Conformal Cyclic Meditation

[AshvinP]

The point I'm trying to make is, the larger the spectrum of our search for truth, the easier it is to remain motivated, simply because we are immersed in our questions all the time, we are our questions, and there is just nowhere else to go. When we search for the full truth, there is no ‘normal life’ to get back to when things get difficult. Life - our own, as well as life at large - is precisely what we are aspiring to understand, together with the full spectrum of physical and spiritual reality. Then we can’t ask our future takeaways to be such and such, or able to quench our thirst for the divine, or else. We don’t even expect to gain any "special knowledge", or any future takeaways, just because there is nothing to take that knowledge away from and to. It’s the whole thing we are inquiring, which is concentric around us, expanding in, as well as out, to the whole sphere of inner and outer existence, so where could we ever go with any slice of such holistic knowledge?


With this in mind, I was wondering if you were pursuing knowledge as Wholeness, or rather as a special selection of knowledge with a special purpose, or quest, attached. If it’s the latter, I imagine it could be an obstacle to feeling regularly motivated, and to the living experience of Spiritual Science too.

This is an excellent point and it reminds me of something I was also thinking of recently. When we contemplate our lower self and its instinctual decisions, which we convince ourselves were reasoned through after the fact (but seldom were), many of them revolve around short-term gratification. And this makes a lot of sense from the perspective of our normal waking consciousness. When confronted with the decision of, 'contemplate an object for 10 min. for many months or even years to develop imaginative perception', or 'sit back and watch an entertaining movie on Netflix while eating a tasty meal', the rationalization for choosing the latter will come easily. It is really a 'no-brainer', as they say. We are not sure how long we need to wait or even what we are waiting for, what 'imaginative perception' is. And the more we get pleasure from choosing the latter while postponing the former, the more our lower self is conditioned to discount the utility of inner exercises and paying attention to our inner activity in general. We enter into a negative feedback of myopic externalized perspective and short-term gratification. The only real way out of this is through depth knowledge of our inner life and its self-similar relations within the living Cosmos. 

I have been playing a VR game for exercise lately and we could use it as a simple analogy. It is similar to the Beat Saber game I wrote about previously, except it has good classical music (it's not me in the video ). 





We have notes, melodies, harmonies, and beats nested within one another. These can be associated with the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st rhythmic convolutions for purposes of the analogy. The notes are associated with our fragmented sensory impressions and concepts, our intellectual judgments on the physical plane. The melodies with our soul-life of inner passions, desires, emotions, mental images, etc. The harmonies with our rhythmic life forces, and the beats with our pure rhythmic intuitions (like the pure meaning of mathematical operations). In the musical idea, we can dimly intuit something of the entire temporal spectrum and harmonize our inner TFW activity by getting into sympathy with the musical perceptions. We can try to concretely sense how all these rhythmic layers are superimposed. Normally we only become conscious in the 4th convolution of fragmented notes, and then assume the melodies and harmonies are built from those, but now we are kinesthetically sensing the entire spectrum in our will-infused, feeling-imbued, thinking. We sense how the notes only exist by virtue of the melodies and harmonies and the underlying beat - the Whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

As we get more in sympathy and resonate with the rhythmic flow, we are able to remember a greater spectrum of the flow which has already passed and therefore anticipate a wider range of what is to follow, without any explicit intellectual reflection. This past to future, remembrance to anticipation, polar correspondence is only possible because the relations are self-similar throughout the flow. So here we see that the self-similarity, far from being a monotonous and homogenous pattern, is the very essence of novel and creative evolution. Few people can fail to sense the creative spirit flowing through the musical idea (especially a classical symphony) and the latter is composed with self-similar relations, through and through. In the symphony, we have the exposition, development, and recapitulation.

https://www.britannica.com/art/sonata-form

In binary form the structure depends on the interrelationship not only of themes but also of tonalities, or keys, the particular sets of notes and chords used in each part. Thus, the initial part, which is repeated, leads directly into the second part by ending in the new key in which the second part begins. The second, also repeated, moves from the new key back to the original key, in which it ends. The second part thus completes the first.

In sonata form the exposition corresponds to the first part of binary form, the development and recapitulation to the second. The exposition moves from the original key to a new key; the development passes through several keys and the recapitulation returns to the original key. This echoes the motion, in binary form, away from and back to the original key. In relation to binary form, sonata form is complex. It offers, in the exposition, contrasting musical statements. In the development these are treated dialectically; that is, they are combined, broken up, recombined, and otherwise brought into change and conflict. In the recapitulation they are restated in a new light.

