AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 11:06 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 8:32 pm
Well, Ashvin, I guess there is not much more I can usefully add at this point. When you say that my thoughts are grounded in an unconscious motivation to escape from the experience of Scaligero’s exercises, it’s actually an unbeatable argument! It could be true, of course; Regardless, for the time being it perfectly delegitimizes any further comments I could make in this discussion. Sure we can go back to this new author, Kühlewind, whenever the sense of MS’ exercises will have appeared to me in more clear terms. Anyhow, it seems like the last viable thing I can say for now, which is sincere by the way, is that I hope I will somehow be allowed to make some of the invisible visible on my path!
Federica,
Most of our thoughts are grounded in unconscious motivations that we are hardly aware of. That doesn't make them per se illegitimate, or wrong, or not worth entertaining. Practically all the stories we tell ourselves about how we ended up thinking along certain lines and adopting certain worldviews is Maya - the real reasons reside in past incarnations and complex webs of karmic entanglement that we are scarcely aware of. That doesn't mean we can't work with the thinking and thoughts that we have, of course, only that we should pay more and more attention to how our thinking unfolds. And it means we should put more effort into inner investigation and loosening the intellectual mask, because it is only in supersensible thinking that we are beginning to operate beyond the domain of our karmic past.
Ashvin,
Yes. That was not self bashing. I was saying that the discussion becomes difficult when unconscious motives are said to be the real reason for the points one makes. Surely it leaves open all the possibilities of self inquiry and exercise. But it wouldn't be fruitful that I add any further thoughts to this particular question of Scaligero's concentration. So instead, I have done something else.
I have been following for a while the blog of a pupil of Scaligero, Piero Cammerinesi, who used to meet him regularly in the 1970s, towards the end of MS's life. Following our discussion, I have opened the blog in search of some inspiration and noticed an audio recording of the last lecture given by Scaligero two days before his death in 1980, with time stamps that reference the exercise of concentration, so I have listened. After a first section on the rise of tuberculosis, cancer and mental illnesses, MS starts speaking of concentration. I have transcribed everything he says from that moment onwards. Not that it clarifies our present question very much, but I thought it could be of interest anyway. He never pronounces the name of Steiner, but it's obvious that he refers to Steiner a few times during the lecture, reading some short excerpts. He simply calls him "Doctor" as an expression of respect.
Rome - January 23, 1980
(...)
Naturally, we could add that what really can help a young person who has a predisposition for tuberculosis are the exercise of concentration, and the exercise of the will, because these two exercises are the ones that grant feeling the possibility to finally express itself according to true soul balance, without dreadfully oscillating between attraction and repulsion. Thus the sick person really needs an edifying life of feeling. This is obtained through the energetic exercising of thinking, and the energetic exercising of the will. At this point we can ask the question [reading] “
What is the goal of the exercise of concentration? What is necessary to do when the force of concentration gets lost in idle dream images?” Yes, this really is a current problem. Why is it so?
Because - for the same reason that tuberculosis is on the rise, for the same reason that cancer is soaring - the work of concentration is difficult, because the atmosphere is weighed down, filled with beings who hamper the activity of concentration. Thus, if previously a certain amount of strength was necessary, today a double amount is required. But there is no other remedy. And we shouldn't think that we have become weaker. Rather, we should notice that all around there are entities that obstruct this activity, and have acquired a remarkable might. Here, when it says “
the force of concentration gets lost in idle dream images” we see those beings coming forth, as if they were saying “Don’t do it, distract yourself”. We can see these beings. And here the art is to realize that the spiritual world requires more strength from us. There is no other response. We have this strength, because we have a thinking that has a source that we can call inexhaustible, unlimited, in which the Logos flows. There’s everything there. Thus we can really ask thinking for this powerful gift. So it’s a matter of more rigor, more determination, and more “grit” - for those of you who are not from Rome, this word means more tenacity. We need some more tenacity. Naturally, this is until thinking becomes free. Afterwards, tenacity needs to be suspended to set the spiritual world free.
