The Alchemical Marriage of Thinking and Will

[Federica]

Hi Frederica,
In line with your post, I am currently working on Steiner's book How to Know Higher Worlds.

You wrote that when we reach the stage where our soul begins to form organs of perception, we should have a teacher to guide us.

I have thought a lot about this topic.
For there is a certain danger on the way to knowledge. For example when you start to have changes in perception. There are many people who can no longer classify what is happening to them and they run the risk of going crazy.
To be honest, I had also developed a great fear in me when I first read about the Guardian of the Threshold the other day.
It sounds a bit schizophrenic.


Another point I notice in myself as a very young person is losing interest in worldly subjects. Material things and career lose their value and you feel a strong desire to come to these insights, which we are talking about here in the forum.

This specific phenomenon is particularly relevant for young people who have not settled in life. CG Jung also addressed this topic when he spoke about active imagination.
One has to ground oneself in the material world in order not to lose oneself.

Kind regards

Hello Güney,
Glad that you are using the summary, and thanks for your comments!

I see that Cleric and Ashvin have offered a wealth of insights connected with the question you raised, but maybe I can still add a comment from a beginner perspective. About the Guardian of the threshold - Yes, that description really is quite scary! Beyond the description, I can't tell by experience how scary the meeting with the real Guardian can be, but I can tell that the more we become familiar with the meaning of the threshold and with the various steps that will get us there, the less scary the character of the Guardian will become, which goes along the same lines of what Ashvin has written.

Ashvin also mentioned that the Guardian can be a precious ally rather than a frightening challenger, and that’s how things look in The Seer’s Handbook too. If you read about the Guardian there, you will notice, its name is Confidant Doorkeeper and it’s not scary. Klocek explains in clear steps what exercises are useful to make our faculties more flexible, so that the moment we realize the presence of the Confidant Doorkeeper, we will actually feel thankful for the help, and well equipped to explore the landscape further ahead. It seems like after sufficient practice with the recommended exercises, meeting the doorkeeper will be our hope and wish, rather than an intimidating event. And even without those exercises, our level of understanding is constantly evolving, so probably that scary description would not sound as terrifying, if you were to read it again now.

I also can relate to your other point, losing interest in material and worldly things, but I will have to keep it for another post. I have now a few more days with some travel and less available time for being on the forum, which I regret!

[AshvinP]

Hi Frederica,
In line with your post, I am currently working on Steiner's book How to Know Higher Worlds.

You wrote that when we reach the stage where our soul begins to form organs of perception, we should have a teacher to guide us.

I have thought a lot about this topic.
For there is a certain danger on the way to knowledge. For example when you start to have changes in perception. There are many people who can no longer classify what is happening to them and they run the risk of going crazy.
To be honest, I had also developed a great fear in me when I first read about the Guardian of the Threshold the other day.
It sounds a bit schizophrenic.


Another point I notice in myself as a very young person is losing interest in worldly subjects. Material things and career lose their value and you feel a strong desire to come to these insights, which we are talking about here in the forum.

This specific phenomenon is particularly relevant for young people who have not settled in life. CG Jung also addressed this topic when he spoke about active imagination.
One has to ground oneself in the material world in order not to lose oneself.

Kind regards

Hello Güney,
Glad that you are using the summary, and thanks for your comments!

I see that Cleric and Ashvin have offered a wealth of insights connected with the question you raised, but maybe I can still add a comment from a beginner perspective. About the Guardian of the threshold - Yes, that description really is quite scary! Beyond the description, I can't tell by experience how scary the meeting with the real Guardian can be, but I can tell that the more we become familiar with the meaning of the threshold and with the various steps that will get us there, the less scary the character of the Guardian will become, which goes along the same lines of what Ashvin has written.

Ashvin also mentioned that the Guardian can be a precious ally rather than a frightening challenger, and that’s how things look in The Seer’s Handbook too. If you read about the Guardian there, you will notice, its name is Confidant Doorkeeper and it’s not scary. Klocek explains in clear steps what exercises are useful to make our faculties more flexible, so that the moment we realize the presence of the Confidant Doorkeeper, we will actually feel thankful for the help, and well equipped to explore the landscape further ahead. It seems like after sufficient practice with the recommended exercises, meeting the doorkeeper will be our hope and wish, rather than an intimidating event. And even without those exercises, our level of understanding is constantly evolving, so probably that scary description would not sound as terrifying, if you were to read it again now.