Here we aren't speaking of rememrbance in terms of normal intellectual memory, which can memorize songs bit by bit and then try to anticipate how they will unfold again the next time we hear it. That indeed allows for a dim anticipation, but we are speaking of an even deeper etheric memory which is not constrained by physical/spatial limitations - it doesn't run out of storage space trying to memorize songs. It accesses the flow of musical thinking in pure imaginations, inspirations, intuitions. It grasps the inner meaning of the flow rather than only memorizing its outer forms. In this way, life itself, and the living beings we encounter, can become an imaginative musical flow which we are aspiring to grow in sympathy and resonance with. Our daily concerns become more eternal in character and our living consciousness can sense its orientation within the nested temporal depth structure even in its normal tasks. Then we enter into a positive feedback of inspiration and motivation. It's exactly as Federica said:

It’s the whole thing we are inquiring, which is concentric around us, expanding in, as well as out, to the whole sphere of inner and outer existence, so where could we ever go with any slice of such holistic knowledge?

So we are clear, this musical experience is only an analogy - it is a very dim intimation of what our phenomenal experience can become through developing living thinking and higher cognition. The latter is implicit in all such musical experiences, but remains in the blind spot and therefore limited in its reach. It remains dimmed, like a dim light which is outshone by a brighter light (the sense-based intellect in normal waking consciousness), and confined to a very small subset of our life experiences. In music it is expressed through the creative flow of notes, melodies, harmonies, beats, or in literature/cinema it is expressed in the archetypal themes and story arcs, but in the broader natural and cultural worlds it is expressed in the very evolution of form, life, and consciousness.

[Anthony66]

Please don't feel discouraged about your golf cart metaphor not convincing a hardened skeptic like me. It was very helpful. But as I said, there is a similarity between different teachings that appeal to higher forms of knowledge not commonly available to the masses. I've been following a discussion elsewhere on the sensis divinitatis. This is a special knowledge which some Christians claim which gives them sure knowledge of the divine and the essential truths of Christianity. It is something which I sought for in vain for decades as a Christian.

I go through waves of encouragement/discouragement with the SS stuff. It is hard! Sometimes when the lights go on and I feel like I understand something or make some progress in meditation I float through the days and life seems good. Other times, like now when I've got absolutely no idea about self-similar intuitive states, I feel a bit down in the dumps.

Hi Anthony,

I see how the self-similar states may have introduced more confusion than anything else. My guess is that things look to you somewhat like this: we look around and see the richness of the sensory spectrum. We look within and perceive thoughts, feelings. If we then take this self-similarity in the superficial way, we begin to imagine that our thoughts should gradually become all the same, all feelings become the same, our perceptions become the same. The result is that we have lost all the incredible richness of our experience and replaced it with patterns of sameness all over. If things are seen in this way, I would be as skeptical as anyone else. I'm not going to enter into the details of the clocks again. Just a hint - that abstractly described metaphor was meant as a pointer towards a Divine state, from whose perspective whole worlds are being Thought. If we grasp that, it's very clear that in our human perspective not only that we're not supposed to become stuck in self-sameness but we must continually go beyond ourselves, to grasp more and more of the world totality. Self-similarity means to find the overarching intuition that can make sense of both your and another being's state. If you want to understand John Smith's ideas you need to find common ground. You only understand him if you are able to think the same ideas. Of course, everyone will experience them from unique perspective but if you don't find a point of overlap then you simply don't understand what he thinks. Then you have your own ideas about what he might be thinking. So you see, in this sense, self-similar doesn't mean spiraling into our own sameness. It means expanding in consciousness such that we can find the same ideas that live in other beings. It's the same topic discussed with Federica. As long as we only think about everything from a third-person perspective, we're only self-similar to ourselves. Everyone else exists only as talking pictures in our perceptions. We grow spiritually when we try to understand the inner experience of other beings. Then our consciousness expands because we need to find a higher vantage point that can see where spiritual perspectives intersect.

I hope you see what this means. If I have to understand the inner life of an alien, I'll have to find the more fundamental level of consciousness from which my human and the alien's forms of consciousness can be seen to have branched. In Darwinian evolution we speak all the time about the common ancestors in the tree of life. From such a branching point we can understand two different species as specializations of one more general. It's similar with the spiritual side of things, except that we speak of the hierarchy of beings. To understand the alien we need to find the level of consciousness that is the 'last common ancestor' for both of us. Only from that vantage point I can understand in the real sense both my perspective and the alien's. Note this - in a way I have found level of consciousness that makes me more self-similar to the alien. Yet this self-similarity from my human perspective leads to tremendous expansion of consciousness because to understand the alien I have to make a first-person ascent into these lofty worlds where I could find the point of intersection. This holds the same even for the most trivial matters. To understand my neighbor I have to ascend in soul life to find our last common ancestor - that is, I have to be able to see my neighbor as my brother. From that perspective I can understand the destiny of my neighbor and why he thinks, feels and acts as he does. If we're not willing to develop interest in the lives of those around us, it's useless to speak of SS because the latter demands precisely such expansion of consciousness that can follow the development of the world from the various levels of common ancestry.

