Federica wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 8:17 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 12:43 pm
I would phrase it differently and say the Lucifer temptation was fundamentally a burning
desire (in the soul body) to live separated from Cosmic spirituality, to cultivate an inner life that feels to be a reality-in-itself (inner life including sensations). In other words, the core spirit no longer desired for its bodily matrix to be a mere reflector of Cosmic spirituality, but to possess its own seemingly 'private' inner life. Of course all of this unfolded in stages over the epochs, not in an instant. We only reached the culmination of this whole process relatively recently even though it was seeded back in Lemurian times (or originally back on Old Moon).
The natural outcome of this desire, however, is also an increasing competition between seemingly private soul spaces to possess parts of the sensory spectrum for their own ends (Rene Girard discusses this in terms of his
theory of 'mimetic desire'). Fundamentally our spirit-soul can reflect its sensory existence within the imaginative spectrum, but these cross-conflicting desires and intents decohere that spectrum and the soul is forced to reflect its existence within the temporally fragmented mineralized spectrum, which gives rise to the experience of extended space as we know it.
So what you said is not inaccurate, but I think it's important to locate the primary responsibility of the decoherence in the selfishly desirous soul body because that's also where the redemptive solution will come, through the purified soul body. The physical body as we experience it today has become a hardened shadow of its true archetypal nature, the
Imago Dei, through the selfish impulses of the soul body. Yet the etheric body has maintained the link between this shadow and its reality, the intuitive spirit, through the imploding of Cosmic forces that maintain the physical body and the cultivation of the thinking faculty through images which precipitate as thoughts within the soul body. By bringing the life forces back into the mental images and concepts, and purifying the desires of selfish impulses, the bodily matrix can be restored to its originally intended purpose, but now in complete freedom and with the fruits of its separated existence, the incarnate "I" and its capacity for spiritually creative love.
Ashvin,
I have tried, but I am not able to fit what I believe you are saying in what I'm reading.
"The physical body as we experience it today has become a hardened shadow of its true archetypal nature, the
Imago Dei"
Hasn’t the human physical body
always been such a hardened shadow?
From what I am reading just now - Chapter III - I understand that the purification and eradication from the soul of those desires that are purely sensory (not the ones that are a reflection of the spiritual in the sensory spectrum) take decades in an after-death process of burning the desires in a spiritual fire, and this only can happen once the soul is not any longer “chained” (as RS says) to the physical body by life on Earth (because, as he says, even during sleep, the soul is still to some extent chained to the physical, it operates in the spiritual world, but with an orientation towards the physical).
But you are saying that this purification process is possible while still alive, in parallel with keeping a functioning physical body, that keeps processing sensory impressions through the senses? Are you saying that through the steps of initiation, not only does the individual become able to foresee and understand what is to be faced and worked through after death, but one comes to actually tackle and accomplish that work while still alive on Earth? If I understand you correctly, and this is indeed what you are saying, what would be the difference then between this and becoming immortal, that is, erasing the cycle of life and death from your radar?
Federica,
So this is another situation where he is describing the average condition of humanity today, the pre-initiatory condition as it were. In general, the whole aim of modern initiation is to experience and accomplish what normally unfolds after death, while still alive. That is, to spiral incarnate existence together with the holistic and creative spiritual processes across the threshold. These are essentially the same spiritual processes described as unfolding on Saturn, Sun, and Moon. In a sense, we
become the beings who artistically weaved our lower psycho-physical form and therefore the manifest world as we now know it. It reminds me of the old time travel paradox where a person somehow becomes their own father. Reality is quite strange in that way!
This is how greater continuity of consciousness unfolds as our "I" expands its loving interests, knowledge, and deeds back to Cosmic scale. It is indeed a process of gradually immortalizing the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, which of course means they (and we) will not remain in their present condition, but will be transfigured into Manas, Buddhi, and Atma. They will become perfect reflectors of the corresponding constellations of Cosmic intents. The 'phase gap' between spiritual activity and its reflection in soul, life, and sensory processes will be progressively closed and this will manifest as the next 3 planetary incarnations (which fulfill the intents of the first 3). Although the fullness of this redemption will be attained at the end of Solar evolution, some essential characteristics of the later stages will already be prefigured during the remainder of Earth evolution.
