the world to-day, and I do not know how many of them have grasped anything of the relationship between sensation and willing-feeling or feeling-willing. It would not be quite exact to say that sensation is related to willing; rather it is related to willing-feeling or feeling-willing. But there is at least one psychologist, Moritz Benedikt of Vienna, who especially distinguished himself by his power of observation, and who recognised in his psychology that sensation is related to feeling.

Other psychologists certainly set very little store by this psychology of Moritz Benedikt, and it is true that there is something rather peculiar about it. Firstly, Moritz Benedikt is by vocation a criminal-anthropologist; and he proceeds to write a book on psychology. Secondly, he is a naturalist — and writes about the importance of poetic works of art in education, in fact he analyses poetic works of art to show how they can be used in education. What a dreadful thing! The man sets up to be a scientist, and actually imagines that psychologists have something to learn from the poets! And thirdly, this man is a Jewish naturalist, a scientific Jew, and he writes a book on Psychology and deliberately dedicates it to Laurenz Mullner, a priest, the Catholic philosopher of the theological faculty in the University of Vienna (for he still held this post at that time). Three frightful things, which make it quite impossible for the professional psychologists to take the man seriously.

[AshvinP]

The larger concept of nested Time-rhythms must be more accurate but also easier to get lost in. The tantalizing image of a 3D fractal lies in the background. That image can throw one back to vantage point, staring at the amazing panorama, lacking the necessary grasp to bring the nestedness to the inner space.

A helpful tool here is to consider how the human individual is a Microcosm of the Macrocosm, and to take notice of the nested rhythms which constitute our Being. It's interesting to observe that this even applies between our head and our feet.


https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... eet/63539/

Einstein determined -- and it was proven -- long ago that clocks in space move slower than clocks on Earth because time moves at different rates depending on how close an object is to a gravitational field. In a new study published today in Science, researchers used atomic clocks accurate to within one second in 3.7 billion years to show that gravitational fields also affect time on a much smaller scale. Basically, your head ages faster than your feet -- unless you spend most of your time hanging upside down.

Of course such observations will remain hopelessly externalized until we also connect them with our inner soul-life. Our thinking (head) links us into the relatively faster Time-rhythms of the Cosmos while our willing (feet) is currently tied to the relatively slower rhythms of the Earth. This is quite obvious simply from the nature of how we experience thinking-thoughts. We can survey the laws of the Cosmos with our thoughts, its evolution from primordial beginnings until 'now', albeit in a very abstract and flattened way with normal waking cognition, while we can't walk off the Earth and to the Moon with our feet. We can also observe the more inward nested rhythms of our bodily organism and how they even play into outer phenomena of artistic culture.

In the times in which such things were still livingly perceived, it was seen that what belonged to such worlds could really be observed in the way that the spiritual played into human activity through rhythm. I pointed out to you how the ancient Greek formulated the hexameter: three pulse beats with the caesura, which gives a breath, and three more pulse beats with the caesura, or with the end of the verse, which gives the full hexameter. In two breaths one has the corresponding eight pulse beats. The harmonious resounding of the pulse beats with the breathing was shaped artistically in the recitation of the Greek hexameter. The way in which the spiritual, super-sensible world permeates the human being, how it permeates the blood circulation, the blood rhythm, synthesizes four pulse beats, four pulse rhythms, to one breathing rhythm — all this was reflected in every speech formation that is in the hexameter. All original strivings to build verse derive from this rhythmic organization of the human being.

There are many more rhythmic correspondences within the human being which reflect those of the nested Cosmic forces, refracted into the outer perceptual world with novel shades of meaning through our creative thinking consciousness.

The essential thing to bear in mind is that the vernal point advances along the whole Zodiac circle, so that the point where the sun rises is always a little further on. The vernal point must travel along the whole Zodiac and it will then return to its point of departure. The time required for this will be about 25,920 years. These 25,920 years are also designated as the so-called PLATONIC YEAR. Thus, the platonic year is a year of great duration. It embraces the time employed by the vernal point, by the point where the sun rises in the spring, to travel through the Zodiac. The time during which the sun's rising point has once more returned to its point of departure consequently embraces 25,920 years. The indications vary according to the various calculations, but just now the exact figures do not matter so much; the essential point to be borne in mind is the rhythm which these figures contain. It is possible to imagine that a great world-rhythm is contained in the fact that this movement, resulting from the explanations which I have just now given to you, always returns to its point of departure after 25,920 years.

Thus we may say: These 25,920 years are most important for the life of the sun, because during that period the sun's life passes through a unity, through a real unity, a complete whole. The next. 25,920 years are a repetition. Thus we obtain a rhythmic repetition of this unity, consisting of 25,920 years.

After having considered this great world-year, let us now consider something which is quite small and is intimately connected with our life between birth and death, that is to say, with our life, in so far as we are human beings of the physical cosmos. Let us consider this, to begin with. Undoubtedly, a respiration, consisting of one inspiration and of one expiration, is most important for our life within a physical body; our physical life is, after all, based upon the fact that the breath is drawn in and that it is sent out again. If our respiratory process were to be interrupted, we would not be able to live, physically. A respiration is indeed something very significant. Our breath brings us the air, which fills us with life, in the form in which it is able to do so; through our organism, we transform this air, so that it becomes a deathly air, which would kill us if we were to breathe it in again, in the condition in which it is immediately after we have breathed it out.

On the average, a human being breathes 18 times a minute. This may, of course, vary, for our breathing is different in our youth, and in old age, but if we take an average, we obtain as a normal figure for the respiration, 18 breaths a minute. We thus renew our life rhythmically 18 times a minute. Let us now see how often we do this in one day. In one hour this would be equal to 18 x 60 = 1080. In 24 hours: 1080 x 24 = 25,920, that is to say, 25,920 times.

