Anthroposophy as Fascio

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

Think of the orderly course of the stellar sphere under sway of what we dimly know as the fundamental physical forces, especially relative to the chaotic course of human culture. Our mechanical constructions pale in wisdom compared to the designs of physical nature, but nevertheless they utilize these same physical forces which we have attained a certain mastery of through our thinking consciousness. So I think these can serve as great metaphors for the ideal aims of our spiritual activity if we are able to imbue them with a new imaginative life. The images of the World will only have as much life as we can give them. There is nothing in the Cosmos which is absolutely deficient in spirit, or must remain at a certain level of deficiency, independent of our own spiritual activity.

We can also ask, what is the purpose of maximizing profits? For one thing it helps people accumulate material services and goods. And that is done precisely to indulge in convenient activities which please the senses. It is also done to accumulate power over others, to subject the will of others to our own will. I would say the current wave of political correctness and the associated 'cancel culture' is another manifestation of that will-to-power over others, under guise of outwardly 'virtuous' motives. At the end of the day, it all comes back to archetypal soul-tendencies which are rooted in our high ideals or, more often these days, our lack of them.

Ashvin,

I see the Cosmos as fluctuating or cycling through changing periods of relative order or chaos. Times of profound initiation are not easy times. Now, at many levels, it seems a time of climate change -- the general context/climate in awareness -- in politics, in economies, in culture and civilization, in weather and whatever, we see extremes. Right now profit maximization needs to be constrained against severe inequality and identity politics needs to be held to promoting mutual respect within a great diversity. Sadly, it's cancel culture that's bursting forth as a symptom of the times. Just read the news -- Yuval Harari and Ali Khamenei both trying to cancel or constrain AI; schools from Massachusetts to Florida attempting to cancel the presentation of art forms. Like tornadoes, these are symptoms of a system state. I'm not advocating for one side or the other. I'm saying "Be aware. It's getting harder to walk calmly on this slippery earth."

I'm pointing to the fact that it doesn't fluctuate or cycle independently of our first-person spiritual activity, at the level of individuals and collectives. Neither the polity, the economy, the civilization, nor the weather do so independently of that inner activity. This doesn't mean current humans are the only spiritual agencies involved or the highest, in fact we are among the lowest, but everything which manifests within the Earthly realm flows through our consciousness. That means our soul-states and our thought-states have an increasing level of influence on future fluctuations and cycles. There are some things seeded through our past states of consciousness which have too much momentum that we can expect to change them with our current spiritual activity, and I agree we can't judge any such occurrences with our Earthly concepts of 'good' and 'bad'. That is something the PC crowd surely hasn't learned yet - that their current concepts can hardly evaluate what actually promotes 'mutual respect within a great diversity'. That we need to inwardly transform before we are in any position to make that evaluation. We have a responsibility to the future (which is also us) for dropping the mostly passive outward 'activism' and actively cultivating the inner ideals which will seed future worlds. That is the true activism.

Ashin,

Yup. Entanglement seems as the new buzzword. The one I'm more used to is Mitakuye Oyasin (All My Relations). Nothing happens independently.

I also dislike cancel culture and PC. Sadly I find forms of it bursting forth in many locations generating like the climate more extreme events.

[Stranger]

PS: some NDE accounts claim that the Earth is going to ascend to the 4-rd density, at least in one of its timelines with at least part of the human population, which means that the 4-th density Earth will become a planet fit for the those souls who graduated to the nondual state so that they can continue incarnating into 4-th density humans.

[AshvinP]

So we come full circle back to the question, how is it possible that some (perhaps not you, but certainly others) have risen above all that to the realm of Creator transcendence, yet they don't know the higher-order details of the created WC which is never separate from the Creator, such as the Spheres/Beings we pass through in disincarnate state, or when they are presented such details, they can't determine immediately whether they are true expressions of the Creator or not (or can only do so based on personal preferences of how we can relate with Oneness)? Wouldn't this mean that Creator and creation are, in fact, phenomenologically, epistemologically, ontologically separate? I know you assert they are not separate, but how do you explain this glaring epistemic discrepancy?

Each form/phenomenon (percept, cognition, idea etc) is ontologically the Creator, and so each of us are processes of the interdependent streams of forms/cognitions within the consciousness of the Creator. The interdependency within and between the streams is governed by the lawful structures. But the fact that each phenomenon and stream is ontologically the Creator does not mean that each stream or act of cognition automatically knows every other form/phenomenon in the World.