I also can relate to your other point, losing interest in material and worldly things, but I will have to keep it for another post. I have now a few more days with some travel and less available time for being on the forum, which I regret!

Another thing to consider is what it means to experience our soul-life exteriorized into a concrete living reality. Idealists, pyschologists, and spiritualists always talk about how consciousness is fundamental, how the inner experience is more 'real' than the outer world of Maya, how we have inner 'demons' and 'shadows' which need to be confronted, etc. But as long as these recitations remain on the horizontal plane of abstract concepts, they lack the power to motivate substantial personal and collective transformation, as decades and even centuries of human history can attest.

To meet the Guardian is only to make conscious in a living way what we already know dimly with our horizontal concepts. As Jung said, "until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Meeting the 'lesser' Guardian is a critical milestone on our path to spiritual freedom. It just so happens that the implications of this 'making conscious' are more real and substantial and powerful than what most people can imagine, including probably Jung himself. That is not to say there is no fear whatsoever involved, since clearly the path of genuine Self-knowledge requires great inner courage. But it is fear more in the somber and devotional sense of, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction."

re: the material world as 'grounding', I would recommend taking a look at Cleric's recent post on this topic - viewtopic.php?p=18026#p18026

When it comes to visionary experiences, which is perhaps what Jung was referring to and cautioning about, the real 'grounding' is our spiritual activity trained with logic and rigor, which is precisely the aim of PoF and HTKHW. When we surrender our will to the sensory spectrum, we are compromising that safeguard just as much as surrendering to inner visionary experiences. The healthy middle is exactly in our devotional and concentrated spiritual activity.

[Güney27]

Hi Frederica,
In line with your post, I am currently working on Steiner's book How to Know Higher Worlds.

You wrote that when we reach the stage where our soul begins to form organs of perception, we should have a teacher to guide us.

I have thought a lot about this topic.
For there is a certain danger on the way to knowledge. For example when you start to have changes in perception. There are many people who can no longer classify what is happening to them and they run the risk of going crazy.
To be honest, I had also developed a great fear in me when I first read about the Guardian of the Threshold the other day.
It sounds a bit schizophrenic.


Another point I notice in myself as a very young person is losing interest in worldly subjects. Material things and career lose their value and you feel a strong desire to come to these insights, which we are talking about here in the forum.

This specific phenomenon is particularly relevant for young people who have not settled in life. CG Jung also addressed this topic when he spoke about active imagination.
One has to ground oneself in the material world in order not to lose oneself.

Kind regards

Hello Güney,
Glad that you are using the summary, and thanks for your comments!

I see that Cleric and Ashvin have offered a wealth of insights connected with the question you raised, but maybe I can still add a comment from a beginner perspective. About the Guardian of the threshold - Yes, that description really is quite scary! Beyond the description, I can't tell by experience how scary the meeting with the real Guardian can be, but I can tell that the more we become familiar with the meaning of the threshold and with the various steps that will get us there, the less scary the character of the Guardian will become, which goes along the same lines of what Ashvin has written.

Ashvin also mentioned that the Guardian can be a precious ally rather than a frightening challenger, and that’s how things look in The Seer’s Handbook too. If you read about the Guardian there, you will notice, its name is Confidant Doorkeeper and it’s not scary. Klocek explains in clear steps what exercises are useful to make our faculties more flexible, so that the moment we realize the presence of the Confidant Doorkeeper, we will actually feel thankful for the help, and well equipped to explore the landscape further ahead. It seems like after sufficient practice with the recommended exercises, meeting the doorkeeper will be our hope and wish, rather than an intimidating event. And even without those exercises, our level of understanding is constantly evolving, so probably that scary description would not sound as terrifying, if you were to read it again now.

I also can relate to your other point, losing interest in material and worldly things, but I will have to keep it for another post. I have now a few more days with some travel and less available time for being on the forum, which I regret!

Hey Federica,
Yes, it is most likely the case that my state of consciousness is not yet developed enough to envision these things truthfully.