Does this make sense?

Expanding our consciousness so that we can find the same ideas that live in other beings seems like one has a view of the mental life of another as being a static phenomenon. It’s like you are seeking the canvas painting that lies motionless in mind rather than the frothing and bubbling that characterizes mentation. Sure, one can discern typical patterns of thoughts (e.g. Charles is prone to anger), or particular views – political leaning, favorite sports team, sexual preference – that one might learn about another. But finding the dynamic ideas in another would appear to be a forlorn task. And good luck finding the dynamic ideas in my dog.

Ascending in soul life to find a last common ancestor seems to be the wrong way round. Wouldn’t it require some form of retrograde motion to find common ground with a sea slug? In this light, I’m struggling with your concept of the Divine state. From one perspective, it seems to be an undifferentiated, unlaminated, simple state. But from another, a self-similar, all-encompassing, all-integrating, infinitely complex state. Perhaps the alpha and omega “thingy” is what you are getting at.

[Anthony66]

Please don't feel discouraged about your golf cart metaphor not convincing a hardened skeptic like me. It was very helpful. But as I said, there is a similarity between different teachings that appeal to higher forms of knowledge not commonly available to the masses. I've been following a discussion elsewhere on the sensis divinitatis. This is a special knowledge which some Christians claim which gives them sure knowledge of the divine and the essential truths of Christianity. It is something which I sought for in vain for decades as a Christian.

I go through waves of encouragement/discouragement with the SS stuff. It is hard! Sometimes when the lights go on and I feel like I understand something or make some progress in meditation I float through the days and life seems good. Other times, like now when I've got absolutely no idea about self-similar intuitive states, I feel a bit down in the dumps.

No worries, Anthony! Actually I feel the metaphor is yours more than mine. It’s not something I had in stock, you inspired it. Now, I wasn’t good enough at forming it in accordance with the ‘instructions’, but I’m not discouraged, maybe it’s doing something!


But now, while you are reflecting on the true meaning of self-similarity, I was wondering about something else, if you don’t mind sharing. In the post you have described yourself as a Christian, and also a "hardened skeptic", and I wonder if it’s a thinking/speaking habit you have acquired, or do you really and precisely mean it? In which case, how does the skepticism tie in to your interest in sensus divinitatis and spiritual science?


I am raising this question - the labels we assign to ourselves and our pursuits under those labels - because I believe it’s connected to our motivational ups and downs. I don’t know if it’s your case or not, but I believe that the more we are pursuing a special, selected knowledge, that we aspire to access, decipher, and take advantage of, in order to satisfy a predefined quest, the more we are exposed to fluctuations. When things get unclear, or when the inquiry put a strain on our energy, we feel down in the dumps, we reluctantly put our special area of interest on hold, and we go back to our normal life, hoping for a future revival of interest and motivation. Would sensus divinitatis be this type of “special knowledge”, like a distilled body of information isolated and preserved somewhere, that can be pursued to respond to a determined, preexisting quest, like for example 'communion with the divine'? (to be honest, I have no idea, I am really asking).


The point I'm trying to make is, the larger the spectrum of our search for truth, the easier it is to remain motivated, simply because we are immersed in our questions all the time, we are our questions, and there is just nowhere else to go. When we search for the full truth, there is no ‘normal life’ to get back to when things get difficult. Life - our own, as well as life at large - is precisely what we are aspiring to understand, together with the full spectrum of physical and spiritual reality. Then we can’t ask our future takeaways to be such and such, or able to quench our thirst for the divine, or else. We don’t even expect to gain any "special knowledge", or any future takeaways, just because there is nothing to take that knowledge away from and to. It’s the whole thing we are inquiring, which is concentric around us, expanding in, as well as out, to the whole sphere of inner and outer existence, so where could we ever go with any slice of such holistic knowledge?


With this in mind, I was wondering if you were pursuing knowledge as Wholeness, or rather as a special selection of knowledge with a special purpose, or quest, attached. If it’s the latter, I imagine it could be an obstacle to feeling regularly motivated, and to the living experience of Spiritual Science too.