Let’s see… [reading] “
The asceticism of the mystics, grounded in feeling, is not of our times anymore. The asceticism of spiritual science is grounded in thinking. It can be presupposed a future direct asceticism of the will, once the consciousness soul will be a realized reality.” Absolutely. Simply, we have to notice that the way of spiritual science calls forth all three forces. It starts from thinking, because thinking is the first conscious activity. The immediacy of consciousness appears in thinking. It’s inevitable that one moves from thinking. Thinking is the absolute a priori, because it’s the only activity that immediately connects us to the spiritual world, directly. It’s the lowest activity of consciousness and at the same time it’s the freest activity, the most retraceable, from Maya in which it manifests, back to its essence. We can let it appear as it does, with Maya. When we have the strength to make it appear, we find its essence.
However, when we do this work, its appearance escapes us, which is why we need to do the exercise of concentration. Actually when we do the thinking exercises, we essentially set the will in motion. This links back to what we have said a short while ago, that we appeal to thinking and to will, with the exercises of spiritual science. And we have also mentioned, speaking of tuberculosis, that thinking and will give us real strength of feeling, because feeling is the depth relationship between the will and thinking. Therefore, we need to practice in continuous harmony between thinking and will, so that feeling - the secret feeling, the most hidden feeling - can reawaken. Because in feeling lives Lucifer, and Lucifer comes from the side of the spirit, while Ahriman comes from the side of terrestriality, of corporeality. Thus we have a more direct grasp towards the sphere of Ahriman, through the senses, the bodily sensation, etcetera, while feeling is fluid, elusive, subtle. It dominates thinking, and thinking doesn’t realize it. In order to get a handle on feeling we should not head in the direction of feeling, but we should operate through the accord between thinking and will. Then, feeling feels the joy of its rhythmic function, because it’s feeling that harmonizes, feeling is the one that is called to accord the two forces. Feeling is the bearer of the music of the universe. It’s feeling that feels the Logos.
Feeling’s only task is to feel the divine. But it doesn’t feel it. It’s forced to not feel it, although its function is to feel the divine. And the fact that this function is taken away from it impoverishes feeling, and makes man little, and petty. It makes him petty in his feelings that become trivial, equivocal, transient, and subjective expressions. This is the unhappiness of feeling, and the reason why we start from thinking, not from feeling. Technically, it would be wrong to start from feeling. Technically, we would never reach the inner life of the soul, if we didn’t start from thinking, that is, from that within which the I really has a hold on our consciousness. But we have to harmonize thinking and will. Every exercise of concentration is an exercise of will. And when we say that Michael is the prince of cosmic intelligence, the regulator of thinking, we have to say: he is the regulator of the will. He acts within the will, in the will that thinks. For Michael, there exists no will without thinking, as much as there is no thinking without will. Thinking without will is dialectical thinking, it’s ideology, at the service of the enemy of the spirit. This is the tragic situation of thinking in our times, that it's truly devoid of the current of will. Therefore, the will through which it operates is not the will of man. It’s the will of the opposer of man. This is why all ideologies are anti-human. They really impede the evolution of man.
All occultisms, all their variations that are becoming plethora nowadays, bring those brilliant methods of yoga, etcetera, but none of them is aware of this tragic behind the scenes of the human condition. Hence they work against man’s liberation, against the possibility for man to clearly see what is happening. It is of paramount importance that feeling… When we say that feeling has to be redeemed, we refer to the Virgin-Sophia, to Isis-Sophia, of which our Doctor [Steiner] says that without her we cannot find Christ. It says [reading]: "
We have the I. The I is already there. What we don’t have, what we have lost, is Isis-Sophia." This is when our feeling is imprisoned, compressed. It’s that feeling which makes us sick with tuberculosis. It’s feeling asphyxiated, feeling that young people would like to feel, but they don’t feel it anymore. There are some young people who brighten up when they are told something that kindles their feeling. So we see how brigandish is the activity of the schools, that leads them to abstract ideologies, to everything that is truly against that which illuminates history and nature, as power of inner life that only feeling can grasp. This is the responsibility that we have for those who approach us, for the young people. This is the most important responsibility, because young people are in search of that, but then they end up in some kind of maharishi... mahesvaari.. or brakmachari… [dark humour] etcetera, and they waste their time.