In my imagination, the Guardian of the Threshold was like a ghost haunting you and frightening. Who would want to experience something like that (:

I think it's great how quickly you got a good understanding of these topics.
I've been on the topic of steiner for almost a year and I'm still trying to crack the core point.
Big respect



I submitted The Seer's Handbook to Amazon, it looks interesting, I think I'll read it.

[Güney27]

Hi Frederica,
In line with your post, I am currently working on Steiner's book How to Know Higher Worlds.

You wrote that when we reach the stage where our soul begins to form organs of perception, we should have a teacher to guide us.

I have thought a lot about this topic.
For there is a certain danger on the way to knowledge. For example when you start to have changes in perception. There are many people who can no longer classify what is happening to them and they run the risk of going crazy.
To be honest, I had also developed a great fear in me when I first read about the Guardian of the Threshold the other day.
It sounds a bit schizophrenic.


Another point I notice in myself as a very young person is losing interest in worldly subjects. Material things and career lose their value and you feel a strong desire to come to these insights, which we are talking about here in the forum.

This specific phenomenon is particularly relevant for young people who have not settled in life. CG Jung also addressed this topic when he spoke about active imagination.
One has to ground oneself in the material world in order not to lose oneself.

Kind regards

Hello Güney,
Glad that you are using the summary, and thanks for your comments!

I see that Cleric and Ashvin have offered a wealth of insights connected with the question you raised, but maybe I can still add a comment from a beginner perspective. About the Guardian of the threshold - Yes, that description really is quite scary! Beyond the description, I can't tell by experience how scary the meeting with the real Guardian can be, but I can tell that the more we become familiar with the meaning of the threshold and with the various steps that will get us there, the less scary the character of the Guardian will become, which goes along the same lines of what Ashvin has written.

Ashvin also mentioned that the Guardian can be a precious ally rather than a frightening challenger, and that’s how things look in The Seer’s Handbook too. If you read about the Guardian there, you will notice, its name is Confidant Doorkeeper and it’s not scary. Klocek explains in clear steps what exercises are useful to make our faculties more flexible, so that the moment we realize the presence of the Confidant Doorkeeper, we will actually feel thankful for the help, and well equipped to explore the landscape further ahead. It seems like after sufficient practice with the recommended exercises, meeting the doorkeeper will be our hope and wish, rather than an intimidating event. And even without those exercises, our level of understanding is constantly evolving, so probably that scary description would not sound as terrifying, if you were to read it again now.

I also can relate to your other point, losing interest in material and worldly things, but I will have to keep it for another post. I have now a few more days with some travel and less available time for being on the forum, which I regret!

Another thing to consider is what it means to experience our soul-life exteriorized into a concrete living reality. Idealists, pyschologists, and spiritualists always talk about how consciousness is fundamental, how the inner experience is more 'real' than the outer world of Maya, how we have inner 'demons' and 'shadows' which need to be confronted, etc. But as long as these recitations remain on the horizontal plane of abstract concepts, they lack the power to motivate substantial personal and collective transformation, as decades and even centuries of human history can attest.

To meet the Guardian is only to make conscious in a living way what we already know dimly with our horizontal concepts. As Jung said, "until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Meeting the 'lesser' Guardian is a critical milestone on our path to spiritual freedom. It just so happens that the implications of this 'making conscious' are more real and substantial and powerful than what most people can imagine, including probably Jung himself. That is not to say there is no fear whatsoever involved, since clearly the path of genuine Self-knowledge requires great inner courage. But it is fear more in the somber and devotional sense of, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction."

re: the material world as 'grounding', I would recommend taking a look at Cleric's recent post on this topic - viewtopic.php?p=18026#p18026

When it comes to visionary experiences, which is perhaps what Jung was referring to and cautioning about, the real 'grounding' is our spiritual activity trained with logic and rigor, which is precisely the aim of PoF and HTKHW. When we surrender our will to the sensory spectrum, we are compromising that safeguard just as much as surrendering to inner visionary experiences. The healthy middle is exactly in our devotional and concentrated spiritual activity.

Hey Ashvin,
Is Jung's active imagination
not what steiner calls imaginative knowledge, which we are supposed to develop in the 5th post-Atlantean age. Jung treats his visual experiences in the red book and shows us a meditative method to reach the collective subconscious (which I understand is Steiner's astral plane).
young has grounded himself in the world through hard physical exertion like work.
Kind Regards

[AshvinP]

Hello Güney,
Glad that you are using the summary, and thanks for your comments!