When I use the language of "hardened skeptic" I mean I've been around long enough, have been exposed to and have entertained various world views, and seen enough special claims to knowledge, to recognize the markers of BS. This is not to suggest that SS is BS. Nor does it warrant that I then default to skeptical atheistic materialism. I very much see myself as a seeker after truth and what draws me to SS is the different approach to reality. One tires with purely balancing the scales of evidence, it becomes as an Ecclesiastes chasing after the wind. As hard as I find the demands of SS in realigning the way one thinks of things, I continue to be drawn to it.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you are asking with respect to Wholeness. I will say that after reading some of "How to Know Higher Worlds", I am challenged by some of the demands of what could loosely be call the pietistic life. There are aspects of my life that I'm not willing to let go of (I like my red wine) which perhaps are hindrances to progress. Having been burnt by former attempts at pietism, I'm hesitant to go there again.

[Federica]

When I use the language of "hardened skeptic" I mean I've been around long enough, have been exposed to and have entertained various world views, and seen enough special claims to knowledge, to recognize the markers of BS. This is not to suggest that SS is BS. Nor does it warrant that I then default to skeptical atheistic materialism. I very much see myself as a seeker after truth and what draws me to SS is the different approach to reality. One tires with purely balancing the scales of evidence, it becomes as an Ecclesiastes chasing after the wind. As hard as I find the demands of SS in realigning the way one thinks of things, I continue to be drawn to it.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you are asking with respect to Wholeness. I will say that after reading some of "How to Know Higher Worlds", I am challenged by some of the demands of what could loosely be call the pietistic life. There are aspects of my life that I'm not willing to let go of (I like my red wine) which perhaps are hindrances to progress. Having been burnt by former attempts at pietism, I'm hesitant to go there again.

What I was asking is whether you approach spiritual science as a specialty knowledge, rather than as... knowledge, starting with you at the center and spreading from there in all directions, inner and outer, to encompass everything.
I might not be aware of what my own difficulties are, but the more I consider your words, the more I feel like I know what your ‘difficulty’ is. You see spiritual science as an island of knowledge, that you are drawn to. As I understand it, this is your major hindrance.

[Federica]

it's somewhat meaningless for me to say, "we are all doing the same thing with our thinking". It leans in to the 3rd person view from the side too much. It's like saying, "we are all the omnipresent, omnipotent Godhead in essence". See, I struggle with that perspective as well!

It’s not meaningless, it’s a resolute take, you prefer to look at things from the perspective of the future, when polarized tendencies have spiraled together. I don't think you were struggling here, Ashvin, but thank you for your efforts

Of course sports games are in fact something we can easily do without, if we really desire to. But it's hard to say the same for this forum and especially Cleric's posts. We simply won't find anything which explores the inner landscape like they do, not even in Steiner, Klocek, etc. So I am glad to hear you will keep reading and remaining active as well!

Yes, I do realize that, very clearly. It's the first thing that crosses my mind when I wake up in the morning.

[Federica]

I have been playing a VR game for exercise lately and we could use it as a simple analogy. It is similar to the Beat Saber game I wrote about previously, except it has good classical music (it's not me in the video ). 

Ashvin,

I know it's peripheral to your post, but I wonder: how do you relate VR exercise to the dangers of mechanism as illustrated in your liminal spaces essay? I realize you might have answered this question in your essay on VR which I haven't read yet. I will now.

(If I may add, from a purely physical perspective, be careful with a 'workout' like this one, it overstresses the shoulder ligaments and doesn't do much else, beyond a mild cardio effect. This is not a workout, but it looks fun, I would certainly give you that )

[Cleric K]

Ascending in soul life to find a last common ancestor seems to be the wrong way round. Wouldn’t it require some form of retrograde motion to find common ground with a sea slug? In this light, I’m struggling with your concept of the Divine state. From one perspective, it seems to be an undifferentiated, unlaminated, simple state. But from another, a self-similar, all-encompassing, all-integrating, infinitely complex state. Perhaps the alpha and omega “thingy” is what you are getting at.

Yes, Anthony, you’re answering your own questions. It’s only a question whether you want to find the perspective from which these things are not mere abstract words floating in imagination but symbols of something experiential, just like the word ‘pain’ is a symbol for something experiential. The alpha and omega thingy is what we recently commented once again about the Escher’s painting with the white and dark doves. I’m not sure if you grasped the idea of hollowed out intuition then.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you are asking with respect to Wholeness. I will say that after reading some of "How to Know Higher Worlds", I am challenged by some of the demands of what could loosely be call the pietistic life. There are aspects of my life that I'm not willing to let go of (I like my red wine) which perhaps are hindrances to progress. Having been burnt by former attempts at pietism, I'm hesitant to go there again.

