Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 9:58 pm Federica, you are completely right that freedom is not about perceiving glyphs, like a kid perceiving many kinds of candy and having the 'freedom' to choose. There's no question that freedom lies in the 'prism-quality'. Let me try to approach this once again, in a probably somewhat surprising way.
We can draw a parallel between what's going on here and what often happens in conversations with Eugene. Now please don't take it as a slap in the face that I attempt to draw such a comparison. I must declare that there are absolutely no personal emotions here. The goal is only to approach these questions from more sides.
What is the basic conundrum in all the talks with Eugene? It's the absolutization of the Divine essence within us into the way we experience it in our present human stage (even if enlightened). We secretly feel as one with the apex of the pyramid and only expect reality to fill the cone below it in the course of evolution. This has been contrasted many times with another picture, such as this one used in the Central Topic. You understand this very well. Actually the glyph tunnel is practically the same picture but presented from within. The unity of our inner life is the ego. It is the intuition that integrates all experiences into the holistic story of a metamorphosing being.
The reason talks with Eugene can't get to the needed depth is because the oneness is abused. We can speak of oneness only because we know the oneness of our soul life - the integration of everything we experience in relation to the one "I". This is the lower cone. This oneness seems like the final frontier. After all, what could be more one than one? Eugene was outraged when it was mentioned that we have to actually cure ourselves of this kind of oneness, which is really the last fetter before entering the spiritual world. Since this is not done, one remains wondering how can we advance in meditation. Then if one is presented with something about the spiritual world, it is immediately dismissed because it seems too fragmented, too lost in multiplicity.
Let's contemplate this well: when we meditate on oneness we feel to be at the upper boundary of reality because as said, what could we be more one than one? There's no such thing. So everything else must lie below, in multiplicity.
Now something analogous happens here but in a different way. Freedom has to do with drawing the impulses for our spiritual activity from our innermost core. If there are interfering factors, glyphs, temptations, candies and so on, these only point to multiplicity and karmic entanglement. But now the question arises: what happens with this process when it goes well into the future? What is the experience of a being that has become so free that almost everything it does springs from the individual source?
It may not be obvious but this bears some relation with the oneness scenario. Notice the commonality: in both cases there's a certain foundational idea and a question. We have often asked Eugene how he envisions future existence (which should unfold oneness even further). The answers are usually of the kind that things are too orthogonal to anything we can know on Earth. It's like saying "I don't know what it will be like but I know that much that it won’t be like you say because what you speak of obviously moves in the opposite direction of oneness."
It is similar here. It is not known what the future will be like but it is expected that the sovereignty of the individual agency should become more and more pronounced. On these grounds, anything that speaks of palettes, choices, etc. is seen as moving in the opposite direction, as fragmenting the individual source of freedom.
In both cases the hourglass shape is not properly taken into account. As soon as we cross the threshold, we find multiplicity again although in a very different way. That's why the abstract idea of oneness is the last fetter - as long as we cling to it, we would never allow ourselves to discover the multiplicity of the spiritual world. This multiplicity is of a radically different character compared to the multiplicity of glyphs or candies. It is multiplicity in the prism itself, in our innermost intuitive core. We find that our ego is really a constellation of spiritual beings.
Naturally, it is quite difficult to speak of these states because they belong to the stage of Intuition. We have to renounce Imagination and Inspiration and remain only with our pure intuitive spirit. Here we face the difficult part. If we expect that freedom consists in drawing more and more upon the unity of our sovereign individuality, we would never allow ourselves to know the true reality of our ego. We'll keep searching for what is more one than one, we’ll look to conduct our spiritual activity as if emerging from a singularity that is more and more independent of everything (thus ever freer).
So if this is the case why does Steiner mislead us in PoF to seek freedom by drawing upon our individual spiritual being? He doesn't mislead us but we have to remember that PoF leads us to the bottleneck of the hourglass. It is completely true that we have to free ourselves from the multiplicity of the lower cone in order to find freedom in the flow through the pinhole of the "I". But if we imagine that further evolution would only make this pinhole tighter and tighter, as if we draw more and more of our impulses from our individual agency, we simply preclude any possibility to know the intuitive reality of the "I". This we can only know when we experience our ego as the unity within multiplicity of spiritual beings (the Christ being of course serving as the central inspirer of the coherency).
The most difficult thing here is that we're used to conceive of beings only as something that impresses into our phenomenal world and we confront them with our "I". Then we can say that we're free if we don't allow ourselves to be dragged by the phenomena but instead draw our impulses from our innermost spiritual being. The spiritual beings in the Intuitive world however, don't impress in our inner world in this way. Instead, we find them when our "I" partitions and we understand the streams that constitute it as living spiritual beings. It's obvious that at this stage we can't go on to seek freedom in the exact same way, as seeking our impulses as emerging from the singular source of our "I". Instead, our impulses now stream as interplay of the spiritual beings that we balance consciously. Our “I” is centered at an infinitesimal point around which the Cosmic mandala of intuitive beings produce constructive interference. If we insist that we draw our impulses from that point, we find nothing there. We peel the layers of reality until there’s nothing. Our “I” has existence only as the constellation of beings. For this reason freedom is a matter of dynamic harmonization of these intuitive streams.