I see that Cleric and Ashvin have offered a wealth of insights connected with the question you raised, but maybe I can still add a comment from a beginner perspective. About the Guardian of the threshold - Yes, that description really is quite scary! Beyond the description, I can't tell by experience how scary the meeting with the real Guardian can be, but I can tell that the more we become familiar with the meaning of the threshold and with the various steps that will get us there, the less scary the character of the Guardian will become, which goes along the same lines of what Ashvin has written.

Ashvin also mentioned that the Guardian can be a precious ally rather than a frightening challenger, and that’s how things look in The Seer’s Handbook too. If you read about the Guardian there, you will notice, its name is Confidant Doorkeeper and it’s not scary. Klocek explains in clear steps what exercises are useful to make our faculties more flexible, so that the moment we realize the presence of the Confidant Doorkeeper, we will actually feel thankful for the help, and well equipped to explore the landscape further ahead. It seems like after sufficient practice with the recommended exercises, meeting the doorkeeper will be our hope and wish, rather than an intimidating event. And even without those exercises, our level of understanding is constantly evolving, so probably that scary description would not sound as terrifying, if you were to read it again now.

I also can relate to your other point, losing interest in material and worldly things, but I will have to keep it for another post. I have now a few more days with some travel and less available time for being on the forum, which I regret!

Another thing to consider is what it means to experience our soul-life exteriorized into a concrete living reality. Idealists, pyschologists, and spiritualists always talk about how consciousness is fundamental, how the inner experience is more 'real' than the outer world of Maya, how we have inner 'demons' and 'shadows' which need to be confronted, etc. But as long as these recitations remain on the horizontal plane of abstract concepts, they lack the power to motivate substantial personal and collective transformation, as decades and even centuries of human history can attest.

To meet the Guardian is only to make conscious in a living way what we already know dimly with our horizontal concepts. As Jung said, "until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Meeting the 'lesser' Guardian is a critical milestone on our path to spiritual freedom. It just so happens that the implications of this 'making conscious' are more real and substantial and powerful than what most people can imagine, including probably Jung himself. That is not to say there is no fear whatsoever involved, since clearly the path of genuine Self-knowledge requires great inner courage. But it is fear more in the somber and devotional sense of, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction."

re: the material world as 'grounding', I would recommend taking a look at Cleric's recent post on this topic - viewtopic.php?p=18026#p18026

When it comes to visionary experiences, which is perhaps what Jung was referring to and cautioning about, the real 'grounding' is our spiritual activity trained with logic and rigor, which is precisely the aim of PoF and HTKHW. When we surrender our will to the sensory spectrum, we are compromising that safeguard just as much as surrendering to inner visionary experiences. The healthy middle is exactly in our devotional and concentrated spiritual activity.

Hey Ashvin,
Is Jung's active imagination
not what steiner calls imaginative knowledge, which we are supposed to develop in the 5th post-Atlantean age. Jung treats his visual experiences in the red book and shows us a meditative method to reach the collective subconscious (which I understand is Steiner's astral plane).
young has grounded himself in the world through hard physical exertion like work.
Kind Regards

Guney,

There is an interesting book which compares the ideas and practical methods of Jung and Steiner. Here is an excerpt which discusses 'active imagination' and also relates to our discussion about the great blessing we may experience in the Guardian's instruction for us to become morally equipped to actively participate in the higher planes of consciousness:

In 1957—at two important conferences of the Stuttgart group Arzt und Seelsorger (“medicine and pastoral care”)—”active imagination” was introduced and discussed as a form of meditation.17 Marie-Louise von Franz described it as “a special form of dialogue with the unconscious.” Since we have already mentioned “imagination” in the context of higher stages of consciousness, it must be emphasized that Jung's “active imagination” is not identical with Steiner's “imaginative consciousness,” even though both are active in that soul realm where pictures are seen as the expression of psychic realities. The main difference here is that Steiner's imagination comes about as a result of the special thought-exercises and thereby constitutes a form of enhanced consciousness above and beyond normal waking consciousness. In contrast, Jung's active imagination can be viewed as a hovering between waking and dreaming. It still takes place within ordinary consciousness.