As an analogy, imagine we are the waves of the surface of the same ocean. When our cognition only runs along the surface, we only see and experience waves (little ripples within our own wave, or other waves closely around us), and from such horizontal perspective the waves seem to be separate from each other. We can develop our surface-cognition further and see more waves around in the horizontal dimension and understand their groups and structures and flows and the laws that govern their flows etc. However, at some point we may look down into the depth and discover that, oh!, it is all just one and the same ocean, there is only water and all waves are made of the same water! But that does not mean that each wave, when it realizes that is it just water, immediately knows what is going on with every other wave across the surface of the ocean. Ontological unity does not mean the full informational access across the full "space" of the ocean. Still, each wave can experientially and directly know that it is made of water and so in no way separable from the water of the ocean. Why? Because the "water" of the ocean is Consciousness, it is the Self, and Consciousness has the fundamental ability to knowingly experience itself. Don't you know that you are conscious? So do I and everyone else, duh! But we have a weird belief that "my consciousness is something different and separate from your consciousness" because we cannot immediately experience what other people experience. That belief is especially supported in materialism where consciousness is believed to be an epiphenomenon of material brain, so there are as many separate and different consciousnesses as there are human brains in the world. But no way, materialism aside, there cannot be ontologically a multitude of separate consciousnesses, otherwise they would not be able to communicate with each other. Ontologically there can be only one consciousness within which there is a multitude of the cognitive processes running and interacting with each other but not necessarily having direct access to all the cognitive experiences of each other.

So, as Cleric described it somewhere else, there is "vertical" expansion of the boundary where we reach to the dimension of the ontological oneness and acquire the knowledge of various universal aspects of that ontological dimension of the "depths of the ocean", and there is "horizontal" expansion into higher order details of the created WC (meaning that, of course, such "horizontal" is actually multidimensional fractal with its own vertical hierarchy). Correspondingly, there are "mystical reductionists" who do not care about the WC and only expand to the vertical dimension, and there are "structural reductionists" who don't pay any attention to the vertical and only expand into the "horizontal" WC. Both of those approaches are limited and both can only acquire a distorted and one-sided knowledge of reality. If we indeed want to know the truth of what reality is and all that it does, we need to push the boundary in both vertical and horizontal dimensions, into the widths of the ocean (the world of the ocean waves and forms) and into the depths of it (the transcendental dimension of what the ocean IS).

Ok well, I shouldn't have asked about the hypothetical person. Let's focus on you or Cleric or me. Remember the main issue you have with Anthroposophy, starting from the Demiurge thread and continuing to this latest one, is that it generally teaches a majority of humans have many incarnations to go before they are free of Karmic entanglements at the individual and collective scales and further reincarnation becomes optional. Anything we discuss or quote which suggests there is more work to be done in that respect is considered automatically suspect. That is basically what my post about purifying our personalized soul life was about, which led to this thread.

So Cleric asks what within the transcendental experience, while on Earth, concretely reveals to us we are free of the Karmic entanglements which would otherwise necessitate further journeys 'up and down' the Spheres. We have already established such things can be precipitated into our concepts, fully knowing those are only dim shells for transcendent experiences. So if it can be so conveyed in some way, please convey it to us or quote someone who has. There must be some way to concretely express it. I shared a quote from Steiner before about how the Buddha fulfilled his Earthly mission and no longer needed to incarnate here, which included many details. But everything else in higher cognitive research also points to the fact that no one on this forum is anywhere close to Buddhahood. What is it within transcendent experience which suggests otherwise?

I have a feeling you may say your personal transcendent experiences cannot be discussed on this forum - the "don't throw your pearls before swine" principle. Or that the secret scriptures which discuss these things have not been shared in public and to do so would violate a sacred oath. That's fine, but in that case anyone can decide with their healthy reasoning which approach is more "fascio", or requires blind faith, and which allows for all sovereign individuals to freely evaluate its teachings in precise detail, both outwardly and inwardly through precise methods also shared, before trusting in its conclusions (free to our spiritual activity and our wallet). One cannot freely evaluate what remains under complete cloak and dagger.

