Guney,Güney27 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2023 12:37 pmAshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Jul 22, 2023 10:50 pmGüney27 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 21, 2023 11:26 pm
Ashvin,
Are not manas buddi and atma the transformed bodies (etheric, astral and physical) through the work of the "I"?
Would it be correct to divide the "I" into three parts (the three soul members), or does the I reside in these soul members?
Jung's technique of active imagination provides awareness in the realm of dreams. In which area would this world, which one enters through active imagination, fall in Steiner's model?
Are the beings and images that appear in the subconscious elementary beings and if so, do they also live in the etheric realm?
Guney,
The way I like to think about it is that the "I" is a formless force that is not identical to any bodily or soul forms but is responsible for weaving all of them through loving, cognitive willpower. At the metaphysical level, there is nothing but the "I"-force. All bodily and soul forms are reflections and transformations of the "I". The formless I-force then makes use of these finished or almost finished forms, often many at the same time, to accomplish its purpose of inner moral perfection through cognitive awakening. Humans are now at the stage at which they have dimly awakened to the reality of their essential I-force and can progressively unveil its deeper layers. The deeper layers are experienced-understood as more and more transpersonal, encompassing broader spheres of beings and their activity. We could refer to this whole complex of organic relations within the I as the I-organism. This organism encompasses the Whole of existence from humanity through the higher hierarchies to the Godhead.
The manifest forms themselves should be understood as something like encrusted habits of spiritual activity. That includes the entire material world surrounding us and our dense body drawn from that world. It also includes the plant kingdom and our vital body and the animal kingdom and our lower astral body. These are habits developed over many millennia by the I-organism to accomplish past intents related to physical and cultural development. They were necessary habits to cultivate for that development but now they also work in opposition to our higher awakening of the I-organism, i.e. the spiritualization of the cultural (soul) and the physical (body). They are like archaeological and geological layers through which we must dig to recover their spiritual essence. The digging, in this case, comes first from steering our I-consciousness through the psyche, making inner sacrifices of the lower personality that has formed habitual attachments to the cultural and physical context. We still need to rely on the collective habitual forms of culture and nature for some time, however, we can begin spiritualizing (or purifying) our own localized soul forms right now.
The inner nature of the dream world is what Steiner and other esotericists refer to as the astral world, which is the realm of psychic forces. When we are able to purify the lower psychic forces, develop imagination, and thereby awaken within the dream world, we are then participating within a higher level of the I-organism that is called Manas in Steiner's terminology. Manas is the transformed astral body Into its spiritual counterpart. Now our "I"-force is no longer habituated to past conditions, but is consciously and creatively participating in the manifestation of future conditions in our own organism and that of humanity as a whole. We are then participating in the progressive redemption of human culture and the natural kingdoms. If we are also able to awaken during dreamless sleep and even deeper sleep, then we are working on transforming the etheric and physical bodies into Buddhi and Atma. Then we are creatively working on transforming the Earth as a whole. I think it's clear that Jung saw this general archetypal progression taking place and knew that the human soul structure is also a localized image of the Cosmic structure, i.e. that working on the former is also a means of comprehending the latter. However, Steiner fleshed out the details of this progression much further through rigorous esoteric training and attunement with the Christ impulse.
This is confusing.
In Steiner's Outline of Occult Science, Steiner describes that our ego is supposed to work on our lower members. Doesn't that imply that the members of our being are separate but work together in harmony?
You say, "The way I like to think about it is that the "I" is a formless force that is not identical to any bodily or soul forms but is responsible for weaving all of them through loving, cognitive willpower." That completely messes up my understanding of esoteric human nature, could you explain in more detail what you mean?
The "I" is the reason that our perceptions and feelings of dreams... are related to ourselves and not simply perceptions that pointlessly pass by trough consciousness. Even memory shouldn't exist without our "I", because what should the memory refer to?
Daskalos says that our "I" expresses itself through our constitutional members.
Is that what you mean with your quoted statement?