In practice, active imagination works in such a way that images, concepts, and thoughts are produced that do not stem from “arbitrary, playful daydreams, but aim to reconstruct the inner logic of events that nature unfolds in the soul.” Jung knew how to differentiate this imaginatio, this special power of imagination, from passive, vague, and arbitrary fantasizing. One can detect the analysand's degree of wakefulness by the character of the pictures that arise. Active imagination calls for the analysand to be awake and ready to make decisions in accordance with the events that unfold before the inner eye. He or she is never merely a spectator. “The therapeutic significance of active imagination lies in the possibility of influencing the unconscious, of working directly on affects, and of being able to accomplish a creative deed of liberation by effectively working with the symbols,” wrote Marie-Louise von Franz.

There is no doubt that Jung's active imagination, although it differs from anthroposophical meditation, reaches deeply into the realm of psychic pictures. Therein lies its effectiveness, but also its danger, should the high ethical standards not be observed that Steiner called for in How to Know Higher Worlds: “Every insight that you seek only to enrich your own store of learning and accumulate treasure for yourself alone, leads you from your path, but every insight you seek in order to become more mature on the path of the ennoblement of humanity and world evolution brings you one step forward. This fundamental law must always be observed. Only if we make it the guiding principle of our lives can we call ourselves genuine seekers after higher knowledge. This truth of esoteric schooling may be summarized as follows: every idea that does not become an ideal for you kills a force in yourself, but every idea that becomes an ideal for you creates forces of life within you.” And again, “for every single step that you take in seeking knowledge of hidden truths, you must take three steps in perfecting your character toward the good.”

Precisely because active imagination can be practiced in a dangerous manner, even to the point of black magic, Marie-Louise von Franz rightly demanded: “Ethical integrity of purpose is the absolute basic requirement for every attempt at active imagination.” It follows that active imagination must be above all a tool in the hands of a psychotherapist.

Wehr, Gerhard. Jung and Steiner (p. 198). SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.

[Federica]

Hey Federica,
Yes, it is most likely the case that my state of consciousness is not yet developed enough to envision these things truthfully.

In my imagination, the Guardian of the Threshold was like a ghost haunting you and frightening. Who would want to experience something like that (:

I think it's great how quickly you got a good understanding of these topics.
I've been on the topic of steiner for almost a year and I'm still trying to crack the core point.
Big respect

I submitted The Seer's Handbook to Amazon, it looks interesting, I think I'll read it.

Thank you Güney! That’s very kind
For my part it’s mostly been ‘wishful thinking’, that is to say, I have the wish to understand, which I see you also have. But I’m still far from a good understanding of Steiner. It takes time and will to learn how to set our faculties free from old habits and let them grow into new capacities!


On the various ways we can picture the Guardian and other spiritual experiences, I think Steiner is clear that uncomfortable and painful moments are to be expected on the path. This is because the requirement is not only to ponder the theory and crack its code, but also to experience everything directly. And we usually come from our personal background that, in one way or another, has been characterized by some sort of comfortable illusions and reactive habits. So, to answer your question “Who would want to experience something like that?” I would say: if our main motivation is to find Truth, then we will accept that some difficult moments are going to happen, when we uncover those illusions and habits. Then we will find the energy to face unknown and maybe even scary experiences. In this sense, the truth seeker will actually be ok with experiencing something like that.


This is also connected to your comment about the desire to withdraw from material things and worldly life and career, especially for younger people. I think these are two different things - material objects on one side, career and worldly life on the other. I also feel a lack of excitement for material objects, gadgets of any sorts, or pleasurable experiences like outings or similar. Sometimes I say I’m interested just to avoid explaining why I’m not really I don't exclude them, but simply don't attach particular value or desire to them. And this is one thing, connected to the fact that we reassess our life goals completely, and we balance them with the importance of the world beyond the threshold.


