GA 13 - Rudolf Steiner's "Secret Science in Outline"

[AshvinP]

Ok, I understand in broad outlines. From your initial post I had received the impression that this work was achievable here and now (the Kingdom is at hand). But In the context of the whole solar evolution, it's less difficult to picture this progressive work. I am still not clear what the physical and etheric human body would have been like without the Fall, and what is left of ideal life once cycles and polarities are progressively streamlined (since the whole universe seems to be founded on the workings of cycles and polarities). But as I said, I am following the broad lines. It's probably enough for now. Thank you.

Yes, but we should be clear that it's not a binary situation - either we are immortalized in the next instant or at the end of Solar evolution. The reason I mention this is to emphasize how it's a continual gradient and how even the first stages of inner transformation can be experienced as momentous developments. For example, we can gain inner certainty of our immortality, our eternal soul-spiritual essence. If we then compare that to the default state of our lives where such a thing, if we thought about it at all, was a matter of abstract speculation, of endless doubts and questioning and theories, mostly for the sake of entertainment because we all secretly 'knew' that no one actually had the answer, we can sense how monumental of a shift that is. Now imagine if all incarnate souls suddenly gained this inner certainty in the next instant (of course this wouldn't happen) - how different would humanity's incarnate existence start to look after a few years? It's not just knowing that our souls are eternal, but that we can actively participate in realizing its immortal essence in the stages of manifest existence. So much mental energy that is directed toward entirely materialistic pursuits would be redirected towards exploring the inner life and helping others. This would lead to a real and effective 'transvaluation of all values', as Nietzsche put it. So that is key - once our spirit begins knowing itself a few degrees vertical of the perpendicular intellectual plane, the whole sense of reality and our role in it begins to transform in the most unsuspected ways. 

The rhythms/polarities never go away, but simply unfold at more and more integrated levels of the existential flow. The angels, archangels, etc. still experience rhythms of spiritual activity and manifestation. At the level of an Angel, for ex., we could say their manifest activity is what we experience within ourselves as the imaginative thought life (which is normally very dimmed down by the verbal intellect). At the core of these rhythms is what we dimly know as 'loving sacrifice'. Once we reach the fulfillment of our Solar evolution, we will be in the condition of the Thrones at the dawn of ancient Saturn. Then our rhythm consists in conducting our activity to sacrifice the very substance of our "I" to manifest the planetary environment for new waves of relative perspectives to undergo their solar evolution. We then maintain the 'standing wave' of potential in which the whole new solar evolution unfolds from beginning to end. In a certain sense, we already undergo this sacrificial rhythm between death and rebirth when we reach the 'midnight hour of existence' and then choose whether to return to incarnate existence so we can pursue the fully human ideal. Even during incarnate existence, we undergo this rhythm at a dim level whenever we stop thinking about intoxicating spiritual ideas (or reaching higher stages in meditation) and plunge back into sensory affairs to complete our tasks in the light of our insights and ideals. So we can already start to get a sense, although dim and nebulous, of how the polar cycles in our experience will be scaled up to the Macrocosm.

re: physical-etheric bodies without the Fall - this post by Cleric was very illuminating for me.

[Federica]

Ok, I understand in broad outlines. From your initial post I had received the impression that this work was achievable here and now (the Kingdom is at hand). But In the context of the whole solar evolution, it's less difficult to picture this progressive work. I am still not clear what the physical and etheric human body would have been like without the Fall, and what is left of ideal life once cycles and polarities are progressively streamlined (since the whole universe seems to be founded on the workings of cycles and polarities). But as I said, I am following the broad lines. It's probably enough for now. Thank you.

Yes, but we should be clear that it's not a binary situation - either we are immortalized in the next instant or at the end of Solar evolution. The reason I mention this is to emphasize how it's a continual gradient and how even the first stages of inner transformation can be experienced as momentous developments. For example, we can gain inner certainty of our immortality, our eternal soul-spiritual essence. If we then compare that to the default state of our lives where such a thing, if we thought about it at all, was a matter of abstract speculation, of endless doubts and questioning and theories, mostly for the sake of entertainment because we all secretly 'knew' that no one actually had the answer, we can sense how monumental of a shift that is. Now imagine if all incarnate souls suddenly gained this inner certainty in the next instant (of course this wouldn't happen) - how different would humanity's incarnate existence start to look after a few years? It's not just knowing that our souls are eternal, but that we can actively participate in realizing its immortal essence in the stages of manifest existence. So much mental energy that is directed toward entirely materialistic pursuits would be redirected towards exploring the inner life and helping others. This would lead to a real and effective 'transvaluation of all values', as Nietzsche put it. So that is key - once our spirit begins knowing itself a few degrees vertical of the perpendicular intellectual plane, the whole sense of reality and our role in it begins to transform in the most unsuspected ways. 

The rhythms/polarities never go away, but simply unfold at more and more integrated levels of the existential flow. The angels, archangels, etc. still experience rhythms of spiritual activity and manifestation. At the level of an Angel, for ex., we could say their manifest activity is what we experience within ourselves as the imaginative thought life (which is normally very dimmed down by the verbal intellect). At the core of these rhythms is what we dimly know as 'loving sacrifice'. Once we reach the fulfillment of our Solar evolution, we will be in the condition of the Thrones at the dawn of ancient Saturn. Then our rhythm consists in conducting our activity to sacrifice the very substance of our "I" to manifest the planetary environment for new waves of relative perspectives to undergo their solar evolution. We then maintain the 'standing wave' of potential in which the whole new solar evolution unfolds from beginning to end. In a certain sense, we already undergo this sacrificial rhythm between death and rebirth when we reach the 'midnight hour of existence' and then choose whether to return to incarnate existence so we can pursue the fully human ideal. Even during incarnate existence, we undergo this rhythm at a dim level whenever we stop thinking about intoxicating spiritual ideas (or reaching higher stages in meditation) and plunge back into sensory affairs to complete our tasks in the light of our insights and ideals. So we can already start to get a sense, although dim and nebulous, of how the polar cycles in our experience will be scaled up to the Macrocosm.

re: physical-etheric bodies without the Fall - this post by Cleric was very illuminating for me.

