Güney27 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 30, 2023 10:44 pm Yes, thinking in the service of the worldview. It structures our perception. What form does this thinking take?
What does the activity look like that has structured our perception so that we now live in the world we are used to?
How does it differ from how we think in everyday life, for example when we think about objects?
,,It is important to remember that our reasoned thoughts are also part of the WC. We can also make these the subject of our thinking. In this sense, we are not trying to develop theoretical models from our current thoughts, but rather to explore the deeper layers of meaning in the thoughts we already have.
For example, a simple, well-founded thought we all have is that the text we perceive consists of straight and curved black lines. Now we can imagine that someone who does not understand English comes across this text. The chances are actually pretty high that even if that person doesn't understand the exact meaning of the squiggles, they will recognize it as a meaningful script. She will intuitively sense that it is the manifestation of another intelligence, especially when perceived in the context of a forum where ideas are exchanged.
So how can we gain deeper meaning from this well-founded thought? If we draw an analogy from this for all the natural objects and processes of the WC around us, where does that leave us? We can explore such questions in an imaginatively fluid way, without looking for rigid theoretical models about the “nature of reality.” In fact, I would invite you to ask these questions and share your answers, no matter how simple or speculative they may seem. This is the point: the state of emergency leads us to see, in ever finer resolution, how the principles of our own intuitive activity are the very process by which reality is structured and developed. The etheric, the astral, the ego, etc. are simply symbols of this experiential reality of multi-layered intuitive activity."
I don't understand exactly what you want to express with this example.
Are you saying that we should see the world as intentional because of this analogy?
What do you mean when you say that our thinking is what creates reality?
I understand how thought structures our reality, but thinking is not the reason (from a phenomenological perspective) or the cause of my perception.
I try to understand the environment by thinking.
I don't understand exactly what you want to say, I think it's because your intuitive orientation is more pronounced than mine, so I don't understand what you have condensed into text form here.
I realy want to understand what you say here.
Can you explain it again please?
You're right, Guney, I should take more time to flesh out the underlying points. My inner development is not so far that it is easy for me to condense the intuitive orientation into helpful metaphors and concrete examples. This is an ongoing artistic skill to work on and pray for. But, still, I should put more effort into the posts.
Previously you wrote - "If I try to stay fully in the given of my experience right now I must admit that I can't even speak of other beings that make up my intuitive context, let alone beings that make up the world."
The first thing to recognize here is that the conscious understanding that we feel isolated in our intuitive context is a great thing to begin with. Why? Because it means we are consciously participating in the archetypal stream of evolution, where higher spiritual forces have died into the isolated ego-consciousness so the latter could attain its freedom and freely pursue inner perfection. Most people feel this isolation but they are not conscious of the reasons why, so for them, it is simply a 'law of reality' that we are atomic souls and deserves no further reflection. Everything in life for such people is finding ways to negotiate with other atomic souls to get some happiness and meaning, but there is a clear sense that such efforts can't go too far and we must ultimately become complacent with the 'fact' that we are confined to our own current experience on this side of the threshold. We should really try to sense this soul mood and how it can subtly sneak into spiritual striving as well if we don't remain on guard for it.
On the inner path, we seek the reasons why we feel like atomic souls and this should first be explored in living concepts. Then we can explore ways of delaminating the layers of experience that have been compressed together into our sensory ego-consciousness. A simple example is the expanding/contracting rhythms we spoke of before. At the daily scale, the two poles are sleeping and awakening. When we sleep, our higher members expand out into deeper layers of intuitive activity (which usually remain unconscious because we can't resonate with its more fluid forms), and when we awaken, they contract back into the lower members and we experience that as normal sensory consciousness. We can also notice this rhythm occurring throughout the day as well. I have noticed, for example, that when I engage in rigorous physical activity, it is more difficult for me to orient toward holistic spiritual ideas. That is because my higher members have contracted tightly back into the physical body, which is necessary when engaged in such activity, especially if we are in the presence of other people. Even apart from physical activity, we can notice certain portions of our day where it is generally easier for us to orient to spiritual ideas and other parts where our thinking is dominated by sensory reality.
This all assumes we are not only paying attention to the content we encounter throughout the day but also to the very manner and quality of our spiritual activity. It doesn't take meditative states, only expanded attention in our normal state. Then we can notice how, through such daily rhythms, we are also participating in the overarching rhythms of human history. Every cultural age is marked by a phase of more materialistic thinking followed by more spiritual thinking and rhythmic succession and this pattern provides the basic context for the unfolding of cultural history over thousands of years. We can understand our own time in history as a critical period of transition between the materialistic thinking rhythm and the spiritual thinking rhythm. If we are able to make such connections, we have already gained a much deeper appreciation for how the facts of spiritual science play into our individual and collective existence.