But losing interest in our connection to world, career, and others is different. Steiner is clear that a spiritual path should not in any way become the means to escape our duties in connection to family, work, or any other engagement we might have in life. Maintaining a solid grounding in the real world comes natural, when the spiritual path is pursued with the intention of finding Truth and bringing our bit of positive contribution to the Whole. However, if the need, or desire to find protection and comfort is the primary motive for the spiritual path, rather than a search for truth, then it would probably encourage us to look for some kind of retreat in it, to shield ourselves from the hazards of the crazy world. In such case, this attitude/need would then be a good example of a mind habit, or comfortable illusion, that will have to melt away in a somewhat uncomfortable process of self discovery.

[Federica]

I guess it all boils down to a barely conscious desire, to just expand within the broken mirror pieces and behold them as Cosmic crystal dust. Magnificent, mysterious, but ultimately incomprehensible, as it grinds down Cosmic Intuition into noise. Finding the spot in the head feels like forsaking immensity for dubious thoughts. But it is precisely in a small thought-piece of the mirror that we can find the actual reflection of the intuitive activity of the Cosmic Being. From that point begins also the healing process and gradually the shards of our bodies fuse to become true mirrors for the life of the spirit and its ever growing degrees of freedom. "The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness." So we once again find immensity yet not as Cosmic rustling but as spiritual world ruled by fully conscious spiritual activity.

It seems that this requirement for our ego to deflate to the level of a mere thought, is felt as a step backwards for those who have tasted the immensity of the mystical or the psychedelic state (even though only as Cosmic noise). And I can confirm that from my experience. What you and Ashvin accomplished in only few months, took me 15 years, until I find the secret of deflation - which is driven by humility. It is here that the words are appropriate: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." And rich should be understood in a deeper sense. Our ego becomes rich when it inflates and swallows immensity that it doesn't comprehend, yet considers its own.

Still pondering on Oneness attraction versus willful training of the thinking faculty, I guess I am not the only one. Cleric, thank you, the progression of posts you have written on the question in this thread is simply illuminating. I cannot imagine that Eugene is not at the very least pondering your illustrations, in which something is continuously emerging from nothing. In this post, beyond inviting Eugene to reunion number two with the forum, I thought I’d recall, at the side of your illustrations, Klocek’s view on Oneness and its attractive power on modern man. In the very first pages of the Handbook, this exact question is addressed from a slightly different angle. Some could certainly delve into it directly. Here I can only keep the topic alive by summarizing Klocek’s view.


About the longing for mystical Oneness felt by many today, he writes: “An experience of self is impossible to measure scientifically”. So the scientific observer is tempted to qualify the self as illusionary. The QM impossibility to measure something without it being changed by the act of measurement itself, pushes the scientific observer to seek “the door to higher perception in the abstract void” made of “patterns of forces” with no “independent beings” in it. Matter and its secrets are felt as hiding at the bottom of the dark abyss between self and world, and the elimination of the separate self feels as a solution to spare us from descending into the abyss.


Klocek opposes such scientific observer-centric view of contemporary physics to the view of the “technician” - Steiner’s naive realist - who is annoyed by the crucial role the observer has risen to, and would prefer to revert back to a world of physics where the observer/the self is simply irrelevant to measurement outcomes. So the technician, or materialist, rejects Oneness, claims readiness to descend into the abyss of matter, but ultimately eradicates the "irrelevant" self just as ruthlessly as the “mystical physicist", only to run into contradictions when destructive and highly subjective individualities violently disrupt the world in ways that unfortunately are all but irrelevant.


The parallel is made between human evolution and cognitive development in the child: in early childhood there's the cognitive experience of immediate oneness, which later evolves in the ability to consciously form inner pictures (gifted). Then in adolescence, there’s the storming of feelings and senses, but no cognitive gift to deal with those. Then any progression must be consciously willed, and that’s where we are in evolution today, Klocek says. In need of using willpower to move forward, but tempted to revert back to non-individualized early childhood and its magical oneness (QM physicist) or to dwell in destabilizing adolescent sense life (materialist) and/or in adolescent sense- and feeling-driven thinking (present-day deviant, amoral behaviors, backed by materialism). In other words, in the microcosm of science, Oneness is polarly opposed to Materialism, and Goethe-Steiner’s living thinking would be the view that makes the two opposites converge. In it, observer and world are united in the event of observation.



