Anthroposophy as Fascio

[Cleric K]

So, in that above example I was talking about the concrete and practical first-person experience of willfully manifesting ideas into perceived forms in LD/OBE and from this practice learning and understanding the mechanism of manifestations of forms by spiritual beings, and then practical learning to participate in the collective spiritual activity of ideational manifestations together with higher-order beings. That is exactly applying the scientific "want to know" mindset through first-person experience in spiritual practices. How is that superficial and analytic-idealist abstract? I don't care about being praised, it's just about your default negative approach of "we do it always right, you do it always wrong" with which it is impossible to establish any constructive dialog.

The problem above has been explained many times but let's try once more.

Even without stating it explicitly, the above already contains quite specific world conception. Practically it conceives reality as imagined. There's the holoflow of spiritual phenomena on one side and on the other is our spiritual activity.

The red is fully valid for our life of (ordinary) imagination. But to go from the red to the blue is not in the least warranted. We simply have no justification to say "I feel my ideal activity to be reflected as imagination, thus this is how reality is created, this is how higher beings also operate."

We know why you choose to draw that conclusion. You have explained it well. In your words, on one hand we have what consciousness is, on the other - what consciousness does. It is assumed that as soon as we go through the experience of transcendental oneness the first question is fully settled. We have solved half of the Cosmic Mystery, we know what reality is, what existence is, what consciousness is and what's left is to endlessly explore what consciousness can do, in other words - how it can impress its ideational activity into imagined phenomena.

As explained countless times, this an elementary error. Remember the following scene of the first Avatar. Toruk is a top predator. He has no natural enemies so he never looks up. That's exploited by Jake to jump on his back and make the Tsaheylu bond:



Movie clip: https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxh9dgBu ... ti2HCxfTbZ

We act like Toruk every time we imagine that we have reached the ultimate foundations of reality. And NO, this is not denial of oneness. This in no way contradicts the fact that we're of one essence with the Divine and all beings. It only brings to attention the simple fact that we blind ourselves for half of reality as soon as we decide that we already know what consciousness is. Instead, we should be open that we haven't even begun to see what consciousness is. This shouldn't cause despair. In fact, it can become our greatest inspiration because there's so much more to learn, so much more to be awestruck by!

When we decide that we already know what consciousness is, we automatically assume that reality consists of a tableau of inner phenomena that spiritual beings manipulate with their activity. We do that simply because this is what we can conceive of at our level of consciousness. For example, we can imagine a wall. We can imagine that we bump into it but also that we evaporate it and pass through it. From that perspective, it is conceived that higher intelligences are basically of the same fundamental nature as us, except that they hold with their imagination a wall that we can't evaporate, our imagination is too week to override the higher.

What is called Maya in this sense refers to the idea that everything is imagined. Reality is really only vaporous imaginative fantasy, existing in the One Cosmic Mind, held by the forces of various beings. In that respect our spirit on Earth is in a situation like Alex from Clockwork Orange:



We're forced to perceive the fantasy of higher beings, which is projected from the same Cosmic subjectivity from which we can also project our imagined pictures, thoughts, memories, but the former are more powerful and we're forced to conform with them.

Is there then any surprise why we see the world as the oppressive work of the Demiurge, who basically sits us in the chair and keeps our eyes wet? We say "Next time I'll choose my fantasies, alright?"

The greatest problem with this whole 'cosmology' is that all manifested reality is in fact unreality. It is only floating images that we're forced to contemplate. I invite everyone to try and delve into this world conception to get a good feeling for it. We should get the unmistakable feeling: "it's all only a floating dream picture. It's real insofar that I'm forced to flow into its channels but other than that it simply an imagined picture in our shared subjectivity."

VR is a fitting metaphor. Reality is here on my side where I know what consciousness is. Reality out there is simply a VR experience. It is arrangement of spiritual pixels in Cosmic subjectivity. This is how I experience it, this is how the Divine experiences it. The difference is only that some beings have greater power over what lesser beings are forced to contemplate, like the software development determines the VR experience.

I hope everyone can appreciate how empowering such a world conception feels and how easily it seems to solve all enigmas. It is completely natural that we should have no interest in the world. The structure of our body, our organs, brain, nature, planets and stars - all of this is simply the fantasy that we're forced to contemplate. It can be examined, it can be studied but in the end it serves no greater purpose because true development is seen simply as the ability to escape the clutches of the intelligences that force us to contemplate their fantasy. If we escape the image of the body as they fantasize it, we can fantasize any body we want.