To give some more illustrations, let’s consider the ‘hardened skeptic’ expression. This readily evokes the picture of the Earth:



The arena of our Earthly life is only a thin film where molten rock has cooled down to solid. We’re floating on a sea of magma. All this is a much more literal metaphor for our spiritual existence than one may suppose. It reminds me of the Emperor from one of the Mummy series:



There was a spell cast on him, he became flame-like and his outer crust was continually solidifying. He had to crack it over and over again so that he could move.

Our intellectual being is indeed constantly threatened by such rigidifying. Our spiritual life has been limited to lateral movements of tectonic plates. Our ideas, our sense of what we are, are very rigid. Trying to move them, rubs the plates against each other, the ground shakes and volcanoes erupt.

In general, people see philosophical, scientific and religious ideas as different arrangements of the tectonic plates. As you say, everyone claims that theirs is the special, true one. So you have painstakingly rearranged the plates several times already but things end up as relative and insecure as ever. So now you say “I’ve had enough. No one really knows anything. It’s just a competition where everyone advertises their tectonic fashion.”

So this is the situation of modern man. We can only rearrange the loose rocks on our hard crust. Few are able to make minor adjustments of the tectonic plates but all in all, we have only rock models of whatever true reality might be. We arrange pebbles on the dusty ground and say “this is God” or “this is MAL”, or “these are the atoms” and so on. After the initial euphoria, people come to their senses and in the end say “well… it’s just a pile of pebbles… no one knows anything else but pebbles”. This is the evolutionary stage of our intellectual consciousness.

Does this mean that we really can’t know anything else but pebbles? Depends on who you ask. Many people are actually quite comfortable with this situation. They are actually relieved that they don’t have to deal with reality. It’s like they are saved from a great burden. In the world of pebbles one can always say “no one knows” and thus justify any kind of desire and action.

So we live in a world of thought-pebbles rolling over our hardened tectonic plates (our character, temperament, etc.) Even though popular mysticism calls this an illusion, what it really accomplishes is simply to fully relieve any remaining traces of the burden. One says “Even the pebbles aren’t real. The tectonic plates aren’t real. Nothing is real. There’s only the void that dreams all of this.” And this is the great lure of our age – take a deep breath and endure the dream of unreality until it is over. Then we’re finally free. Or so it’s said. It’s amazing how even in this forum, so many people embrace this philosophy, while forgetting that in the end it is just another arrangement of the tectonic plates. So once again it is really our character, our temperament, our desires, sympathies and antipathies, that lead us to embrace this particular constellation of pebbles. In the end, it is our hardened ego that has embraced this particular tectonic configuration and now awaits its liberation through death. The reason people don’t notice this is because they believe that by calling the pebbles an illusion, their philosophy is no longer dependent on any tectonic configuration. It’s tempting to believe in our liberation at death but it’s still a belief. What if the mystical state is really simply a brain state at the edge of shutting down and interpreted by intellect that has lost all sense of reality?

What can be done then? We can see an unexplored direction. What if we can find consciousness within the mantle? Could it be that we can be lucidly spiritually active within these depths of which our intellectual crust is only a cooled down and hardened layer?

It’s clear that we need a radically different approach here. We can arrange pebbles and speculate about the depths, as Freudian psychology does, but our intellectual self-consciousness still remains on the surface, as the hard crust. Obviously, as long as we arrange pebbles, they will always remain such. We can’t expect that by just arranging pebbles in different configurations, at some point they will turn into lava. We need some unexplored degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity. Degrees of freedom that we have long forgotten, since for decades and decades we have been only moving tectonic plates and pebbles laterally.

How can we gain some intuition of what is here being spoken of? Every post in this forum tries to do nothing but this – tries to kindle our intuition of the forces that act perpendicularly to the crust. Here’s one more attempt. I’ll use your red wine example.

Why do people of our age drink alcohol? I’m not speaking of you personally, I’m drawing a general picture. One says “It’s tiring to feel the complexities of life all the time. At every step I’m entangled in the most complicated relations with people and objects. I feel like an elephant in a pharmacy. I have to watch my every move, otherwise just by turning around I bump into shelves, glassware falls down and shatters. I need constant vigilance. This is exhausting. I need some time off. I want to spend some time living only with the final results of my thoughts, feelings and actions. I don’t want to premeditate things, I don’t want to be conscious of the consequences of my actions. I would never be able to approach that hot colleague of mine if I had to be conscious of all the details. True, I often say things that insult people, I disgrace myself, I get into trouble, I make myself sick, but at least for some time I’m relieved from the burden of complexities of existence.”

So in this way sobriety introduces certain leeway between the final manifestation of our thoughts, feelings and actions and their preparation. For example, sometimes we may feel our anger bubbling up and we feel as if we want to slap someone in the face. While drunk this may happen as certainly as a law of nature. We simply witness the burst of anger and the movement of our arm. When sober we have something like safety time, we feel the anger gaining momentum and the mental image of us slapping the person begins to take shape. But in our thinking also other images can be intuited side by side – we sense the consequences of our action. Then just like a railroad operator, we can switch tracks and channel anger in a different direction.