So that is already a huge advantage to be grateful for because it means we have developed the basis for a living faith that there are concrete ways to radiate the ego-consciousness back out into the meaningful context that structures its existence. Before or once we arrive at this point, it seems to me an underlying idea that recurs is as follows - "I can see that there is a spiritual reality related to my current existence, and this reality can be known inwardly through my intuitive thinking, but the deeper understanding of that reality can only come from breakthrough higher cognitive experiences. Until then, I should avoid thinking too much about these deeper realities and only focus on my current state of being."
That can be a healthy idea to the extent it develops feelings of reverence for what stands above us and secretly structures our existence, so that we don't feel pressured to intellectually model spiritual reality from the side as a detached spectator. Instead, we know that the higher Spirit will incarnate into our conceptual life through Time as we continue to work on ourselves inwardly. To be clear, the life of prayer and concentration is critical for deepening our intuitive orientation. That's why I mentioned living in the exceptional state before and I am also in the process of compiling a summary of exercises for doing so. But the above idea can also subtly miss something - that the higher experiences can only incarnate into what is already there. Just as a candle flame needs wax to burn through, the higher Spirit needs a rich palette of spiritual ideas to meet on its descent. That is the main reason for working our thinking through spiritual science and struggling to understand the higher states from which it is speaking to us. Again, these higher states are not detached from normal experience but comprise the meaningful context for that experience.
Here is a concrete example we can work with, from Clerc in the earlier days of the forum.
Cleric wrote:Let's consider a little contrived example in order to throw some additional light on the matters. Let's imagine that we want to build a building. We have strong faith in idealism and think that we'll be assisting humanity's evolution if we build a hall where conferences can be held and ideas exchanged. Yet we are no construction engineer so don't know how to build it. Let's now consider a being living on a higher stage of consciousness than we. Such beings actually exist. The higher beings closest to man are called Angels in Christian Esoterism. The name is not that important. We can encounter these beings even if we don't know how they are called in different traditions. When we cross the threshold of higher cognition, we already find ourselves in the lowest of three higher stages of consciousness that are available to modern man through the appropriate training. This first stage is the normal state of consciousness for these beings, just as our ordinary intellectual consciousness is the normal state for contemporary man. The Angels don't have physical structure. Their 'coarsest' structure reaches to the life (etheric) processes in Nature. This doesn't mean that they feel limited or unaware of the physical world. On the contrary, they have more understanding of it but need not to be entangled in it and consider the details. As an analogy, we can say that they experience the 'quantum mechanical wave function' of the physical world without the need to decohere/collapse it. Human soul life is an open book for these beings. The soul (astral structure) of men is part of their environment, just as plants and animals are part of our environment. A noble thought, as our idea to build the hall, lives in our astral body and is perceptible to the Angel. We can speak only in metaphorical pictures here. Let's say that it looks like a luminous structure living in our soul. When the Angel investigates it it can trace as light rays its relations to other ideas and beings (for example the soul of BK which we enthusiastically expect to visit our hall). It can experience our idea in the context of the overall evolution of humanity. The Angel has its own idea of world development, it is conducting its life according to its ideal. If it considers that our idea aligns well with the overall evolution it may decide to help with its realization. When it investigates further our soul organism it can see that we're unable to build the hall ourselves. There're different ways it can know this but let's say that it simply perceives our own realization that we can't do it. It then expands its consciousness in search for solution. In the spiritual world geometric distances make no sense. It's like asking what's the distance between the concept of tree and the concept of light. The 'distance' in the spiritual world results from the degree of affinity between idea-beings. Beings that have common modes of 'vibration' recognize each other. Beings that are very dissimilar simply don't perceive each other. So when the Angel expands its consciousness in this way, it is searching for idea-being that will complement our idea-being. Then the perception of another soul stands out, which might happen to be of someone involved in construction and is Karmically suitable for the task. Then the Angel may begin to work directly or with the assistance of another Angel that might be more closely related with the constructor. In either case, the Angels begin to influence both ours and the constructor's soul life. They do that through gently inspiring certain ideas and feelings. In our ordinary state we simply have thoughts and impulses, just like we do all the time. One day we find ourselves in the company of the constructor, we get acquainted, we start talking, we share our idea, he becomes enthusiastic and offers his help. Now this meeting between us in the physical world seems the result of chance but through all the time our freedom has been slightly influenced such that it may be slightly more probable for us to decide to go in this way rather than that way, that we may travel somewhere on this date rather than that date and so on. All this was possible because of the constant work the higher beings were doing. This is only possible for them because they experience time in very different way. Their moment 'now' can encompass whole years of our life and they perceive the most various ways Karma may lay out for us.