[Seemingly checking some written pages] We can say that we are following the thread…..
We can say that, by not experiencing living thinking, man cuts himself off from a relationship with the Logos, and for this reason he has to die. This death is a true one, because there are beings who don’t die any longer. It seems like they do, but they do not die, because they are alive in the immediacy of life. There are beings who, through death, reawaken to a new force. But when they have not found the connection with Logos they have to die. They have to go through the experience of death, and that experience educates them, because it’s a somber event, a moment when man knows the power of the abyss, that can be known through living thinking only during life on Earth, so that he can win over death while still alive. There is this saying of the Rosicrucians: “Who does not collapse before dying, will know the fall down after death” It goes more or less so, true? It means that, if one has not faced death before death, one will have to face it afterwards, and really feel the tragic moment of death. If you now read again the book “Initiation” by our Doctor, you will see, it’s entirely a track following which one can overcome death during life.
Then we can move up to more demanding questions. One is about the Guardian of the threshold. We can say that the Guardian of the threshold is a being who appears to us as a symbol of what we have left to overcome. But why does this happen? Because we deserve to know it. There are beings who would be terrified to see what they are. They delude themselves that they are good, helpful, generous, altruistic, fraternalistic, radical, etcetera, but they aren’t. The Guardian of the threshold is the moment on the spiritual path when man finally deserves to know what he has left to transform, to overcome. Naturally, this requires much courage of vision. This courage gives form to forces that, facing the vision of the Guardian, become positive forces. But relapses can happen, a fall back into the old nature can happen, in which case the Guardian becomes a very unpleasant being. It’s terrible, because he’s constantly there, admonishing us: “You have fallen back. That which you had expelled is reawakening in you”. This is a fight of crucial importance, where man prepares for initiation, prepares for a birth in accord with the spirit. It’s a level at which one is ready to encounter Christ.
I believe it is appropriate to add the following. It is expected in our present times an experience of the Guardian of the threshold for the whole of humanity. Not in a specific, precise sense, as described in “Occult Science”, but as an experience that brings every being on the brink of desperation, due to the fact that man has omitted to complete a task. This operation has to happen now, it should have already happened. That is, the transition from a rational-affective soul, to the consciousness soul. By various signs, it’s apparent that it hasn’t happened. It’s not happening. Therefore it’s inevitable that every being has a tragic experience, an experience in which it’s felt that there are no more human strengths coming to help. In this way, through pain, through darkness, there could be a blossoming of the forces that the spiritual world needs in order to help humanity. The spiritual world helps man, but it needs man to be free. It needs man to offer a sacrifice through an inner free act.
This unconscious experience of the Guardian, lived through by the whole of humanity transforms into something that operates on the path of freedom, by the activity of those who are aware of the behind the scenes we have discussed. In this way, the free activity of the real experimenters of the spirit allows the spiritual beings to take hold of this human spiritual gist and transform it in power of destiny, in order to prevent man from falling, from collapsing, in order to save our civilization, so that it can move forward without destructions and cataclysms. You can see how the course of history presents us with a panorama where there’s no respite. And the situation is becoming penned, encircled from all directions. And so where are the redeeming forces coming from, if not from a condition of inner tension through which man is led to intuit an inner activity that he owes the spiritual world? This is already visible in certain figures.
Now let's conclude with this thought, that I have saved for last. This could be the true comment on our discussion. It could help us understand the mistake in which we have sunk. [Reading] “
We can call reality only that aspect of the world content, obtained through knowledge, in which are reunited two apparently separated elements, thinking and perception.” I have kept this question for last, because it’s a help. Presently, through the incontrovertible scientific thought, we only live in the world of perception. Thinking is excluded. You may say, how is it excluded? We have thought, we have the philosophy of science, we have epistemology…” Yes, but all this is at the service of the percept. The counterpart in terms of thinking is lacking, from all progress of physics, for instance. It’s a terrifying misunderstanding, by which we are not getting out of the OT, of the old moralism. We are unaware of the new forces of the consciousness soul.