Now imagine that our present civilization is by default slightly drunk. Our thoughts are swirling out of control, our emotions burst, we keep fidgeting. In certain sense we live in the final stages of manifestation of all these inner phenomena, even though we still have some leeway for last minute adjustments.

To get out of this drunken state we need inner effort which is quite alien to modern man. And is this surprising? One says “Are you crazy? I desperately try to shut down all this burden of premeditation while you suggest that I have to become even more conscious of it? Get lost!” This really points us at the major conflict of our day and culture. The last thing people would like to do is become more conscious of their inner processes. But there are also those who feel that we can never make a step forward unless we address these depths. Dimly, everyone understands that all the troubles we have are caused by human misconduct. Very little can be blamed upon Nature. Most of the pain and suffering in the world is caused not by Nature but corrupted human activity. And if it is caused by Nature, in most cases it is because humans take the risk to misuse Nature and then simply suffer the consequences of her lawfulness. Yet we’re at loss about how to treat this human corruption. We’re not willing to give up our drunkenness so we have no choice but search for ways to constrain it. We say “it’s OK to be drunk. This is human nature. But let’s at least try to make it safe.” So we have laws, imprisonment, pharmaceuticals, social conditioning – everything that aims to constrain in some way the volcanic eruptions of human nature.

Herein lies the ‘tipping point’ of which we have spoken before. It’s the realization that we can never be free unless we gain consciousness of the currents of our deeper soul life. From this perspective you can grasp the nature of meditation as it should be in our age. Concentrating on a rolling pebble is a beginning. It helps us to gather and focus our inner forces. This already counteracts our default drunken state, where our thinking is all over the place. But we need to go even further. Our point of concentration has to become like an opening in the crust, like an open volcano. In it we gradually begin to gain faint consciousness of our molten nature, the currents of our soul life – that would be the beginning of Imaginative consciousness. In time, we begin to feel ourselves active in these currents. Then our spirit finds new ways of moving the tectonic plates which were inconceivable before.

Now here we go in more advanced topics but I must state this in order to avoid a dangerous one-sidedness. Our Earth is slowly dying. Little by little it cools down. Ultimately it can become only a cold rock like our Moon. This is important to consider in our case. In the Imaginative state we can indeed find our inner nature to be of the Earthly kind. We can feel that our soul has emerged from fire but is now gradually cooling down and at some point will inevitably sink into dark and cold unconsciousness. This is one aspect of the Imaginative world. It is our infernal nature. The other aspect can only come by finding our union with a principle that continually sources new light and warmth. In other words, when we find our ‘upright’ stance in the Imaginative world, we’re a being that has its infernal bowels ‘below’ and its noble spiritual nature 'above'. If left on its own, the life of our lower nature would gradually dissipate its energy (warmth) and solidify. This can only be prevented if the lower is continually being vivified by the light and warmth of the Sun nature – that is the Spirit. Thus it’s not just a matter of attaining Imaginative perception of the bowels. It’s not a matter of giving free reign to our passions and desires – these are our infernal currents of magma. We need to fertilize the magma of our lower nature with the Intelligence of the Spirit. Currently the Spirit is enslaved in the rigidified crust and the currents of magma. It’s not about escaping or destroying the lower nature but organizing it, putting its raw power in service of a higher ideal.

One may still say “But I’m not interested in myself. I want to understand how the world works.” Yet when we begin to grasp the infernal depths and the Cosmic heights of our soul life, we come to realize that we already are the world. Think of the Deep MAL picture. Self-knowledge and world-knowledge are inseparable. To have self-knowledge is to gradually become the world.

So, Anthony, I hope this really pinpoints the crux of the matter. It’s important to stand face to face with this question. All of SS starts precisely with this realization that our ordinary state of consciousness is like being slightly drunk. Then one begins to seek the leeway of cognition where the forces which shape our thoughts, feelings and actions are to be found.

Let me put it even more explicitly. You say “There are aspects of my life that I'm not willing to let go of”. If you feel that you have to let go of red wine just because of some pietism, because some modern Moses carved some new moral code on stone, then this completely misses the point.