That is true, but to be honest, I don't think it's particularly helpful to categorize these things into a rigid conceptual schema. It's great and necessary to read through Occult Science and such to get a feel for the relationships between the body members, soul members, and spiritual members, but only if we are also willing to keep this fluid and allow them to fall away when we are seeking the inner experience to which the conceptual labels are pointing. You are surely at the stage where it is still most helpful to schematically conceptualize the human organization as a means for stimulating your spiritual activity, but when you feel confusion setting in from different descriptions or terminology etc., as it inevitably will, you should also keep in mind that the schematics will have to be sacrificed by the intellect to open the door to an intuitive experience of that organization. It is only through such experience that we overcome the confusion and can work with all sorts of different labels for the same inner realities. The following passage may be helpful.
Scaligero wrote:Those of us who succeed in developing the love for truth cannot fail at any given moment to move onto interaction as an essentially presupposed practice. However, precisely such action, if decisively carried out first, inevitably leads outside the dialectics [conceptual schema] by means of which it arises. It delineates an experience of the spirit that must leave behind the representations that stimulated it; traditional representations are like the boat of Buddha's discourse, which makes no sense for ascetics to bear on their shoulders once the river has been crossed; that boat is then useful only for turning back.
If we want to speak of the I-force very simply, then we could say that it is the means by which we carry out our own willed intents, in contrast to those of external powers of nature and culture. When you get hungry, you are driven to find food and eat something, but this is experienced as an external force of nature rather than your own willed intent. If you are learning to drive, the state requires you to pass certain exams so that you are licensed. That is experienced as less of a compulsive force than the natural drive to eat, but it still can't be experienced as arising solely within your own willed intent. There are other extraneous factors that pushed you in that direction. When you are confronted with the choice to help a stranger who has fallen down on the street or to simply walk by that person, and you choose to stop and help him, that is experienced as arising completely within your own will informed by conscience. It is that sort of moral decision that is the expression of your genuine I-force. The reason for emphasizing that the I is formless is to highlight how our concept of our I is not identical to the I-force itself. We all bear a concept of our I-force, our center of gravity, that is comprised of our desires, wishes, feelings, memories, and so forth. That concept refers us to the center of gravity but should not be confused for it. We can distinguish the concept by calling it our "personality" while calling the actual center of gravity our "individuality".
What Jung and Steiner were most interested in was directing souls towards the inner experience of their individuality, which is generally unknown to us during the course of normal life. The personality that is known to us can be said to revolve around this unknown individuality (or Self/Atma) just like our desires, emotions, and thoughts revolve around our sense of personality. Why is our individuality unknown to us? That is because we are only conscious of its expression through one of our constitutional members i.e. the dense body and its sensory system including the brain. The personality is the individuality expressed entirely within the isolated physical context. If we were to become conscious through our vital body (imagination - Manas), however, the individuality would know itself within a broader context. That context is referred to Steiner as a "time-organism" rather than a fragmented spatial organism. We then grasp the fragmented spatial frames of existence as something whole like a musical melody. If we become conscious through our astral body (inspiration - Buddhi), then the individuality knows itself within an even broader context that is beyond spatiotemporality as we experience it. And if we become conscious through the I-itself, then our individuality knows its true inner essence (intuition - Atma).
So the individuality certainly expresses itself through our constitutional members, but we should also be clear that our personality concept is one of those members. The latter veils the inner essence of our individuality yet we can utilize the force of that individuality to unwind the layers of the personality that has been built up around it, like layers of clothing or masks. We start by undressing the psychic tendencies that were put on over our individuality most recently, like our modern opinions, assumptions, beliefs about 'reality', and our personalized emotions and desires. That is what Steiner is referring to when he says that the Ego-I can work on our lower members. It first works on purifying the personality so that we can awaken more fully to its inner essence, which takes us beyond the experiential confines of our physical context and inwardly unites us with broader spheres of beings. Our individuality is always comprised by and working with these broader spheres of beings, but when we are unconscious of that work, it becomes inefficient and disharmonious. Just like our physical body needs to be in proper health for our personality to utilize it in fulfilling various earthly tasks, our personality needs to be properly purified for the individuality to utilize it in fulfilling higher Cosmic ideals of human existence in harmonious concert with other beings.