Klocek sees the only solution to these opposite dead ends in Imaginative cognition, initiated by will power. For the first time, such cognitive development will not come as gift / as automatic evolutionary process, but only through free determination to develop our soul organs, by leveraging the life forces not anymore required to evolve the physical body and its organs. Such forces will instead express themselves as living forces of thinking, the auroras that can consciously work at the development of the soul organs / chakras. Only these organs will be able to digest and purify the adolescent unleashed sense and feeling forces that are driving our world crazy these days.


Basically today we are like rebel teenagers, victims of unleashed forces, and without any gifted cognitive capacity to master them. These capacities are not directly gifted to us because at this point we have in-house the necessary life forces to apply in order to master the storms directly, by ourselves. But we have to use will power to make that purification happen.
The question boils down to: will we remain stuck in adolescent rage, kidnapped by our own physical (and soul) body (materialism), will we attempt to go back to the childhood of our civilization (mystical oneness), or will we finally be able to grow up? Not easy, Klocek says. But we can leverage our need for recognition, and our intuition that we just can't be worth less than nothing. To do something, rather than nothing, and prove our self-worth, should nonetheless make some sense… hopefully.


Growing up means cultivating (literally, livingly) the thinking seed we received as gift in our childhood, 2000 years ago by applying and developing the capacity to form inner pictures (concentration) then exploring how the soul processes the sense impressions through the conscious experience of the True Self and its morality, and finally by pursuing Imaginative cognition, on a path that “leads back to the magical forces behind the sense world”. So the path of living thinking leads back to Oneness, Klocek says. “In imaginative cognition, the conflict between mystical abstractionism and analytical reductionism can be resolved (…) The step that needs to be taken is to transform an abstract universal void filled with impersonal forces, by entering the being-ness of beings exponentially mightier in degree in their world-creative Imaginations than the human beings.” The living thinking path is seen as a reconciling path between the human being and the Cosmos, just as well as between materialist science and QM.


In this perspective, the cause of attraction to Oneness, metaphorically pictured like a wish to go back to childhood’s magical experiences, seems to be connected to a longing for comfort and protection, (the same Lou expresses in his Both / And manifesto) rather than to hybris directly. Does this make sense to anyone?

what I'm doing here is to remind about the importance of seeing the "forest"

We don't need to ask Lou this question, but Eugene, if you are following, does the shielding, protecting, welcoming, magical, divine Mother/ original forest sound as a recognizable attracting principle to you?

[AshvinP]

Hey Federica,

Once again, very well summarized!

In this perspective, the cause of attraction to Oneness, metaphorically pictured like a wish to go back to childhood’s magical experiences, seems to be connected to a longing for comfort and protection, (the same Lou expresses in his Both / And manifesto) rather than to hybris directly. Does this make sense to anyone?

what I'm doing here is to remind about the importance of seeing the "forest"

We don't need to ask Lou this question, but Eugene, if you are following, does the shielding, protecting, welcoming, magical, divine Mother/ original forest sound as a recognizable attracting principle to you?

It looks like 'hybris' is basically the same as 'hubris'? If so, it is interesting to consider how the intellect, in its longing for the primordial lower nature over the new impulses of individual evolution, inverts this relationship (as practically all others).

"Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time."

Seen in the light of Federica's post, this is nothing more exotic than the inverting tendency of the modern intellect, which thereby traps itself within the logic of the inverted relationships, the 'infernal loops'. We should really try to sense how much hybris there is in passively expecting the Gods to bring our souls and nature back to spiriutal life independently of our own willpower, as Cleric also mentioned on the other thread. It is no different than a child expecting their parents to continue feeding, clothing, housing, etc. them indefinitely because that's what what they did after birth and during childhood. Unfortunately, this is the standard exoteric religious expectation today, for Eastern and Western alike, and also the same for the materialist technicians (save for the few who innovate towards a secular 'black magic' of seeking physical immortality).

How much less hybris, and more reverence and devotion, do we show to the Gods when we seek to actively develop the living thinking forces entrusted to us? But if we inversely feel we are already showing the utmost devotion through our passive longing for peace and comfort of child-like existence, then we have trapped ourselves in the Maya of inverted relations. This is why the purification of living self-consciousness is so necessary as a foundation going forward. It is simulatenously a showing of reverence-devotion to the Universe/Gods and a means to know in what ways our normal acts of 'reverence-devotion' are simply a means of satisfying personal longings. To figure out in what undoubtedly subtle ways our obstinancy and pride manifests through our normally conditioned desires, feelings, and thoughts.