Once again, all this is not said simply because we like to play opposition and deny oneness. All of this speaks of something concrete - the Toruk fallacy which without realizing it makes us feel that the nature of Cosmic Consciousness is a solved puzzle and all Divine rays simply fantasize images in the shared Divine subjectivity - some with greater power, some with lesser. This is a very convenient polarity. It is perfectly palpable for the intellect (because we all understand what fantasy is). Yet it will remain Maya. It remains Maya because we're the one who perpetuates it by imagining that higher intelligences create the world similarly to the way we imagine an apple.

Now we can of course go into much greater details about the actual nature of the higher beings and world creation but this would be all in vain if we don't even allow ourselves to question whether we might be missing something and that there might be a long way of discovery before us about what consciousness is.

[AshvinP]

At this rate, I could just as well feel offended on behalf of my Danish friends, because of this:

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, as they say.

I don’t get that in 2023 people keep propagating non-inclusive, discriminatory sayings of this sort, when there are so many other ways to say the exact same thing that don’t require offending the very nice Danish people, and me with them, so casually and insensitively.

I detect the sarcasm here but also to note, this is a line from Hamlet, which we were also discussing elsewhere as a reflection of the isolated consciousness soul. I thought the following context in which the line appears makes it especially appropriate:

The line ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ is not spoken by one of the play’s major characters. It comes at the end of Act 1 Scene 4, when the Ghost has appeared (or, more accurately, reappeared) on the battlements of Elsinore castle, and beckoned to Hamlet to come and speak with it.

HAMLET:
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away! Go on; I’ll follow thee.

The Nemean lion was an animal thought to be invincible in Greek myth. Heracles strangled it as the first of his famous twelve labours, but no other man could vanquish it. So Hamlet is essentially saying, ‘I know it’s my destiny to follow the Ghost and hear what it has to say. Every blood vessel in my body is resolved to do that.’

HORATIO:
He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS:
Let’s follow; ’tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO:
Have after. To what issue will this come?

In other words, ‘Let’s follow after Hamlet. I wonder what the outcome of this will be?’ Unlike Marcellus, Horatio is Hamlet’s close friend. Horatio is uneasy about the appearance of the Ghost and what it might represent.

MARCELLUS:
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

And here we have the famous line. It’s worth observing that ‘state’, here, doesn’t mean ‘condition’ but ‘nation’ or ‘kingdom’. Something is rotten because ghosts don’t just tend to appear in normal times when everything is spiritually well with the kingdom. But more than that: for the ghost (or supposed ghost) of the late king to appear: something’s not right, and Marcellus, as a soldier and a sentinel keeping watch on the castle battlements, is trained and primed to know when something’s wrong.

[Federica]

At this rate, I could just as well feel offended on behalf of my Danish friends, because of this:

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, as they say.

I don’t get that in 2023 people keep propagating non-inclusive, discriminatory sayings of this sort, when there are so many other ways to say the exact same thing that don’t require offending the very nice Danish people, and me with them, so casually and insensitively.

I detect the sarcasm here but also to note, this is a line from Hamlet, which we were also discussing elsewhere as a reflection of the isolated consciousness soul. I thought the following context in which the line appears makes it especially appropriate:

The line ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ is not spoken by one of the play’s major characters. It comes at the end of Act 1 Scene 4, when the Ghost has appeared (or, more accurately, reappeared) on the battlements of Elsinore castle, and beckoned to Hamlet to come and speak with it.

HAMLET:
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away! Go on; I’ll follow thee.

The Nemean lion was an animal thought to be invincible in Greek myth. Heracles strangled it as the first of his famous twelve labours, but no other man could vanquish it. So Hamlet is essentially saying, ‘I know it’s my destiny to follow the Ghost and hear what it has to say. Every blood vessel in my body is resolved to do that.’

HORATIO:
He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS:
Let’s follow; ’tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO:
Have after. To what issue will this come?

In other words, ‘Let’s follow after Hamlet. I wonder what the outcome of this will be?’ Unlike Marcellus, Horatio is Hamlet’s close friend. Horatio is uneasy about the appearance of the Ghost and what it might represent.

MARCELLUS:
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

And here we have the famous line. It’s worth observing that ‘state’, here, doesn’t mean ‘condition’ but ‘nation’ or ‘kingdom’. Something is rotten because ghosts don’t just tend to appear in normal times when everything is spiritually well with the kingdom. But more than that: for the ghost (or supposed ghost) of the late king to appear: something’s not right, and Marcellus, as a soldier and a sentinel keeping watch on the castle battlements, is trained and primed to know when something’s wrong.