[Stranger]

Ok well, I shouldn't have asked about the hypothetical person. Let's focus on you or Cleric or me. Remember the main issue you have with Anthroposophy, starting from the Demiurge thread and continuing to this latest one, is that it generally teaches a majority of humans have many incarnations to go before they are free of Karmic entanglements at the individual and collective scales and further reincarnation becomes optional. Anything we discuss or quote which suggests there is more work to be done in that respect is considered automatically suspect.

I don't know how you got to misinterpret my position so badly. The majority of humans indeed " have many incarnations to go before they are free of Karmic entanglements at the individual and collective scales and further reincarnation becomes optional". Where did I say anything against it? Please read this message above where I confirmed exactly that view.

So Cleric asks what within the transcendental experience, while on Earth, concretely reveals to us we are free of the Karmic entanglements which would otherwise necessitate further journeys 'up and down' the Spheres. We have already established such things can be precipitated into our concepts, fully knowing those are only dim shells for transcendent experiences. So if it can be so conveyed in some way, please convey it to us or quote someone who has. There must be some way to concretely express it. I shared a quote from Steiner before about how the Buddha fulfilled his Earthly mission and no longer needed to incarnate here, which included many details. But everything else in higher cognitive research also points to the fact that no one on this forum is anywhere close to Buddhahood. What is it within transcendent experience which suggests otherwise?

These questions are irrelevant for our current human lives. When our life ends, we will go through the life review, we will recall our previous lives and will be advised by our soul guides (who are higher-dimensional beings) if we are ready to move on to incarnations on higher dimensions, or if we still need to go back to human form to learn further lessons. What we need to do now is to focus on our current development of consciousness in both transcendental and immanent domains of reality, do our everyday work of spiritual practice and put it into practice by manifesting it in our everyday life.

[AshvinP]

Ok well, I shouldn't have asked about the hypothetical person. Let's focus on you or Cleric or me. Remember the main issue you have with Anthroposophy, starting from the Demiurge thread and continuing to this latest one, is that it generally teaches a majority of humans have many incarnations to go before they are free of Karmic entanglements at the individual and collective scales and further reincarnation becomes optional. Anything we discuss or quote which suggests there is more work to be done in that respect is considered automatically suspect.

I don't know how you got to misinterpret my position so badly. The majority of humans indeed " have many incarnations to go before they are free of Karmic entanglements at the individual and collective scales and further reincarnation becomes optional". Where did I say anything against it? Please read this message above where I confirmed exactly that view.

So Cleric asks what within the transcendental experience, while on Earth, concretely reveals to us we are free of the Karmic entanglements which would otherwise necessitate further journeys 'up and down' the Spheres. We have already established such things can be precipitated into our concepts, fully knowing those are only dim shells for transcendent experiences. So if it can be so conveyed in some way, please convey it to us or quote someone who has. There must be some way to concretely express it. I shared a quote from Steiner before about how the Buddha fulfilled his Earthly mission and no longer needed to incarnate here, which included many details. But everything else in higher cognitive research also points to the fact that no one on this forum is anywhere close to Buddhahood. What is it within transcendent experience which suggests otherwise?

These questions are irrelevant for our current human lives. When our life ends, we will go through the life review, we will recall out previous lives and will be advised by our soul guides (who are higher-dimensional beings) if we are ready to move on to incarnations on higher dimensions, or if we still need to go back to human form to learn further lessons. What we need to do now is to focus on our current development of consciousness in both transcendental and immanent domains of reality, do our everyday work of spiritual practice and put it into practice by manifesting it in our everyday life.

In that post you wrote:

After evolving along this path for a certain period (it may take one or multiple incarnations) you eventually graduate/ascend to a level of consciousness where there is no interest and necessity to incarnate into the 3-rd dimension (where Earth resides) anymore because you have all its lessons learnt and disentangled all karmic knots tying you to the 3-rd dimensional entanglements.

The question was, how can we come to know whether it is this incarnation we are free of entanglements or we have more to go? Your new post suggests that this can't be known on Earth, only after we cross the threshold of death when we meet our soul guides. But higher cognitive experience is precisely about crossing the threshold of death while on Earth with wakeful consciousness and bringing the fruits of knowledge from the soul guides into the Earthly spectrum for the benefit of all the souls here. So we basically speed up the process of disentaglement which would otherwise take much longer. That is why we keep asking whether you allow for this possibility and, if so, what would such knowledge concretely look or sound like to you? Because one thing seems clear - you don't like the look or sound of the spiritual scientific knowledge (for ex. what I quoted a few pages ago). Are you now saying such knowledge is impossible, by way of higher cognition or even the full transcendent experience, and that's why the questions are "irrelevant for our current human lives"?