[Federica]

Thank you for the comprehensive outline, Federica! I will probably be printing it out and keeping it close, as I imagine that it will help me to stay oriented on a daily basis.

What you describe in the last post was also my experience and expressed much better than I could. I remember starting on HTKHW before PoF and being turned away very quickly. But it is hard for me now to remember clearly just how it felt to be unexposed to the inversion horizon and view the World Phenomena in that way. I suppose that will change as I progress more and integrate more time-layers of my 'dust fractal'.

We have a very hard time accepting that there are modes of thinking-being which we can hardly imagine when our ego remains inflated, which it is by default in modern society. We want everything to line up nicely with the conceptual templates we 'worked' so hard to develop our entire adult lives, but which we actually inherited through our past Karma. If we take reincarnation somewhat seriously, it's easy to see why our normal thinking is so firmly rooted in the past. A new incarnation would serve little purpose unless it occurs after the environment has radically changed, so that we can learn new lessons from our life experience. Yet our thinking activity is still adapted to the environment from our previous incarnation, perhaps even 1,000-2,000 years ago. Although we certainly progress spiritually during periods of death-rebirth, we need to recapitulate all our previous incarnations before something truly new can unfold. That is too simplified, but it should go to show the general principle of just how conditioned by past activity that we truly are. So we need to seek the supra-sensory impulses which seed the future and we shouldn't expect these to fit conveniently into our highly conditioned intellectual templates. Especially in the mystical circles we see a clear longing for, not only past traditions, but very ancient ones. Of course these can be helpful as tools to place ourselves within the evolutionary progress of our spiritual organism in the context of the Whole, but often they are taken as ends-in-themselves, as is generally the case with most abstractly constructed systems and models today.

The difficult part is realizing in humility we cannot grow out of our past conditioning by more reorganizing of planar concepts which precipitated from that same past activity, and the inflated ego-complex serves to keep this habit of thinking in place.

Ashvin,

I’m glad you found the description useful, but I wonder why you would want to remind yourself of an entangled perspective that you have now been able to leave behind. Writing this, I thought it could be useful to those who are with me, still on the other side of the inversion horizon. Anyway, it’s good to hear that it was clear enough! Said in fashionable terms, it gives me a kind of impostor syndrome though. I think you and Cleric have given me more credit than I deserve. I’ll take this as a debt, or gift, that I will attempt to honor, hopefully better than by putting together diligent summaries. I surely have to take some more risks at this point.
That’s what I get from the second part of your comment. Daring to be free - from the past, from categories, from achievements, from egoic self-soothing thinking habits. I have been thinking enough of hybris and child-like tendencies. I should stop now and inquire more about my own faults and limiting mind habits, somehow. Thank you for the inspiration!

[Federica]

It looks like 'hybris' is basically the same as 'hubris'?

Yes, I didn't know of this alternative English spelling, but it looks like they both refer to the exact same feeling.

If so, it is interesting to consider how the intellect, in its longing for the primordial lower nature over the new impulses of individual evolution, inverts this relationship (as practically all others).

Right... It's so easy to think that being reverent to nature, letting our (entangled) nature be, abiding by it because it must know better than us, etc. is the way to avoid hybris. Another variation - not mine this one, but common: 'let's not fight our destiny'. It's difficult to draw the line between responsibility and hybris. Between daring to do our due part and relaxing in a 'Gods must know better' comfy repose. I am still not 100% clear on that. Or, I am clear, but it requires a conscious effort every time, to reset the thoughts, to dig a fresh track for them to flow in the correct direction. If I am not careful I will land in a default "nature is wonderful, nature knows better" type of excuse. It looks humble, in reality it's self-indulging. We like to believe that our daily struggles somehow entitle us to some relief from individual responsibility. We hear a lot: 'It's ok to fail', and it's true of course, that it's ok to fail, but only if failure comes from free action, rather than from 'reverent' avoidance. I see that true reverence and devotion spring out of acted responsibility, not out of fearful submission to inner and outer events, disguised as respectful awareness.
But it is difficult… I couldn't get the sense of your comment at first reading, for instance. I had to kind of push myself out of planar text analysis first… it's that bad