Hmm... of course I knew it's from Hamlet. Is this mansplaining?

[Stranger]

The astral vehicle is manifested through the combined work of the hierarchies (including humans) which unfolded over many incarnations, consisting in the perfection of our WFT soul-capacities accomplished while on Earth. It isn't something we will into existence before birth like a watchmaker who has the idea of a watch and mechanically manifests it to use and discard before manifesting another one (or deciding not to manifest it anymore). What is embedded in your astral vehicle now is the result of that entire evolutionary process which will continue after your current incarnation - your soul-work right now will feedback into the quality of your next astral vehicle. At our current stage, humans have the responsibility of attaining immortality (continuity of consciousness) for the astral body through our gradually perfected spiritual activity.

Yes, that's how it works, it is a collective manifestation, and the higher is the dimensional level of the body structure, the more it is shaped by our individual manifestation. Manifestation is a skill that we need to learn as we develop.

[Stranger]

Now we can of course go into much greater details about the actual nature of the higher beings and world creation but this would be all in vain if we don't even allow ourselves to question whether we might be missing something and that there might be a long way of discovery before us about what consciousness is.

Of course "all reality is imagined" is oversimplified model. However, if all there is is only Consciousness, then all reality is only conscious experiences of various forms created by and experienced by consciousness at various levels and by various individuated spiritual activities (called "beings"). It is not only imaginations, the variety of forms in consciousness of course not limited to imaginations. The more we develop our cognition, the more we become aware of the creative power and creative process of how consciousness creates forms. On the highest level the Divine is fully aware of the whole process all the way through and has the full mastery of the creation process, and the less our cognition is developed, the less the creative mastery, knowledge and awareness of the process we have. The main purpose of the current structures is to be for us a training platform where we can develop our cognition and learn the creative manifestation skills. In material realm we have very limited ability to manifest, on the astral level it is greater, and on the higher levels it is progressively greater and involves more ways of manifestation not available on lower levels. Manifestation is a skill that need to be learned by practice and through first-person experience. Likewise, even if we may get an insight into oneness and some of the aspects of what consciousness is, we never know all the depths of what it is when we are still on lower developmental levels. So, the knowledge of both what consciousness is and what it does unfolds to us progressively more as we develop along with our manifestation skills.

[Cleric K]

I've been pondering this statement all afternoon. Can you please provide some clarifications on: is "higher being" a referent to a single being or higher levels of being;

Higher being in this case refers simply to a perspective which experiences the intellectual self as its suit, so to speak. Of course, there are levels but in this particular case it was used in a more general manner.

and what "feels itself", the higher being or our thinking united with the higher being?

This is a good question and hints at the difficulties we encounter when we try to have a clear intellectual definition of "what I am". I would say that the second form - thinking united with the higher being - is better but it really depends on what exactly one implies. How would you describe this unity?

[Cleric K]

Of course "all reality is imagined" is oversimplified model. However, if all there is is only Consciousness, then all reality is only conscious experiences of various forms created by and experienced by consciousness at various levels and by various individuated spiritual activities (called "beings"). It is not only imaginations, the variety of forms in consciousness of course not limited to imaginations. The more we develop our cognition, the more we become aware of the creative power and creative process of how consciousness creates forms. On the highest level the Divine is fully aware of the whole process all the way through and has the full mastery of the creation process, and the less our cognition is developed, the less the creative mastery, knowledge and awareness of the process we have. The main purpose of the current structures is to be for us a training platform where we can develop our cognition and learn the creative manifestation skills. In material realm we have very limited ability to manifest, on the astral level it is greater, and on the higher levels it is progressively greater and involves more ways of manifestation not available on lower levels. Manifestation is a skill that need to be learned by practice and through first-person experience. Likewise, even if we may get an insight into oneness and some of the aspects of what consciousness is, we never know all the depths of what it is when we are still on lower developmental levels. So, the knowledge of both what consciousness is and what it does unfolds to us progressively more as we develop along with our manifestation skills.

How would you describe, from the corresponding experiential perspective, what it is to create an animal, say, a bear. What would the Intelligence that is in position to do so, experience? How could we describe the contents of consciousness of such a being? What would that being feel the bear to be in relation to itself?

[AshvinP]

Hmm... of course I knew it's from Hamlet. Is this mansplaining?