You see, the way in which our life takes its course in one day, has a most peculiar rhythm. If we take one respiration as a unity, as a life-unity, this is very significant for us, since our life is maintained by the rhythmical repetition of the respiration. One day gives us exactly the same number of respiratory rhythms, as the number of years which the sun employs in order to lead back its vernal point to its point of departure. That is to say: if we imagine that one respiration is one year in miniature, we pass through one platonic year in miniature, so that in one day we have a reproduction, a microcosmic reproduction, of one platonic year. This is extremely important, for it shows us that our respiratory process, that is to say, something which takes place within our human being, is subjected to the same rhythm — differing only in time — as the rhythm which, on a large scale, lies at the foundation of the rhythm of the sun's course.

It is important to place such a fact before our soul. For if we transform into a feeling what these explanations convey, this feeling will be of such a kind that it tells us: We are a reproduction of the macrocosm. It is not just a phrase, not only empty talk, if we say that man is an image of the macrocosm, for this can be proved in detail. This can also make you feel the sound foundation of all the laws which come from spiritual science, because they are all based upon this intimate knowledge of the inner connections, existing in the universe, but it is not always possible to set forth clearly every detail.

When considering such things, we should, of course, realise, above everything else, that the human being is in part torn out of the whole universe. Seen as a whole, he stands within the rhythm of the universe, but at the same time he is, in a certain way, free; he modifies certain things, so that there is not an EXACT harmony, in every case. But the possibility of human freedom lies in the very fact that a perfect harmony does not always exist. The harmony, however, which exists as a whole, contains the fact that man stands within the whole cosmos.

[lorenzop]

“ to transform existence (not theoretically but in actuality) by gradually restoring the original unity of the mirror pieces by investigating the hierarchical way in which they were originally produced and seeking through evolutionary spiritual development to put them together. Not mechanically repackaging them but restoring the true unbroken cosmic mirror (I repeat that this metaphor is a great simplification and misleading in certain ways).”

Your words above-I am not aware of nor can I imagine a creation narrative which includes a perfect parcel of fragments or pieces, existing in some perpetual idealized state.
Perhaps you could me an example from a tradition/faith that believes in a layer of diversity in a state of perfection, and what this tradition or faith suggests this perfection might be experienced. What does the knowing of this feel like?
I realize this might be like my asking what is Meaning…

[Cleric K]

Your words above-I am not aware of nor can I imagine a creation narrative which includes a perfect parcel of fragments or pieces, existing in some perpetual idealized state.

This 'perpetual idealized state' has been talked about many times. More concretely, we've talked about the fallacy of translating our completely anthropomorphic state into the eternal (for example here). In short, the fallacy consists in our inability to outgrow the Newtonian sense of time. The intellectual ego remains hidden in the background and imagines that the way it feels about reality is the absolute foundation. We imagine that towards the perfected states which integrate the Time potential, our Newtonian clock will still tick as it does now and we'll simply contemplate some perfect picture, scratch our head and say "Now what? This is getting boring..." Not only we can't overcome our linear intellectual clock but we also imagine that we'll still feel like an atomic human-like consciousness that can be bored.

Perhaps you could me an example from a tradition/faith that believes in a layer of diversity in a state of perfection, and what this tradition or faith suggests this perfection might be experienced. What does the knowing of this feel like?
I realize this might be like my asking what is Meaning…

I think that what was written above already hints that there's no easy way to speak of these lofty realities, as everything will anyway be aliased by the lowest common denominator of our own conceptions.

Most traditions speak of these high realms in various ways. Consider this:

1 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
2 And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
4 And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.
5 And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
6 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.
8 And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, LORD God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.
9 And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever,
10 The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,
11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

I remember years ago when I read the above, when I was still looking at things through my quite materialistic conceptions, I thought to myself: "Repeating day and night holy, holy, holy for ever and ever? What could be more boring than that! Even the most mediocre Earthly life is infinitely more rich and interesting in comparison!"

Well, only with time I could see how because of complete ignorance, I was simply arrogant. Not for a moment at that time, passed through my mind that the reality at these heights simply doesn't fit my consciousness, that I had to do a lot of work before my spirit could at least approximately resonate with these archetypal realms. And what John speaks of above are indeed Imaginations of the archetypal realms. How could he express these unfathomable realities other than using symbols taken from the sense world?

It is our own fault if we naively imagine some beasts around a throne while the wall clock ticks and we think to ourselves "Can I go do something more interesting already?" The images in Revelation are incredibly deep, practically they address the seed structure of our reality.

Think about the shape of the H2O molecule and how it forms hexagonal clusters:



It because of this that when the ice crystals grow in the appropriate temperature and pressure, hexagonal macrostructures form:



In a similar sense, what John describes above is the Time-fractal seed within which all states of being manifest - all of them being reverberations of the archetypal forces passing through several convolutions and entering more and more complicated relations with other reverberations. The numbers of beings, their attributes, everything is of importance. But we need a lot of work in order to organize our inner being such that it becomes resonant with the Cosmic archetypes.

[lorenzop]

Eastern traditions speak of levels of existence other than this human plane, and these levels of existence are either more pleasurable (ie heaven) or with more suffering and anguish (ie hell).
But I’m all cases these levels of existence are all seen as appearances, temporary and therefore still having degrees of falsity.
My take and the Eastern practices is that if someone is interested in more heavenly levels of existence then go for it, but it not spiritual growth or evolution, nor does it result in spiritual freedom.