[Stranger]

The question was, how can we come to know whether it is this incarnation we are free of entanglements or we have more to go? Your new post suggests that this can't be known on Earth, only after we cross the threshold of death when we meet our soul guides. But higher cognitive experience is precisely about crossing the threshold of death while on Earth with wakeful consciousness and bringing the fruits of knowledge from the soul guides into the Earthly spectrum for the benefit of all the souls here. That is why we keep asking whether you allow for this possibility and, if so, what would such knowledge concretely look or sound like to you? Because one thing seems clear - you don't like the look or sound of the spiritual scientific knowledge (for ex. what I quoted a few pages ago). Are you now saying such knowledge is impossible, by way of higher cognition or even the full transcendent experience, and that's why the questions are "irrelevant for our current human lives"?

While in this life this knowledge can only be internal to us. There are no external criteria that can be put in place like college tests. You should know for yourself if you are sufficiently disentangled from your human karmic knots and if you are maturing and getting close to graduation from the human form, but of course only if you have sufficient insight into the depths of your soul to even know that. We do communicate with soul guides on the nonverbal spiritual level, and some even on verbal one (by the way, Lou does it on a regular basis), they guide us on our journey and we get everything we need to know from them at our current stage. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John.10).

But if you so insist, I can give you some criteria to test yourself (and no, not other people, but only yourself) if you are still karmically tied to the 3-rd dimensional dualistic realm:
- If you still have a strong sense of your separate self and ego-consciousness
- If you have high or low-esteemed self-image, if you feel strongly offended when people demean or insult you, or feel very happy when they praise you
- If you do not experientially know the Divine Self and do not experientially see it everywhere
- If you don't experience compassion and love towards every living being
- If you do not see shining beauty in all forms, even those that look ugly to human eyes
- If you do not experience the oneness of the world and all its living beings with the Divine, yourself included
- If you suffer psychologically from negative life circumstances or losses, if you have strong personal likes and dislikes

There are more of course, these are just examples. These are rather high developmental level criteria, and we may be allowed to graduate from human form and allowed to incarnate into 4-th dimensional races even if we do not perfectly meet all of those criteria. But again, this decision will be left for the assessment by the council of spirit guides of the soul's maturity after leaving the human body.

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:2

[AshvinP]

The question was, how can we come to know whether it is this incarnation we are free of entanglements or we have more to go? Your new post suggests that this can't be known on Earth, only after we cross the threshold of death when we meet our soul guides. But higher cognitive experience is precisely about crossing the threshold of death while on Earth with wakeful consciousness and bringing the fruits of knowledge from the soul guides into the Earthly spectrum for the benefit of all the souls here. That is why we keep asking whether you allow for this possibility and, if so, what would such knowledge concretely look or sound like to you? Because one thing seems clear - you don't like the look or sound of the spiritual scientific knowledge (for ex. what I quoted a few pages ago). Are you now saying such knowledge is impossible, by way of higher cognition or even the full transcendent experience, and that's why the questions are "irrelevant for our current human lives"?

While in this life this knowledge can only be internal to us. There are no external criteria that can be put in place like college tests. You should know for yourself if you are sufficiently disentangled from your human karmic knots and if you are maturing and getting close to graduation from the human form, but of course only if you have sufficient insight into the depths of your soul to even know that. We do communicate with soul guides on the nonverbal spiritual level, and some even on verbal one (by the way, Lou does it on a regular basis), they guide us on our journey and we get everything we need to know from them at our current stage. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John.10).

But if you so insist, I can give you some criteria to test yourself (and no, not other people, but only yourself) if you are still karmically tied to the 3-rd dimensional dualistic realm:
- If you still have a strong sense of your separate self and ego-consciousness
- If you have high or low-esteemed self-image, if you feel strongly offended when people demean or insult you, or feel very happy when they praise you
- If you do not experientially know the Divine Self and do not experientially see it everywhere
- If you don't experience compassion and love towards every living being
- If you do not see shining beauty in all forms, even those that look ugly to human eyes
- If you do not experience the oneness of the world and all its living beings with the Divine, yourself included
- If you suffer psychologically from negative life circumstances or losses, if you have strong personal likes and dislikes

There are more of course, these are just examples. These are rather high developmental level criteria, and we may be allowed to graduate from human form and allowed to incarnate into 4-th dimensional races even if we do not perfectly meet all of those criteria. But again, this decision will be left for the assessment by the council of spirit guides of the soul's maturity after leaving the human body.

