Stranger wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 9:41 pm
Cleric K wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 9:17 pm
This is clear and no one has ever questioned it. It's true even for far less transcendental things. Practically even purely Earthly sensations are transcendent for those who haven't experienced them. A word or concept for such a sensation is in no way equivalent to its experience.
So let's mark this off too. No one has ever suggested that our intellectual concepts (even if spiritually scientific) are
equivalent to the realities they point to. So with this out of the way,
what prevents us to gain clear knowing of the actual spiritual realities and then symbolize them through images and concepts? I repeat - not in order to reduce them and claim that the concepts and images are equivalent to the experiential realities but only because at our stage of evolution we need the bridge. Even we ourselves can't grasp the intuitive realities if we are not able to think about them with our intellect (through the pointers and with the clear understanding that they are only pointers).
It is the limitation of our current stage of the development of consciousness that "prevents us to gain clear knowing of the actual spiritual realities", and that includes not only cognition faculties, but broader spiritual abilities to experience realities, both immanent and transcendental.
The question now is what do we find in the transcendental when we begin to become knowingly conscious of its higher experiential details (basically Ashvin's question from above). Is there a point at which we say that something is fundamentally unknowable in our Earthly stage (even through our transcendental intuition, after it has been refined)?
I do not know if there is a "a point at which we say that something is fundamentally unknowable". How would we know if there is such a point or if there is not? All we know is that so far we indeed have been able to expand the boundary of knowable, and that includes reaching to both immanent and transcendental, knowable both by cognition and by direct mystical experience, and that expansion manifests the continuous development of our spiritual abilities to experience and cognize actual spiritual realities. We haven't so far reached the "hard stop" limit, but this fact does not tell us if that limit actually exists somewhere ahead of us or not. So, all we can and should do is to keep going.
I want to present two examples of what we may find. What are your thoughts on them? If you don't have any specific thoughts on the validity of these details, do you see any way in principle that we can reasonably assess their logical coherence or even verify them experientially?
(1)
What was the aim and intention of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic beings concerning the physical world? What did they want to bring about in all the beings now dwelling in the world, beings whom they were able to influence after they had united with human evolution in the Atlantean time? These beings, Lucifer-Ahriman, intended nothing less than to keep all earth beings in the form of dense, physical matter in which they are enmeshed. For example: when a plant grows forth from its root, sprouts leaf after leaf, and finally produces the blossom, it is Lucifer-Ahriman's purpose to foster this growth and expansion indefinitely; that is, to make this growing being resemble the physical form it inhabits, to preserve it as it is, thereby snatching it from the spiritual world. For were they to succeed in making this being of the spiritual world resemble the physical form, they would be wresting heaven from the earth, so to speak. In the animal kingdom as well the Luciferic-Ahrimanic beings have the tendency to make all animals resemble the body in which they live, and to cause them, within their material substance, to forget their divine-spiritual origin. And it is the same in the case of the human being.
In order to prevent this, the divine-spiritual Father spoke: In their culmination, in man, the beings of earth have attained to external knowledge in their ego; but we cannot yet entrust them with life. — For life would in that case take a course in which the beings would be torn from their divine-spiritual root in this life: the human being would become an integral part of the physical body and would for all time forget his divine-spiritual origin. Only by bestowing the boon of death upon all things attracted into matter could the divine Father Spirit rescue the memory of divine origin. Thus it became possible for the growing plant to shoot upward until the impulse of fructification entered, and then for its form to wither and a new one to spring from its seed. But in entering the seed state, the plant is for a moment in the divine-spiritual world, and the divine-spiritual world refreshes it. And all this applies pre-eminently to the human being. He would be banished and chained to the earth and would forget his divine-spiritual origin were not death spread over the earth — were he not provided with ever-fresh sources of strength between death and a new birth — in order that he may not forget his divine-spiritual origin.
(2)
Now, think of something else: think of this: between birth and death man is bound to the earth, because his soul, having lived a time in light always hungers again for weight, and returns to the condition of weight. When a condition has been set up — we shall speak further of this — in which this hunger for weight no longer exists, man will follow light more and more. He does this up to a certain point, and when he has arrived at the outermost periphery of the universe, he has exhausted that which gave him weight in his lifetime; then begins a new longing for weight and he begins his path over again, back to a new incarnation. So that in that interval also between death and a new birth, at the midnight hour of existence, there arises a kind of hunger for weight. This is man's longing to return to a new earth-life. Now while he is returning to earth he has to go through the spheres of the other adjacent heavenly bodies. Their effect on him is various and the result of these influences he brings with him into the physical life. So you see the question is important: What influence have the stars in the spheres through which he travels? For according to his passage through his stellar sphere, his longing for earth-weight is variously formed. Not the earth alone radiates, as it were, a certain weight which is the object of man's longing, but also the other heavenly bodies, through whose sphere he travels, as he moves towards a new life, influence him with their weights. So that man, while returning, can get into different situations, which justify one in saying this: Man while returning to earth longs once more to live in the earth-weight. But first he passes through the sphere of Jupiter, who also radiates a weight of such a kind as to add something joyful to the longing for the earth's weight. Thus the longing takes on a joyful mood. Man passes through the sphere of Mars. Mar's weight influences him also, and implants activity in his soul, which is joyfully longing for the earth's weight, so that he may use forcefully the next life from birth to death. The soul has reached the stage of possessing in its subconscious depths the impulse clearly to long for the earth's weight, and to use earthly incarnation forcefully, so that the joyful longing is expressed with intensity. Man passes also through the sphere of Venus. With this joy and strength and longing is mingled a loving understanding of life's tasks.
You note, we are speaking of several different weights, issuing from the heavenly bodies, and are connecting them with the living contents of the soul. We are seeking, again, in looking out into universal space, to assess what is spread out in physical space in moral terms. Knowing that will lies in weight, and that light is the opposite of will, we may say that Mars radiates light, as do Jupiter and Venus also, and that in the forces of weight lies at the same time modification through light. We know, in light are dying world-thoughts, in the forces of weight lie worlds to come through the seeds of will. All this streams through the souls moving in space. We are looking at the world physically, and, at the same time, morally.
The physical and moral do not exist side by side, but in his limitations, man is disposed to say: here, on one side, is the physical, there on the other, the moral. No, they are only different aspects, in itself the thing is one.