I hope the basic message is clear. Just like focusing on oneness leads us to a dead end, so does imagining that the inner experience of freedom is like drawing ever more our impulses from our individual agency. When we shatter the last fetter, our innermost intuitive self is found to be weaved of living intuitive beings. Pictorially speaking, one stream comes from Libra, another from Aries and so on. The grand difficulty is that the reality of this can’t be exhausted through Imagination or even Inspiration. In Imagination we still live in the metamorphosing glyphs in which Intuition is reflected. In Inspiration we hear the meaning of Intuition as World Thoughts. Only in Intuition itself we live in the reality of the “I”, where we find the beings not as something with which we interacts and emancipate from (in order to be more free) but as the intuitive streams which constitute our “I”-reality and that of the World. Freedom is now a matter of understanding how our intuitive point of balance is weaved of the streams of the Cosmic constellation and how we regulate that balance.
I first thought I would refrain from going into a detailed answer, but I have changed my mind.
If so, how can freedom be about the following:Cleric wrote:freedom is not about perceiving glyphs, like a kid perceiving many kinds of candy and having the 'freedom' to choose.
What is the difference between choices of candies and choices of bridge engineering?Cleric wrote:we may find out that the water level in the room is rising and soon will reach the ceiling. Then we have to utilize our freedom to find the creative solutions to the situation. Just like any engineering task, there might not be one best solution. For example, if we have to build a bridge, there are various possible designs.
Cleric wrote:Now something analogous happens here but in a different way. Freedom has to do with drawing the impulses for our spiritual activity from our innermost core. If there are interfering factors, glyphs, temptations, candies and so on, these only point to multiplicity and karmic entanglement. But now the question arises: what happens with this process when it goes well into the future? What is the experience of a being that has become so free that almost everything it does springs from the individual source?
First, it's evident, but worth recalling (because it seems ignored here): since I criticized the cannabis example of freedom, my focus has remained on characterizing what freedom is now for us. Because there appeared to be big discrepancies in that understanding, I remained on that question, leaving aside my original question about future man on Jupiter and freedom. Present freedom is where we stayed even since, with few side remarks (pushed by Ashvin) on what freedom might be for future man.
That said, I don’t see glyphs as “interfering factors'' at all. In a way, that’s my whole point: they don't interfere. So it strikes me that this expression is used to portrait my supposedly Eugene-like position. Just as importantly: I never implied that the glyphs point at karmic entanglement. The glyphs are the crystallization of the unfolded interplay of karmic entanglement and freedom. Again: the question of the future does not arise for now, at least not for me. Not until some clarity has been shed on the present meaning of freedom (although Ashvin tried to keep it up in parallel). In short: it appears that my viewpoint has not been accurately rendered here.
Cleric wrote:It is similar here. It is not known what the future will be like but it is expected that the sovereignty of the individual agency should become more and more pronounced. On these grounds, anything that speaks of palettes, choices, etc. is seen as moving in the opposite direction, as fragmenting the individual source of freedom.
I have never had any expectations about what future freedom would be like for future man, let alone expectations of sovereignty. If anything, when pushed, I rather express the opposite idea, saying that future man would probably have “super-responsibilities”. So the above is a mistreatment of what I have said. Moreover, it implicitly shifts the object of controversy - on which I have been objecting since the drugs example - from the present idea of freedom, to the freedom of future man (on which I never dared to open any controversy).
Again, saying that in my view alternative choices are fragmenting, is a distortion of what I said. As I said in many variations of vocabulary, alternative choices are simply not where freedom happens, are asynchronous with freedom.
Cleric wrote:If we expect that freedom consists in drawing more and more upon the unity of our sovereign individuality, we would never allow ourselves to know the true reality of our ego. We'll keep searching for what is more one than one, we’ll look to conduct our spiritual activity as if emerging from a singularity that is more and more independent of everything (thus ever freer).
I recall that I was, and am, speaking of present freedom. Here is another mis-representation. In the post above, I stated clearly what my current definition of freedom is. I said: "Freedom, or free will, is the outpouring of knowledge - truth of reality made true by love - flowing through the prism of individual agency, and so becoming timely enterprise."
Not at all our sovereign individuality, but the inflow of knowledge in us, coming to a coincidence with us, and we with it. This is the opposite of a “more and more independent singularity”. I'm glad I wrote extensively, in a very long post (in the Venus thread) about how I intend knowledge, knowing, in relation to being, and doing. For the one who has read that post, it is without doubt how I do not intend it as unity of sovereign individuality becoming ever more independent.
To sum up, I don't recognize this characterization of my viewpoint. I understand well the analogy drawn between Eugene's vision and the vision that is here portrayed as mine. It would work, if that was my vision. But it's not. Not my vision of knowing, as recorded in the threads. Regarding the last two paragraphs, I understand them, to the extent that they are understandable without being familiar with Intuitive cognition. What I still don't understand is how that leads to the drug example and the similar ones.