As Cleric mentioned, the word "concrete" simply isn't being understood. I could have gotten that list of 'criteria' by asking GPT 'what makes a really spiritual and loving person'?

On all esoteric paths, for ex, we encounter the Guardian of the Threshold. This is a wakeful, concrete experience of our inner soul-entanglements, accumulated through our incarnations, made objective knowledge for us. They are the entanglements which keep the spiritual worlds across the threshold from inflowing our waking consciousness when we are morally unprepared. The experience can be accompanied by striking images which are not dreamlike, but more real (or cognitively textured) than the sense-pictures we see while normally awake. Such experiences can be precipitated into concepts accessible to our ordinary reasoning, as they have been throughout esoteric literature, which greatly aids those on the path with their own development.

This is just one example of many. This whole time we have been speaking of higher cognition it has been about systematically crossing the threshold with waking consciousness, discerning judgment, and bringing back concrete knowledge to the sphere of ordinary reasoning which can be understood clearly and communicated precisely with others. It's not just some personal affair for us to feel in communion with higher beings, but a Cosmic ideal of redeeming the entire Earthly evolution in which all human individuals and lower life waves are embedded, building the gradient between the human intellect and the Cosmic thinking of the soul-spirit guides.

Can you point to similar concrete experiential knowledge either for yourself or shared by other paths which can be freely evaluated by our ordinary reasoning?

[Stranger]

As Cleric mentioned, the word "concrete" simply isn't being understood. I could have gotten that list of 'criteria' by asking GPT 'what makes a really spiritual and loving person'?

On all esoteric paths, for ex, we encounter the Guardian of the Threshold. This is a wakeful, concrete experience of our inner soul-entanglements, accumulated through our incarnations, made objective knowledge for us. They are the entanglements which keep the spiritual worlds across the threshold from inflowing our waking consciousness when we are morally unprepared. The experience can be accompanied by striking images which are not dreamlike, but more real (or cognitively textured) than the sense-pictures we see while normally awake. Such experiences can be precipitated into concepts accessible to our ordinary reasoning, as they have been throughout esoteric literature, which greatly aids those on the path with their own development.

This is just one example of many. This whole time we have been speaking of higher cognition it has been about systematically crossing the threshold with waking consciousness, discerning judgment, and bringing back concrete knowledge to the sphere of ordinary reasoning which can be understood clearly and communicated precisely with others. It's not just some personal affair for us to feel in communion with higher beings, but a Cosmic ideal of redeeming the entire Earthly evolution in which all human individuals are embedded, building the gradient between the human intellect and the Cosmic thinking of the soul-spirit guides.

Can you point to similar concrete experiential knowledge either for yourself or shared by other paths which can be freely evaluated by our ordinary reasoning?

Do not see shining beauty in all forms, even those that look ugly to human eyes, right now?
Do you have a strong sense of your separate self right now?
Do you experience compassion and love towards me or anyone else right now?
What can be more concrete than that?

[AshvinP]

As Cleric mentioned, the word "concrete" simply isn't being understood. I could have gotten that list of 'criteria' by asking GPT 'what makes a really spiritual and loving person'?

On all esoteric paths, for ex, we encounter the Guardian of the Threshold. This is a wakeful, concrete experience of our inner soul-entanglements, accumulated through our incarnations, made objective knowledge for us. They are the entanglements which keep the spiritual worlds across the threshold from inflowing our waking consciousness when we are morally unprepared. The experience can be accompanied by striking images which are not dreamlike, but more real (or cognitively textured) than the sense-pictures we see while normally awake. Such experiences can be precipitated into concepts accessible to our ordinary reasoning, as they have been throughout esoteric literature, which greatly aids those on the path with their own development.

This is just one example of many. This whole time we have been speaking of higher cognition it has been about systematically crossing the threshold with waking consciousness, discerning judgment, and bringing back concrete knowledge to the sphere of ordinary reasoning which can be understood clearly and communicated precisely with others. It's not just some personal affair for us to feel in communion with higher beings, but a Cosmic ideal of redeeming the entire Earthly evolution in which all human individuals are embedded, building the gradient between the human intellect and the Cosmic thinking of the soul-spirit guides.