I think it would be more mansplaining if I tried telling you the meaning of 'battlements' and 'castles' and 'kingdoms'

[Lou Gold]

Of course "all reality is imagined" is oversimplified model. However, if all there is is only Consciousness, then all reality is only conscious experiences of various forms created by and experienced by consciousness at various levels and by various individuated spiritual activities (called "beings"). It is not only imaginations, the variety of forms in consciousness of course not limited to imaginations. The more we develop our cognition, the more we become aware of the creative power and creative process of how consciousness creates forms. On the highest level the Divine is fully aware of the whole process all the way through and has the full mastery of the creation process, and the less our cognition is developed, the less the creative mastery, knowledge and awareness of the process we have. The main purpose of the current structures is to be for us a training platform where we can develop our cognition and learn the creative manifestation skills. In material realm we have very limited ability to manifest, on the astral level it is greater, and on the higher levels it is progressively greater and involves more ways of manifestation not available on lower levels. Manifestation is a skill that need to be learned by practice and through first-person experience. Likewise, even if we may get an insight into oneness and some of the aspects of what consciousness is, we never know all the depths of what it is when we are still on lower developmental levels. So, the knowledge of both what consciousness is and what it does unfolds to us progressively more as we develop along with our manifestation skills.

How would you describe, from the corresponding experiential perspective, what it is to create an animal, say, a bear. What would the Intelligence that is in position to do so, experience? How could we describe the contents of consciousness of such a being? What would that being feel the bear to be in relation to itself?

Cleric, I love these questions. Let me try some imaging (not imagining) ....

what it is to create an animal, say, a bear. What would the Intelligence that is in position to do so, experience?
It could feel like watching a personally created process unfold, perhaps a process like what we perceive scientifically as evolution.

How could we describe the contents of consciousness of such a being?
Total creative (potential and manifest) ability.

What would that being feel the bear to be in relation to itself?
Her/His/Its child.

In sum it might be that (following Blake), "Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

[ScottRoberts]

You were "beaten" (by me at least) for making a big deal about "Awareness" and "Being" (capitalizing them, for one thing), and for insisting on the need to "experience Oneness" (with the implication this is a mystical experience) to get over dualism.

The experiential knowing that "I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness." is a big deal. The only difference that I can see between what I was saying "I am the Awareness" and yours "I am the awareness" is the capital "A"

There is a big difference in that I said "I am the awareness of....". I am not some concept called Awareness.

I might add that in defining the "I" the way I did, really only points to the difference between humans and non-human animals -- in addition to their awareness of sensations, we have this awareness of continuity, etc.

Some time ago on this forum we agreed to capitalize the words if they apply to universal realities. Isn't awareness universal in a sense that every sentient being is "the awareness of the stream of consciousness" (in the same way that we use the capitalized word "Thinking" because it is universal)? And this is also automatically the "experience of Oneness", isn't it? (because awareness is always inseparable from the stream of consciousness and this fact is also universal).

That is not something I agreed to, as far as I can recall. My preference for capitalization is to use it to emphasize that some property or activity of the Divine can be referred to by some property or activity that I have, but in a much, much more grand way that I can't even imagine. So, for example, Thinking and Love. Now one can note that the Divine is aware of so much more than I could possibly be, but there is that 'of' again. Take what it and I are aware of out, then we are simply both aware.

Regarding "Beingness", Heidegger had a good text on it called "Time and Being" (capitalized too) where he shows why such realization is also important in many ways, highly recommended.

In German all nouns are capitalized, but yes, Heidegger does say a lot about Being, as many philosophers have since Aristotle. I think this is not helpful, in that it seems to imply a reality beyond just the tautology that everything that exists, exists.

It is a big deal because if we do not know it and if we instead believe that we are separate human beings-selves, then we perceive ourselves and reality in such a distorted way that any kind of knowledge, science or activity will also be inevitably distorted (and this state is called "duality"). And the practical consequence of this distortion for humanity is the mess that we have created on Earth. If everyone would know themselves as "I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness", and not "I am a separated human being that needs to survive, gain possessions, fear losses and death", how it would be possible for people to fight in wars, to be involved in corporate greediness, government corruption, personal fights, crimes etc?

What I am calling a "big deal" is your insistence that we need to escape duality by getting the mystical blast of "experiencing Oneness". I would also debate your blaming all our ills on the dualist perspective, but that would require going into different dualisms (self-other dualism and spirit-matter dualism) and bringing in the evolution of consciousness that took us from being naive idealists to naive (spirit-matter) dualists. But all I want to say now is knowing myself as "I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness" does not eliminate either of my dualist perspectives. It will take a lot of engaging in spiritual science to do that.