This is a really made up example, intentionally made more human-like and accessible but higher perception reveals that things like this happen all the time. It should be noted that we, as humans investigating the higher realms, are only visitors there and we can't encompass the totality of consciousness of an Angel or any other higher being. Yet we can experience certain points where our consciousness and theirs intersect. Then we glimpse at the wonderous ways these beings constantly work. Such experiences are not only curiosities of higher existence but can become actual practical knowledge. We understand that we can do a lot to help these beings by taking conscious stance towards them. Not only that but it is actually our duty to enter into fully conscious relationships with them - if we want to work with them. The last part is very important. Because not all beings work for the same ideal. Just as the Angels where trying to inspire in us the correct idea that would lead to the acquaintance, so could beings of completely different character see the construction of such a hall as a threat for their own goals. Then these latter beings can try to inspire different ideas in us - for example, the can inspire the brilliant idea to go to the pub instead of the place where we might eventually meet the constructor. Traditionally, the beings that take as their ideal to dedicate all their activity in the direction of integration of consciousness are collectively called in occultism the White Lodge. It's not some 'club' based on metaphysical membership but it's a union in a common idea that beings pursue freely. Things work in such a way that we can't integrate our consciousness only for ourselves. The reason is that the contents of our consciousness are the imprint of the life of all other beings. Thus if we want to integrate our own experience we must also help actively for the integration of all other beings. This is the fundamental characteristic that brings these beings into a whole. It's the only path where self-interest or egoism is naturally transformed in altruism. We can only achieve our highest aspirations if we enter brotherly relations and are ready to make sacrifices in the name of the overall integration of experience. This is how Love becomes for us the fundamental essence of reality. Conversely, beings that follow their own goals, that can be achieved only by arresting the integration of some other beings, are collectively called the Black Lodge. As a rule, these beings have no idea of the overall integrative process of Cosmic consciousness and as such they are not trying to deviate other beings because of some pure evilness but simply because they need something from other beings in order to achieve their own goals - which the beings may actually conceive as noble and much more correct than the goals that the integrative beings are following. So these beings (not always but in many cases) sincerely follow what they believe to be the best but because of their limited perspective, they can't trace its full consequences for the general life. And of course, there are also such beings whose perspectives are so limited that they simply have no consideration whatsoever about anything else than their own impulses. These are the beings who in their self-indulgence are the inspirers of the most horrific acts. Man experiences a very fortunate position where he can find his own center amid the forces that inspire him in very different directions and he may choose in freedom with which idea-beings he would like to integrate his stream of experience.
There are a couple of things to orient to in such a post. We are not trying to build an intellectual model of ‘angelic nature’ or the 'white and black lodge', but move our spirit fluidly through the contours of meaning and deepen our intuitive orientation through that process.
- Spiritual science should never be understood as isolated claims about reality. In physical science, we get claims like "water is made of 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen", or "the Earth is 4 billion years old", and so forth, and we verify such claims through sensory observation (or, more often, phantom abstract thoughts that are extrapolated into the remote past and projected into future times). In contrast, SS claims should be understood more as 'scenes' of a holistic story that is always connected to our first-person stream of meaningful experience. We can't understand the scenes properly if they are plucked out from the overarching intuition of the story.
- When I first read the above, I probably thought "wow this is really interesting... I hope one day I can also verify these facts for myself". We all pass through such a phase on the inner path. However, now I realize that when I think through the destinies of human individuals in relation to the ideas and ideals they pursue, I am already living within the angelic perspective, only it's mediated heavily by my fragmented intellectual concepts. The more I can make these concepts "living", i.e. fluid, symbolic, imaginative, etc., the more I experience the angelic perspective shining through them. There is a whole gradient that can be developed between my current experience and the imaginative experience of the angelic perspective, and the latter will only manifest to the extent it intersects with my own ideal development.
- The latter also points to a principle of spiritual science as a whole. We will notice that, whenever Steiner mentions what the higher hierarchies did or are doing or will do, it is always in relation to humanity's stream of development. That is because all higher cognitive experience can be traced only so far as the deeds of the higher hierarchies structure our first-person state of being (which embeds past and future states). It is by enriching this first-person state of being with spiritual ideas and values that we make our soul-structure ripe for higher experiences to shine through it, like a finely-tuned instrument becomes ripe for the musical virtuoso to play.