Can you point to similar concrete experiential knowledge either for yourself or shared by other paths which can be freely evaluated by our ordinary reasoning?

Do not see shining beauty in all forms, even those that look ugly to human eyes, right now?
Do you have a strong sense of your separate self right now?
Do you experience compassion and love towards me or anyone else right now?
What can be more concrete than that?

We were discussing concrete knowledge of the Karmic structure which conditions our becoming within the Earthly realm. Another ex. - the life tableau you mentioned only comes at the end of life (or in some NDE cases) can be systematically experienced through imaginative cognition. We can behold all life experiences going back to our birth. Through this higher development, we are becoming conscious of the Cosmic cognitive currents which animate our normal sense of beauty, compassion, love, etc., the latter only being dim shadows of the former.

Now the first thing attained in this way is true self-knowledge. For, just as in life we have for our immediate perception a table here, chairs over there, and this whole splendid hall — with the clock that isn't going! — and so on; just as all this stands before us in space, and we perceive it at any moment, so, to the thinking that has become active and real, the world of time makes itself known — at first in the form of the time-world that is bound up with the human being himself. Past experiences that can normally be recovered only as memory-images stand before him as an immediately present tableau of long past events. The same thing is described by people who experience a shock through the threat of imminent death by drowning perhaps; and what they describe is confirmed — I always add this — by persons who think in an entirely materialistic way. To someone in mortal peril there may flash up an inward tableau of his past life. And this in fact is what happens also to people who have made their thinking active; suddenly before their souls arises a tableau of their life from the moment when they first learnt to think up to the present. Time becomes space; the past becomes present; a picture stands before their souls. The most characteristic feature of this experience — I shall have to go into it more closely to-morrow — is that, because the whole thing is like a picture, one still has a certain feeling of space, but only a feeling. For the space now experienced lacks the third dimension; it is two-dimensional only, as with a picture. For this reason I call this cognition Imaginative — a picture-cognition that works, as in a painting, with two dimensions.

You may ask: When I have this experience of only two dimensions, what happens if, still experiencing two dimensions, I go further? That makes no difference. We lose all experience of a third dimension. On a later occasion I will speak of how, in our day, because there is no longer any consciousness of such things, people searching for the spiritual look for a fourth dimension as a way towards it. The truth is that when we go on from the physical to the spiritual, no fourth dimension appears, but the third dimension drops away. We must get used to the real facts in this sphere, as we have had to do in others. It was once thought that the earth was flat, and ran off into an indefinite region where it came to an abrupt end; and just as it was an advance when people knew that if we sail round the earth we come back to our starting-point, so it will be an advance in our inner comprehension of the world when we know that, in the spiritual world, we do not go on from first, second, third dimensions to a fourth, but back to two dimensions only. And we shall see how, eventually, we go back to only one. That is the true state of affairs.
...
Ordinary memory-pictures make us feel that they come essentially from conceptions of the outside world, experiences of pleasure, pain, of what other people have done to us, of their attitude towards us. That is what we chiefly experience in our purely conceptual memories.

In the tableau of which I am speaking, it is different. There we experience — well, let us take an example. Perhaps we met someone ten years ago. In ordinary memory we would see how he came to meet us, what he did to us that was good or bad, and so on. But in the life-tableau we re-live our first sight of the man, what we did and experienced ourselves in order to gain his friendship, what our impressions were. Thus in the tableau we feel what unfolds outwardly from within us, whereas ordinary memory shows what develops inwardly from without.

So of the tableau we can say that it brings us something like a present experience in which one thing does not follow another, as in recollection, but one thing is side-by-side with another in two-dimensional space. Hence the life-tableau can be readily distinguished from memory-pictures.

Now what is gained from this is an enhancement of our inner activity, the active experience of one's own personality. That is the essential feature of it. One lives in and develops more intensively the forces which radiate from the personality.

So, again, can you point to any similar concrete experiential knowledge of the soul-spirit nature which gives us living feedback on how to address our various Karmic entanglements and decondition from them?

[Cleric]

While in this life this knowledge can only be internal to us. There are no external criteria that can be put in place like college tests. You should know for yourself if you are sufficiently disentangled from your human karmic knots and if you are maturing and getting close to graduation from the human form, but of course only if you have sufficient insight into the depths of your soul to even know that. We do communicate with soul guides on the nonverbal spiritual level, and some even on verbal one (by the way, Lou does it on a regular basis), they guide us on our journey and we get everything we need to know from them at our current stage. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John.10).