Previously you asked “What makes spiritual science a science?” You’ll get a taste of what makes spiritual science a science if you’re willing to ask yourself questions like “What is it in me that is not willing to let go of certain things? What are the forces that shape my character?” You see, SS is hard because we ourselves become the subject of investigation. It’s not like taking an x-ray or ECG, or EEG then reading the results and saying “that’s me”. No, we ourselves need to become the living ECG and EEG. Science tries to tear down and see how the world works. In SS we have to do the same but to ourselves in vivo. It’s easy to investigate that which is already dead. It’s much more difficult to investigate that which is vibrant with life, especially when it clashes with desires. To investigate the living reality of our being we need to continually overcome ourselves.

So in this direction threshold is to be found. It can only be conceived if you find within yourself the spiritual strength to differentiate your thinking from the being that doesn’t want to let go of certain pleasures. Thinking is the first place where we can find freedom because thinking is the most immediate expression of the Spirit – our essential Being. We will change whether we like it or not. Time changes us. If we don’t let go of certain things, death will force us to. As Federica said, SS is not about satisfying some tangential curiosity while we enjoy ‘real’ life. It’s about understanding life itself. To understand what is up, what is down, where time comes from and where it is going. In prior ages such things were stamped upon human beings in the form of religious education. But today we need to be able to reproduce the religions from our own lucid insight into the nature of reality.

I hope this makes it as explicit as possible. Everything that SS speaks of results from a higher form of sobriety, where we find the hidden forces that shape our dreamy life.

Finally one may still object “Higher form of sobriety? What could be more boring than that?” Our Earthly dream has attained a nightmarish tint. We say “I can’t stand this, give me a remedy” and we plunge ourselves in the senses as if to drug ourselves into forgetfulness of how miserable our existence is. Yes, gaining higher lucidity is not easy. It takes effort and sacrifices. But it’s the only way in which we can get a grip on the flow of the dreamscape. Like so many things in life, we first have to invest some effort, we need to go through trials and pain but then something beautiful is born. A mother knows this. We’re now collectively in labor. We all go through the pains of birth. If we endure, something beautiful will be born. The Spirit Child in us, which begins its journey of becoming an artisan of the dreamscape. All that the human spirit has ever secretly yearned for is on that side of the birth canal. And this is not simply another lullaby for our after-death existence. This birth happens here and now. It’s a matter of inner transformation. If we ignore our spiritual nature and prefer to drug ourselves into the kaleidoscopic forms of the dim dream life, this life will gradually turn from nightmarish into hellish. It simply can’t be otherwise because we ourselves are doing it by neglecting the essence of our being. If we give up the degrees of freedom through which we're supposed to shape the dreamscape, then other forces will take possession of them and shape our flow from behind the crust of waking consciousness.

Anthony, I know that all written above will sound repulsive, maybe even insulting. But these are all feelings that pull the yoke of our spiritual being. The question is whether with your free thinking you understand what was described? Do you understand the direction in which one should go if SS is not to remain simply the next pile of pebbles? Do you think that those who speak of these depths of reality are simply confused and in truth there's nothing beneath that which is not willing to let go of something? If you conceive that it might be possible to gain that higher sobriety, do you see how this could serve not only for the satisfaction of vain curiosity but as actual transformative force for the individual and the world?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I know it's peripheral to your post, but I wonder: how do you relate VR exercise to the dangers of mechanism as illustrated in your liminal spaces essay? I realize you might have answered this question in your essay on VR which I haven't read yet. I will now.

(If I may add, from a purely physical perspective, be careful with a 'workout' like this one, it overstresses the shoulder ligaments and doesn't do much else, beyond a mild cardio effect. This is not a workout, but it looks fun, I would certainly give you that )

Federica,

There is a great danger in VR for those who remain unconscious of its effects. Cleric also elaborated on that here, more than I did in my essays. If we just think of it phenomenologically, when we put on the headset and get immersed in the imagery, we are even more abstracted from our physical organism and our inner life than we are in normal non-VR waking consciousness. Most people pay little attention to what's going on with their physical body even normally, especially in relation to their own mental states, and in VR this lack of attention becomes intensified as we are bombarded with floating images which seem mostly independent of our physical organism (except our hands on the controllers and turning our head). Our inner life will probably get more stimulated for awhile, but we are likewise not paying attention to what it is doing. We will attribute the causes of that stimulation to the perceptions themselves like we generally do in the normal sensory spectrum, rather than to the depths of our inner life.

In SS terms, we could say this loosens the vital-life body from the dense (physical) body, but we remain entirely unconscious of that dynamic and this lack of consciousness makes all the difference. If we can become more self-conscious of how our active, feeling-imbued thought-life is precipitating through the physical organism into the perceptual flow, then what is a great danger can become a great pedagogical tool for us. I would still say most of the games on VR are not going to offer much, since they suck us into flattened narratives which pale in comparison to the real-world narratives we can perceive in the depth structure of non-VR phenomenal existence. Most people treat it as an 'escape' from the drudgery of normal life, not realizing how magically we can experience the latter. With the fitness games, there is the exercise factor, and with these musical exercises, I appreciate how it gives the opportunity to engage my whole body-soul-spirit in the temporally extended musical idea. Our musical thought-life can become more vitalized by feeling and will. We can remember the historical forces and anctipate the future forces which flow into the present experience and make it possible. But again this should only be a tool towards experiencing the same ideational depth structure in our non-VR waking life.