- The default intuition is to consider the above post and think, 'sometimes the Angels come and work with our ideas and feelings to help us accomplish goals'. But I hope it is clear that what is being described is a limited metaphor for the entire stream of our experience. It is a 'metaphor' because we won't ascend to higher realms and observe angelic beings floating about in some subtle form, looking for luminous structures in human souls - these are symbols for entirely inner realities. Nevertheless, they point very concretely to how, whenever we are subtly inspired through our lofty impulses, feelings, ideas, and ideals, we are always in dialogue with higher beings. And, likewise, whenever we feel compelled by lower instincts, emotions, and thoughts, we are in a one-sided dialogue with quite other sorts of beings - they talk while we listen and carry out their commands with very little or no conscious participation.
-The fact that the Angelic perspective can encompass several years of our life in their 'now' moment is important, as it illustrates how the higher beings ideate the ‘field of potential’ in which our states of being unfold. Reality is only states of being – perceptual content (in the widest sense) and the invisible meaning that makes sense of that content. So when we say ‘our’ states of being, this is only a manner of speaking – we are a metamorphosing state of being, as are all higher beings. It is simply that their state of being encompasses what we experience as manifold states of being spread over time, and the goal of inner development is to resonate more and more with the higher holistic perspectives of our own stream of experience. We aim to make our 'now' state coincide more and more with the 'now' state of higher beings.
We could characterize it metaphorically as thickening out our ‘now’ state of being so its deeper layers of meaning are experienced within that ‘now’. The bowl is our current conceptual life, through which we experience all the WC, and we use our spiritual activity to rhythmically move through the batter of experiences and ideas and give it temporal thickness. Our ideal experience and intuitive orientation thus acquire a firmness, a reality that cannot be easily shaken. Practically, the temporal thickness is when we sense how our ‘now’ state could only be what it is through the layers of meaningful context that, from our current perspective, we experience as temporally extended over seasons, years, decades, lifetimes, epochs, etc., or we label abstractly as physiology, biology, and psychology, or geography, flora, and fauna, or family, nation, and species, etc. This context is the imaginative, inspired, and intuitive activity of higher beings that guide human destiny. Their activity 'filters' the field of potential states of being - according to karmic laws - into a contracted state of being that we experience as 'now'. This filtering of potential is always taking place from each 'now' state to the next. It can also help us orient towards how the successive planetary eons, rounds, globes, and epochs manifest.
The underlying theme here is that, by moving our spirit through these ideas and struggling to get a concrete sense of the higher layers of intuitive activity from which they are revealed, we are ripening our souls for the higher Spirit to gradually incarnate and deepen our intuitive orientation. The ‘struggle’ means we read patiently, multiples times if necessary, we engage the thought experiments, we inhabit the sorts of perspectives being described as much as possible, and we broadly relate it to the principles of spiritual reality we have already discerned with trust and confidence. We are thereby probing the deeper meaning of what is already implicit in all our thoughts, feelings, and deeds. That is the meaningful context that makes sense of our normal experience. Simply reading Cleric’s posts on this forum, or perhaps even this post, with energetic effort, is already participating in that process of inner development. Our ‘now’ state while reading these posts, lectures, books, etc. will gradually be experienced with more temporal thickness, i.e. more meaningful insight into how the higher worlds are already present within it. None of the posts and lectures will lead to such insight when considered in isolation. They are simply snapshots of a reality that needs to be viewed from as many angles as possible.
Guney wrote:In the case of the ego everybody can understand it as a symbol, but in the case of etheric body, where is the experiential reality, of the force that structures the physical body, which is part of the WC?
As indicated above, we won't be able to get any quick or isolated answers to such questions in a way that deepens our intuitive orientation. We need to approach from many angles and struggle to make our thinking more flexible and fluid, more etheric-like. One such angle is to consider the widely differing form and behavior between stones and plants. They are both comprised of mineral elements, yet the mineral structure of the stone remains relatively stable, while that of the plant metamorphoses in a rhythmic way and takes very interesting structured forms as it strives towards the Sunlight. The etheric body is a symbol for the inspired forces that animate this mineral structure. In human beings, these forces have been become much more inwardized to structure the inner organs and life processes. The outer mineral structure of the human being is more shaped by soul and spirit forces, such as the countenance of the face.