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA175/En ... 12p01.html
I pointed out in my previous lecture that physical man, as at present constituted, does not answer to his inherent potentialities; his physical body was originally destined for immortality. This idea has further implications. Not only has physical man who was destined for immortality forfeited his claim to immortality, but also the other living beings, the ligneous plants and the warm-blooded animals bear the seeds of death in them.... The question then is: how are we to account for this deterioration? Virtually the whole of nature around us, even when investigated scientifically, is not such as it was intended to be. Who is responsible for this? The blame lies with man because he succumbed to the Luciferic temptation, to what is called in the opening chapter of Genesis, the “Fall”, or original sin. To Spiritual Science this is a real and genuine drama in which man was not only involved, but which was first played out in the soul of man. At that time man was still so powerful that he involved the whole of nature in his fall.
...But in addition, man was also designed for a particular tone; he was endowed with his own specific tone in the whole Harmony of the Spheres, and also with an original vitality, so that it would always have been possible for the etheric body, if it had retained its original vitality, to have preserved the immortality of the physical body. And man would have been spared the consequences. For had the etheric body preserved its original form man would have continued to dwell in those higher realms from which he has fallen. He would not have succumbed to the Luciferic temptation, for in those higher realms totally different conditions would have prevailed. And in former times those conditions really did exist.
...Thus the Christ Impulse was implanted in the whole of Earth evolution. I doubt if there is a single person who imagines that the Christ Impulse loses anything of its majesty or sublimity when it is incorporated in this way in the whole world order; when, in other words, it is restored to its cosmic rank, and when men really acknowledge that at the beginning of Earth evolution there existed, and at the end of Earth evolution there will exist, an order different from the present natural order, and a moral order that transcends the physical. The Christ Impulse was necessary in order that the end of Earth evolution should be worthy of the beginning.
The reason why, normally, we cannot purify the astral while chained to the physical body is because our soul life is so conditioned to react to sensory events in selfish ways. Any incremental progress we make in taming some lower passions through the intellect is almost immediately and entirely negated by that conditioning as we continue to navigate the sensory entanglement. For example, maybe we make some progress in dealing with unhealthy (selfish) eating habits by carefully working out a dietary plan, but then we are constantly confronted with the whole production, marketing, etc. complex of fast foods, which trigger encrusted patterns of feeling and will that the intellect is powerless to resist. What is needed here is something equally or more potent to replace (or transmute) those old habits, and that we don't find in normal sensory life.
But on the initiatory path, the spiritual within the sensory gradually begins to shine through. There are growing points of contact between the purely ideal life and the sensory life. Sensory events begin to remind us more of ideal streams of destiny, such as those outlined in Occult Science. In that way, the events can lend their energy and yield to new ideal habits instead of triggering the old selfish ways of being. Basically, we have penetrated surrounding cultural and natural events with more holistic spiritual insight, coming to intimately perceive their overarching significance in our streams of destiny. This new insight helps us resist the siren song of the old selfish soul patterns in reaction to sensory events. Such a path of development is already shortening the time that would be needed in kamaloca to purify the soul impurities before ascending to purely ideal worlds and creatively working on the curvatures of destiny.
We should remember that is the purpose of the purification - it gives us an opportunity to creatively plan the archetypal streamlines of our next incarnation so that we can compensate for past karma and advance toward the fully human (Christ) ideal. Even once we go through kamaloca, the impurities of the soul body that are purged during that time don't simply disappear - we have to clothe our spirit in them again as we return to our next incarnation and form a new soul body. In that sense, only those parts of the astral body can be immortalized that we work on purifying
consciously and freely during incarnate existence. The work is always accomplished as a rhythmic bouncing between the two poles of existence - the purely ideal pole providing holistic insight into how the psycho-physical curvatures should 'bend' such that we are given the best opportunities to accomplish the work of inner perfection within the pole of manifest existence.
PS. I didn't dare to read the post on René Girard, as I am trying to administrate my energies and that seems like a surely interesting but extemporaneous reading for the purposes of this point (but please correct me if I'm wrong)
Yes, the Girard post is not at all necessary, just an interesting side note on how others have intellectually reached some of these truths of Cosmic evolution.