lorenzop wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2024 4:07 pmWe can measure\detect (the influence of) emotions of love and gratitude, etc. - - - brain scans, galvanic skin response and similar are performed ad nauseum.AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2024 2:09 pm
For that to be done, Lorenzo, we first have to be willing to explore the reality of our purely qualitative life. What is your view on the fundamental emotions of gratitude, love, reverence, and so forth? Can these be measured with a Geiger counter? Can they be detected with a brain scan as specific brain states that explain their depth and fullness?
We could ask similarly about the idea, "how to measure or detect the influence of archetypal beings". Can this idea itself be measured and detected through physical instruments? It is in the very life of such ideas that the archetypal influences are to be found. They are to be found in all the contextual factors that led us into the vicinity of thinking about the world through a specifically colored lens and asking questions from that colored perspective.
So based on your response, the short answer is that the influences of archetypal beings can be detected\measured by looking to our psychophysiology, detected only in principle if we can't detect this influence at the moment OR are you suggesting the influences of archetypal beings cannot be detected and can only be believed or considered?
Yes, in that sense, everything we measure/detect in the perceptual world is an expression of the archetypal beings. For ex. when we study the geological layers of the Earth, the oceans and rivers, the flora and fauna, and the patterns of human culture (like industrial and economic patterns for ex.), we are studying the mineral, life, soul, and spiritual bodies of the Earth organism. The Earth as a planetary whole is an archetypal being.
But this will remain a 'Gaia' abstraction if we can't penetrate to the inner dimension of the outer expressions. The emotions of love and gratitude are abstractions for the person who has only studied their outer expressions in brain scans, skin responses, etc. but has not immersed their consciousness in the feeling currents of love and gratitude. Or if a person only studies the muscular structure and movements of a smile but does not penetrate to the inner state of joy and satisfaction, the 'smile' remains an abstraction. When these remain abstractions, a person can easily convince themselves that love, gratitude, joy, etc. are nothing but the quantitative properties outwardly detected and gradually their inner experience will be diminished according to the image of their conceptions.You see, with the blood we cannot fail to notice; it is red, it contains all kinds of substances, and so we say to ourselves: The blood is something special. With water, we simply think: Ah well, it's water. It attracts less notice; and the substances it contains —apart from hydrogen and oxygen, which are in water — are not present in such large quantities as iron is, for instance, in the blood. So people pay no heed to this. But it is true, nevertheless, that the whole water circulation has tremendous significance for the life of the earth. And just as the human organism could not live if it did not have its blood circulation, so would the earth be unable to live if it did not have its water circulation.
It is the same principle with the archetypal influences. We need to immerse our consciousness in the archetypal currents that structure the temporally extended rhythms of our soul-life, which are the same currents that structure the rhythms of the Earth organism, if they are not to remain abstractions. Once our inner experience is thickened through this archetypal resonance, we will not only see how the outer measurements are the expression of inner activity, but we will discover many new outer patterns in sensory life that we never even noticed before, such as the Earth's waterways as its blood circulation. Our very capacity to measure/detect will expand along with our attention, imagination, and intuition. This has always been the archetypal process through which cultural paradigms shift and we are simply awakening to it more deeply.