Federica wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 10:17 am
AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed May 10, 2023 12:48 pm
Federica,
Once again, thanks - it took me a few readings, but now it's kind of coming together. Another small detail: I thought that temperament, likes and dislikes were residing in the astral body, more than in the etheric?
The etheric body is where the principle of repetition holds. When we look at the growing plant, it produces leaf after leaf in orderly succession. Then it drops the seed and produces copies of itself with the same form. So any WFT ways of being which become habitual in us get woven into our etheric memory, mostly before birth or a little bit during life. When they are only in the astral body during life, we can call them likes and dislikes which are more pliable (we should also remember, though, that we normally only
know of the soul-life in so far as it is reflected by the physical-etheric bodies, the latter acting as mirrors). It is easier for us to apply torque to these likes or dislikes and adjust them. But if they become habitual in the etheric body, we are dealing with sympathies and antipathies which are much less pliable and require more torque. I would make a similar distinction between character (more pliable) and temperament (less pliable), the former being our constellation of opinions, beliefs, emotions, qualities, virtues, etc. and the latter being our inner disposition towards the World (choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic).
To be clear, this doesn't mean the etheric body
causes all of these habitual tendencies and dispositions. The ego-astral complex is what allows for us to lucidly experience the World and react to it. It impresses the habitual tendencies we develop into the etheric body, which also impresses it into the physical body to some extent. The physical-etheric serves as a sort of contextual limit on what capacities we can bring to expression during an incarnation unless we are able to also work on them through higher cognitive development. At death, the memories/experiences impressed into the etheric body are imprinted back into the astral body and then back to the ego, where it all continues in seed-form. Then, on our return to incarnation, the ego fashions the new lower vehicles in correspondence with that imprint. A similar cycle occurs each night with sleep, but to a lesser extent. All of this occurs with feedback from the higher hierarchies on what needs to be further perfected to become proper citizens of the Cosmos.
Ashvin,
This is insightful, but there seems to be a contradiction also: if we only know our likes and dislikes insofar as they are imprinted in the etheric and/or physical bodies, how can we more easily apply torque to those likes and dislikes that are only in the astral body? To apply torque to aspects of our soul life, we must be aware of them first?
Federica,
We are aware of the likes and dislikes through the lens of our normal concepts mediated by the physical senses. Consider a like or dislike - 'I like vanilla flavor and dislike strawberry flavor'. We are only aware of this relation to the extent we can formulate it in concepts tied to our physical senses, in this case taste. So we are still viewing whatever that relation signifies from the outside-in, or in esoteric terms, we are completely within the consciousness soul which uses the physical sensory organism as its instrument. Even without higher cognitive development, we can apply some torque here with help of that conceptual activity. Maybe we formulate a strategy to expose ourselves to more varied flavors than we are accustomed to and gradually build up a tolerance for them. That is pretty tedious work which will progress relatively slowly (if it works at all), but it's at least something which can be done. Or in the case of our purely conceptual likes and dislikes - opinions, beliefs, etc. - there is even more leeway for torque to be applied. Actually we can understand much of post-Christian exoteric history in terms of doing this dimly conscious, tedious work. It is a gradual purification of the astral (desire) body and the soul-life, which unfortunately has come to a standstill more recently or is perhaps even going in reverse in certain domains.
We also have to recognize that there are aspects of our soul-life which are less accessible to our conceptual torque. That first-person distinction is really the basis of speaking of parts of the soul-life residing in the 'etheric body' instead of 'astral body'. It really helps to understand all these categories - whether they are realms, planes, bodies, modes of cognition, etc. - as convenient ways of grouping these differentiations in the experience of our first-person stream of becoming. They work so well because that involving-evolving stream does, in fact, differentiate itself according to qualitative archetypal structure. In other words, it's not that we can apply less torque to personality traits of the etheric body, but there is an 'etheric body' by virtue of experiential areas where we can apply less torque in our current stage. In our stream of becoming, we can also distinguish more instinctual likes or dislikes - perhaps we like to be around certain types of people and not around others, without any clear sense of why or how those preferences are related to our lucid perceptions-concepts. These would be our sympathies-antipathies residing more in the intellectual soul, which uses the etheric body as its instrument. Whereas our likes-dislikes may arise from our childhood or some period during this incarnation, the sympathies-antipathies are tied to deeper-seated memories and tendencies extending even into previous incarnations. Likewise we can differentiate an ever deeper layer of pleasure-pain which is more nebulous to our lucid conceptual activity. That is associated more with the sentient soul which uses the sentient body as its instrument.
So all of these originate in our soul-life but are either reflected back to our I-consciousness by the physical and etheric bodies, or dimly experienced by it in the astral body. Our conceptual activity permeates the entire spectrum to some extent, which is why we can even speak of these differentiations. But we can also notice how that activity becomes more nebulous or tenuous in its understanding of what's really at work. The same applies if it moves in the upward direction towards the archetypal spiritual strata of cultural aesthetics, morals, ideals, etc.
Steiner wrote:What men observe are the single passions, the single instincts, the single desires, momentary likes and dislikes, deeds carried out or not carried out because of momentary sympathy or antipathy. In making such observations, however, we behave like someone who has a sentence before him and says: “Here I see g,o,d,r,u,l,e,s,t,h,e,w,o,r,l,d.” All he can do is to spell the single letters. Then another person comes and says: “The letters spelled by you mean God rules the world.” Just as spelling differs from reading, so does ordinary science differ from spiritual science.