As we have often discussed, the conquest of the incontrovertible truth of physics - which is true! - where the concept coincides with the object, really is the element that pleases everyone. However, it’s overlooked that this is simply the first moment of cognition. We have learned how there is a first moment in cognition, conditioned by the sensory world. This first moment of cognition is true. Inquired by idealists, it's considered a content of our consciousness, thus all subjective; inquired by materialists it’s considered a reflection of the external world, where thinking is nothing other than a sort of photograph of what happens, so we are done, reality is what it is, and we copy it, interpret it, and apply it - it's frightening!
But that is only the first moment of cognition, that idealism has shown to depend on subjective means of knowledge, to be integrated from the side of sense-free thinking. Because it’s thinking that has given us mathematical intuitions! What happens when this understanding is absent? It happens that we are stuck in a dualistic condition, in which the truth of science becomes dogmatic, omnipotent, dominant. We are all puppets, at the mercy of it, from technology, to income declaration. It’s a potent mechanism from which we can’t extract ourselves. True, there is a political mechanism of opposition, that you know very well. Those who are in power know very well how to go beyond the bankrupt economy.
But if Ahtens cries, Sparta doesn’t laugh. Everyone, in a way or another, suffers from the same sinking into the rational soul. We know that the rational soul is the expression of Ahriman, while the affective soul is the expression of Lucifer. So the rational-affective soul expresses itself in this science. When our Doctor tackles this question, he doesn’t argue that it’s a mistake. Rather, we need to discover up to which point it’s true, and where we have stopped. Because there is an initial moment of cognition, reached by science, that represents the relationship of thinking with the object. But nothing is known with regards to thinking. Nothing is known of the forces that really give origin to the contents of science. Science without thinking intuition would be nothing. Still, science denies it. If we look at technology and science, we can see that it’s all science of percept. The other part, the inner part, that has provided all the content - that is, thinking - is absolutely not there.
We can say that this is the consequence of the powerlessness of philosophy. Philosophy in the West has reached its culmination through idealism. In Germany, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. But also here, through Vico, Gioberti, Spaventa, Rosmini, down to Croce and Gentile. But none of these philosophers has intuited the force of knowledge. None of these has received the idea that the forces of knowledge that allow science to exist are experimentable. This powerlessness of philosophy has permitted what in “Truth and science” is called the advent of anti-philosophy. Philosophy has lacked the courage to recognize this trajectory. But when the forces of knowledge have not been cultivated, such courage is impossible. And we are paying the price of this situation. Because it’s this collapse of philosophy, the collapse of the minimally positive element brought by idealism, that has opened the way for the ideologies of matter to take over humanity. Because everyone believes in this ideology. It’s at this level that we are stuck. If we can’t find the level of sense-free thinking, we will not have a true economy. We will not have true psychology. We will not have true science.
Thus, the Guardian of the threshold is knocking at the door. What’s been evoked by our friend Leopoldo by saying “Then it’s death before death” is important. We are dead already, because we know nothing of what is happening, any longer. We don’t know the behind the scenes, although we have the fortune to have at our disposal all that is needed. You see - you are told this by someone who knows all the currents, someone who knows them in depth. There isn’t a current that I have not experimented with. I know them all, with all their deceits and pitfalls. I can tell you that the spiritual science of our Doctor is the gold of the Sun descended on the Earth. It’s the big venture of man, the path of liberation of man, because in it there is everything. And we have to be worthy of the realization of this impulse. It is a duty to others, a duty to our neighbors. Enlivened by love for our neighbor, we realize this life only if we are able to bring this principle in us, as instruments - though not worthy instruments - of the Logos.