Güney27 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 8:13 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 7:56 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 6:03 pm
Ashvin,
You are making the same exact points as in your previous replies, only adding some smooth makeup on top. That was not necessary. In fact I could have spared the ink, and you could have spared the makeup. Moreover, your question seems to be above all oriented toward checking how easily I would contradict myself. Obviously there cant' be any "sort of concepts that are necessary before it's safe to engage in consecrating gestures". And, as I said, I don't see consecration in the OMA passage. So I think it's best that I pause here. By the way there might be some more interesting and relevant questions waiting to emerge from other sides. Thank you, anyway.
Well, as usual, Cleric's last post is probably more helpful and cut closer to the heart of the matter. Perhaps you will be contemplating and responding to that. Just take it as another way of expressing the same points I was clumsily trying to express. That is why I see no tension at all with the Steiner quote and no issue with using the various exercises discussed here to study-meditate the real-real experience of spiritual science.
Do you experience the Atlantean consciousness, when you are meditate the lectures about that topic from steiner?
Or do you make mental pictures of the Atlantean C state ?
I find a lot of differences when I'm reading OMA for example or MotT and compare them to steiner.
Is it exclusive to Steiners work, that one can experience his descriptions( I never have experienced them in my case )?
Guney,
Whenever it is foggy outside, I try to transport myself a bit into such a consciousness. It's not about whether we experience the Atlantean consciousness when in the fog or when reading about it, but whether we make an
active effort to try and imagine it, from its inner meaningful dimension, and see how that helps us make sense of that which we
do experience in our current stream of consciousness, where clear-cut concepts and perceptions have crystallized from the imaginative flow. It is not at all exclusive to Steiner, because it is dependent on
our efforts to resonate with the more integrated perspectives from which supersensible facts are communicated. Through those efforts, the gap between Steiner, OMA, VT, or any other esotericist will close in our intuitive thinking experience. We will sense how they are all approaching the same realities from different standpoints, with different missions from the higher worlds to carry out in these apocalyptic (revelatory) times.
These are not one-time efforts but something we must continually revisit and approach from various angles. I will quote another section from the Steiner lecture that Federica just quoted.
Steiner wrote:Now it is of course true that one who hears of such things and is not himself clairvoyant cannot convince himself of the facts as such through his own immediate vision; it is quite true that he receives them and cannot prove them by clairvoyant evidence. That is true; but it would be quite wrong to imagine that the man who is not clairvoyant cannot in any way prove or have insight into the facts which are now being presented. And it would be wrong to assert that one must merely take in faith and on authority what is given out of clairvoyant consciousness. These communications would be in the highest degree imperfect, would lack something essential, if they appealed only to authority and faith. What is being given out in the right way — this has often been emphasised — can be discovered only by clairvoyant consciousness but when it has once been discovered — if only by one person — when it has once been seen and communicated, everyone can understand it by means of unprejudiced reason, that is to say by those faculties which are accessible to him on the physical plane. And it may well be said: Even if no one of those here present ever has the opportunity of proving everything immediately in the most comprehensive sense, everyone could at any rate make this possible if he had the time and the necessary mental faculties (I mean, faculties of the physical plane). Let us even consider such difficult matters as were treated of here in recent lectures, with regard to the incarnations of Zarathustra, such difficulties as, e.g. that Zarathustra's etheric body passed over into Moses 2 — let us even imagine that such difficult, far-reaching and significant subjects are being dealt with, even then let no one assert that he who knows these things as the result of spiritual research appeals for blind credulity! That is by no means the case. But suppose someone were to come and say: “I for my part am no clairvoyant. But here is someone asserting these things about Zarathustra and his incarnations. I will now lay hold of everything that is at my disposal on the physical plane, everything that history hands down to us, everything that is contained in the stone monuments, or in ancient religious documents, and I will test all these most carefully.” And suppose he were to say further: “Assuming that what is being said is correct, does it tally with the facts that can be externally corroborated?” — Such a person would then investigate thoroughly what can be confirmed by external means, and he would see that the more closely he investigated the more he would find corroboration for what the clairvoyant has set forth.
...
But now you will find that a testing of this kind requires great effort, it demands thought and work. It means that one must really set out to find confirmations in the physical world for what is stated out of clairvoyant research. And here we come to a matter of which we shall do well to speak, a matter that is closely connected with our main question. Is it not necessary, is it not even good, for the man of to-day, besides striving (as he certainly should strive) to penetrate into the spiritual world, also to occupy himself at the same time with an energetic cultivation of the ordinary means of knowledge and the ordinary methods of thought? In other words: Does the theosophist not do well to overcome the indolence that is certainly prevalent in the world to-day, and to develop his world of thought in all earnestness, to lay hold of the means by which man can be comprehended even only on the physical plane, and to turn these to his use? Is it not right that he should learn a great deal, and especially learn how to think?
It is indeed very difficult to make clear to the consciousness of the present day what is meant by this. It once happened that someone who wanted to make progress in theosophical knowledge and at the same time to learn how to think the thoughts with greater exactitude, came and asked me to recommend him what to read. I recommended him to study Spinoza's Ethics, so that he would be able to formulate in clear-cut outlines the thoughts that were being given him. Not many weeks afterwards he wrote to me that he could not see why he should study this book; it was rather voluminous and the whole object was simply to prove the existence of God, which he had never doubted; therefore he saw no need to wade through long trains of thought in order to prove the existence of God!
This is key and we should first admit to ourselves that our default habit is to find shortcuts for thinking, to pay little attention to or skip over things that seem 'too difficult' or that we feel we 'already know'. From a purely secular perspective, this can be justified because it isn't even clear what good comes from ever-more strengthening of our thinking faculty above and beyond what is needed for basic daily functioning and showing off intellectual knowledge to others. But once we have set out on the intuitive thinking path, we no longer have any such justification and we should begin to realize the most profound spiritual value comes from continual rhythmic movement of our thinking-will between supersensible ideas and the stream of concrete experience. We should
trust that our spirit can move in ways that we don't yet suspect if we allow it the opportunities to do so, instead of putting more rationalized obstacles in its way.
As I have mentioned before, one could simply click on Cleric's name and search user's posts, go to the earliest posts on this forum, and then start working through them with great patience and care. One could do a post or two an evening, or even a single post if it's a long one. If this is done properly, we will already sense our inner life 'delaminating' and a greater resonance with more varied states of consciousness. Even if we resonate a
tiny bit more with the medieval thinkers, the ancient Greeks, and the ancient Egyptians, this will be a huge step forward. These little victories build on themselves exponentially over time. They inspire us to continue our efforts and double down on them. Then we start to realize the only thing standing in our way is not Steiner, or the remoteness of spiritual reality, or anything similar, but our indolence, inattentiveness, and overall lack of presence in the first-person flow of spiritual activity.