Ordinary psychology is able to spell. By looking at a human life, it finds certain instincts and urges in the child. The scientist, who only knows how to spell, registers these things, and thus it continues during the human being's entire existence on earth.
Those understanding spiritual science are able to read. Looking beyond the fire's surface, they see what is below: man's destiny-determined life-path.
Between ordinary psychology, such as it is still practiced today, and genuine knowledge of human soul-life there is a difference akin to that between spelling and reading.
Through higher cognitive development, we can begin awakening to the inner side of those concepts and experience the higher cognitive currents underlying the likes, dislikes, sympathies, antipathies, etc. The intellect relies solely on experiences mediated by the physical senses. Imaginations are the I-astral experiences reflected directly by the etheric body without meditation of physical senses. Through Inspiration we can experience directly within the astral body without physical-etheric mediation. With Intuition the 'I' awakens to its own true nature, which is physically perceived as external nature. At each stage the opportunities to apply torque and the effectiveness of that application greatly increase. We start to discern completely unsuspected connections between external nature, our physical organism, and our soul-life, and to find unsuspected ways of steering our spiritual activity through those domains to optimize and harmonize their relations, not only for our own benefit but for Humanity-Earth as a whole.
Federica wrote:Otherwise, I understand the principle of repetition in terms of life/reproduction primarily. This is common to plants, animals, and humans. Then with the help of the idea of different lengths of time waves, I understand how this repetition principle inherent to the etheric layer extends to habit, to behavioral repetition (WFT). So the shape of our individual life principle pushes us along the lines of certain habits, and we are called to “work against nature” and streamline our habits, before we can “think bigger” and attempt to change the shape of our repetitive cycles-at-large, so to say, all the way up to, ideally, continuity of spiritual consciousness during sleep and during earthly life. But repetition goes beyond life. It is ingrained in the whole spectrum of natural and spiritual phenomena. The Cosmos is repetitive, and the Earth is repetitive. So, logically, that repetitive quality of the etheric/life layer should extend from the plant, animal, and human kingdoms, to the Earth and beyond. I have found a matching illustration of this in Steiner, that highlights the fundamental interconnectedness of us humans with the Earth, physical, and spiritual. By virtue of that connection, sleeping humans act as the brain cells through which the Earth “thinks”:
Steiner wrote:When a man is awake, the soul-spiritual part is of course contained in the physical-corporeal part; but let us now imagine a sleeping human being. On the bed lie his physical body and his etheric body; they do not contain his astral body and his ego, as is the case when he is awake. We might say, however: The activity that our astral body and ego carry on within our physical body while we are awake, does not cease completely while we are asleep. To begin with, and seen purely from outside, the sleeping human being lying there on the bed has a lifeless aspect, but to a clairvoyant consciousness the physical and etheric body of the man lying there asleep on the bed do not present a lifeless aspect. The seer must give an entirely different description of a sleeping human being, of this physical and etheric human being, lying there asleep on his bed. A clairvoyant seer must say: The whole day long the sun shone over that region of the earth, where the human beings are now sleeping. Now it is night. (I am speaking of normal conditions; when people are asleep during the night and awake during the day, I am not speaking of the conditions of life in great cities, of metropolitan habits). Darkness envelops that region on which the sun shone the whole day long. And now it is strange to notice the following: The earth, as a living Being, begins to think, and the organs through which the earth thinks are the sleeping human bodies.
The human beings think through their brain, and in the same way the earth thinks through these sleeping human bodies. The earth always perceives by day; it perceives through the fact that the sun shines upon it out of the cosmic spaces. That is the earth's perception. And during the night, the earth works out in thoughts all its perceptions. “The earth thinks”, says the clairvoyant seer; the earth thinks because it makes use of the sleeping human beings. Every sleeping human being becomes, as it were, a brain-molecule of the earth. Our physical body is organized in such a way that it can be used by the earth for its thinking activity, when we do not use it ourselves.
Just as the earth thinks through the physical body, so it “imagines” (you know what imaginative knowledge is) — it imagines all that is not earthly upon the earth itself, all that belongs to the earth from out the cosmos. The earth imagines this through the etheric body.
I think we should distinguish here between repetition as a mechanical or automated process, i.e. when it is unconscious or dimly conscious, and spiritual habits which are cultivated in full consciousness. The latter are certainly structured, but they are only repetitive in so far as certain activity-reactions are most optimal in response to outer circumstances. Each case is judged fully consciously on its own merits (which you will remember from PoF as well). The more we transmute the former to the latter, through Self-knowledge, the more we develop the principle of Manas from the astral body, the principle of Buddhi from the etheric body, and the principle of Atma from the physical body. When the repetitive habits of the etheric body are made conscious and the latter is ennobled through practices like devotional prayer or spiritual art, they are transmuted and begin flowing as fully conscious inspirations. That is how we gradually harmonize what flows from our bodily nature with what flows from our spiritual nature. But you are correct that, at a more metaphysical level, we could also call it the process of awakening to how they are one and the same. After all, the lower habits were implanted in our physical-life organism by the higher heirarchies for definite spiritual purposes.