But if you so insist, I can give you some criteria to test yourself (and no, not other people, but only yourself) if you are still karmically tied to the 3-rd dimensional dualistic realm:
- If you still have a strong sense of your separate self and ego-consciousness
- If you have high or low-esteemed self-image, if you feel strongly offended when people demean or insult you, or feel very happy when they praise you
- If you do not experientially know the Divine Self and do not experientially see it everywhere
- If you don't experience compassion and love towards every living being
- If you do not see shining beauty in all forms, even those that look ugly to human eyes
- If you do not experience the oneness of the world and all its living beings with the Divine, yourself included
- If you suffer psychologically from negative life circumstances or losses, if you have strong personal likes and dislikes

There are more of course, these are just examples. These are rather high developmental level criteria, and we may be allowed to graduate from human form and allowed to incarnate into 4-th dimensional races even if we do not perfectly meet all of those criteria. But again, this decision will be left for the assessment by the council of spirit guides of the soul's maturity after leaving the human body.

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:2

Let's use your school graduation metaphor. We can paraphrase the above points as "Criteria which show you're not yet ready to graduate":

- If you still have a strong sense of being a student who learns only for the benefit of his own separate existence
- If you think that you are too good or too bad student and you are easily influenced by the praises and insults of other students and teachers
- If you do not experientially know that you are of one essence with the Teacher (we have the same fundamental conscious capabilities and we can develop to be just as virtuous) and see his wisdom everywhere.
- If you don't experience compassion and love towards every student and other living being on campus
- If you do not see shining beauty in all school activities, even those that look ugly to the student's eyes
- If you do not experience the oneness and unity of the school system with the School Master, yourself included
- If you suffer psychologically from poor exam marks, if you have strong personal likes and dislikes

Now these are all excellent things - no one has ever disputed that they are all necessary. But do we notice something? Do we notice that in these points there's nothing about the actual curriculum? These points can be framed and presented as a very noble code of moral conduct for the school. We can see such codes of conduct in almost every forum and discord server today. We see points: "No hate speech, no spamming, no impersonation" and so on. In our forum we're so advanced that there's no need to write these down, we assume everyone knows them in their heart

So all this is good. It is a vital atmosphere that is absolutely necessary and has to be nourished continuously (it's not just a one time thing). But in a normal school does a student graduate only because they have fulfilled the points of conduct? These points are the fertile conditions for the learning process to begin and be sustained, not the graduation criteria themselves. Well, maybe if the school has some preliminary admission test, these can indeed be seen as criteria for passing but that's only in order to be admitted to the school. It will be funny if a first grader says "I fulfill all the points of moral conduct so I have nothing left to do here, I'm ready for the university." Then other schoolmates say "What are you talking about? You haven't even started school and you already see yourself fit for the university?" The kid replies "There are different paths. All those subjects that you learn here are not actually necessary. They may be curious, there's nothing wrong to go through them if that's what interests you but they have nothing to do with real graduation and Divine life. All you need is to realize the one code of moral conduct."

Obviously this is a school unlike any one we know in practice. Normally every grade develops skills and knowledge that serve as the foundation for the next. Only in the above school one can go to the university by simply learning to behave and assuming that they are ready for more noble student life.

As you say, things will reveal themselves after death. Everyone will see if they have prepared the proper foundation. I can't prove to anybody that things will be one way or another. But we can use our common sense. Notice - we don't even need to use some higher faculty, all we need is common sense to see the radical difference between the two approaches. The first consists in simply shutting ourselves to the school (believing it's dual, optional, etc.) and quietly brood on the points of moral conduct in anticipation for the university after death. The second simply says "I'm here anyway, I might just as well see what this school is about. Maybe something of what I can learn here would turn out to be indispensable for my future career? If I simply assume that it is all optional and none of it is a necessary foundation for the higher curriculum, I'm simply taking a bet which according to common sense is quite high risk (usually to make an informed choice we have to examine all options in depth)" I remind that in this metaphor, the school shouldn't be taken to mean the secular world of duality and suffering. The code of moral conduct already indicates that we need some level of maturity to attend this school. It's the school that leads us in the Kingdom grade by grade and develops the needed skills, faculties and virtues.

This is not the first time this school metaphor is used here but I just decided to connect it with the view of transcendence that you presented above.