Thanks for the caution on the physical strain. Basically I use this game when it is sub-freezing outside and I can't really go for a walk/jog or play basketball. I definitely don't go as hard as the person on that video. But I am open to any suggestions you have for indoor workouts which avoid those physical strains!

[AshvinP]

it's somewhat meaningless for me to say, "we are all doing the same thing with our thinking". It leans in to the 3rd person view from the side too much. It's like saying, "we are all the omnipresent, omnipotent Godhead in essence". See, I struggle with that perspective as well!

It’s not meaningless, it’s a resolute take, you prefer to look at things from the perspective of the future, when polarized tendencies have spiraled together. I don't think you were struggling here, Ashvin, but thank you for your efforts

Federica,

I just want to clear this up a bit. There are basically two ways of approach. One way is for the person who is completely unfamiliar with what we speak of here, in terms of the cognitive TC spectrum, i.e. the superimposed, nested Ideas with their differentiated Time-rhythms. In that case, I would not prefer to take the perspective of the 'future' when pointing to the path forward. Rather, something like the PoF phenomenology of thinking-perception, as it is currently experiened for normal waking consciousness, seems most appropriate. They can be gradually led to experience the implicit depth existing within their own first-person thinking-perceptual activity.

The other approach is for a person who has experienced that depth to some extent and is trying to conceptually reconcile that experience with philosophical or scientific ideas concerning the phenomenal world, including their own inner life. For me personally, it was really helpful to understand that what we experience inwardly in concentration, meditation, etc. is nothing new, but rather is revealing what is always present and implicit in our sensory-conceptual experience, only dimmed way down by the light of intellectual cognition. If we go into a dark quiet room and meditate for some time, then we can even sense this rapid dimming occur when we open the door and walk into a light-filled room. Likewise we can sense the transition just after waking up, if we try to remain connected with our dream-life and associated imaginations as our intellectual thinking-consciousness is still in the process of reincarnating.

So that's why I may mention that our incarnational thinking rhythm is the same, and it's only our living awareness of it which differs (to be contrasted with our awareness of the concept, 'our thinking rhythms are the same'). I think this can be helpful for people aleady familiar with the basic principles we are speaking of. So, you're right, it's not meaningless per se. But, at the end of day, everything in reality is from the first-person perspective. So it is also justified to say that the incarnational rhythm practically doesn't exist for a first-person perspective who is completely unaware of it. Just like it would be justified to say that the materialist is correct that we experience an outer world (in normal waking consciousness) which is devoid of Spirit. Given our modern metaphysical thinking habits, I think it's generally more helpful to take this approach and remain flexible in our thinking through these phenomenal dynamics, rather than imposing any sort of metaphysical framework.

[Anthony66]

To get out of this drunken state we need inner effort which is quite alien to modern man. And is this surprising? One says “Are you crazy? I desperately try to shut down all this burden of premeditation while you suggest that I have to become even more conscious of it? Get lost!” This really points us at the major conflict of our day and culture. The last thing people would like to do is become more conscious of their inner processes. But there are also those who feel that we can never make a step forward unless we address these depths. Dimly, everyone understands that all the troubles we have are caused by human misconduct. Very little can be blamed upon Nature. Most of the pain and suffering in the world is caused not by Nature but corrupted human activity. And if it is caused by Nature, in most cases it is because humans take the risk to misuse Nature and then simply suffer the consequences of her lawfulness. Yet we’re at loss about how to treat this human corruption. We’re not willing to give up our drunkenness so we have no choice but search for ways to constrain it. We say “it’s OK to be drunk. This is human nature. But let’s at least try to make it safe.” So we have laws, imprisonment, pharmaceuticals, social conditioning – everything that aims to constrain in some way the volcanic eruptions of human nature.

It has been said that wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. This seems to be accentuated many times over with SS. Few today are interested in things spiritual. Of those that are, they are either drawn to exoteric traditions or vague forms of new age belief. Until I encountered this forum, I don't think I have ever come across anyone propounding the ideas spoken of here. And as I've said many times, these ideas are extraordinarily difficult to grasp. Is this the domain of a select few? What is the likelihood of substantial numbers in the world advocating this approach? I guess it's a matter of exponential growth - perhaps things might be different after a few score generations.