Thanks Ashvin - Yes, I realize it's not all or nothing, and that concrete inner and outer changes emerge from such realization. For now, though I don't have this certainly as a knowing, I have it as a feeling. This is concrete enough to provide me with the determination to keep striving for progression somehow. Thanks also for the 'evolutionary glimpses'. I follow. I only regret not having enough time to study-meditate, watch the reading group, or read as much as I would like these days. This is the only reason for the short comments. I will return to Cleric's old post too.

[Cleric K]

Ok, I understand in broad outlines. From your initial post I had received the impression that this work was achievable here and now (the Kingdom is at hand). But In the context of the whole solar evolution, it's less difficult to picture this progressive work. I am still not clear what the physical and etheric human body would have been like without the Fall, and what is left of ideal life once cycles and polarities are progressively streamlined (since the whole universe seems to be founded on the workings of cycles and polarities). But as I said, I am following the broad lines. It's probably enough for now. Thank you.

I think I've mentioned this before, but one of the most illuminating lecture cycles that I've read has been: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA134/En ... index.html

To me it was precisely this contrast between what existence would have been without the Fall, that gave me a leap of understanding. Without that, based on our physical state, we can't easily conceive otherwise but having a somewhat localized existence, even if in a more ethereal body. However, without a well-formed mineral body that templates every frame of our incarnate existence (and thus we feel localized within the sensory experiences), human consciousness would have been much more non-local. Human beings would be planetary spirits, as if overlapping electron clouds. The whole lecture cycle is very interesting but here's something that speaks directly to the issue:

Recall what we said yesterday about the whole origin of matter. We said that matter arises when spiritual form comes to a kind of boundary or limit and there breaks and scatters; this pulverised form then shows itself as matter. That is the actual earthly matter. It really only occurs directly in this way in the mineral world, for the other substances are changed and modified through being taken hold of by other things that intervene. The substance of blood, however, as such, is a unique substance.





Blood substance was originally also destined to come first of all to a certain limit. Suppose you have here (a) purely spiritual form-rays of the blood substance, and here (b) its force is exhausted. Now according to the tendencies originally inherent in it, blood substance was not meant to be dispersed and sprayed into space, but here at the boundary (b) it was to become just very slightly material and then spray back into itself, spray directly back again into the spiritual. That is how the blood ought to have been. To put it rather crudely, blood ought only to have come so far as to form as it were a skin of substance, fine and slight, it ought only to have come to the point of beginning to be material. It should be forever shooting out of the spiritual for a moment, becoming matter just to the extent of being materially perceptible, then again shooting back into the spiritual and being received up again into it. A perpetual surging forth from the spiritual and shooting back into it again — that is what blood should have been. Its inherent tendencies are directed to this end. Blood was designed to be a perpetual flashing up of light in the material. It was really intended to be something entirely spiritual. And it would have been so if men had at the beginning of earth evolution received their ego from the Spirits of Form alone; for then they would experience their ego through the resistance created by the momentary lighting up in the blood. In the lighting up in the blood man would experience the “I am”; it would be the organ for his ego perception. That would, however, be the one and only sense perception which man would have had at all; the others would not be there if everything had happened without the Luciferic influence. Man would have lived in union together with the ruling Will. The single sense perception that was designed for man was this — in the flash of blood substance and in the immediate rush back into the spiritual, to perceive his ego. Instead of beholding colours and hearing tones and perceiving tastes man ought really to live within the ruling Will; he ought to be, as it were, swimming in it. What was designed for him was that from out of the spiritual World-All, into which he would be placed as a pure Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, he should gaze down upon a being on the earth or in the environs of the earth — not feeling to himself: “I am in that being,” but: “I gaze down there — it belongs to me — the spiritual blood becomes for one moment material, and in what flashes up to me I perceive my I.” The one and only sense perception which should have come is the perception of the I or ego, and the one and only substance which was intended for man in the material world is the blood in this form of momentary flashing up. So that if man had become like this, if he had remained the man of Paradise, he would look down from the World-All upon that which was destined to symbolise him on this earth and to give him the consciousness of I, namely, a purely spiritual being consisting of Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions, within which the I shoots up in the attempt to break through. And in this flash man would be able to say: “I am, for through me has come into being that which is of me down below.”



It is strange but it is a fact. Man was intended to live in the environment of the earth. Suppose a man were living here (a) in the environment of the earth, then it was intended he should him-self produce on the earth his reflection, and only through this reaction ray back again his ego, and then he would say: “There below is my sign.” It was not intended that man should carry round about with him his man of bones and his man of glands, etc. — still less that he should pronounce the grotesque verdict: “That is I.” It should have happened quite differently. Man should have lived in the environs of the earth planet, and sunk a sign and symbol into the earth in the flashing up of form in blood, and he should then have said to himself: “There I drive in my stake — my sign and my seal, which gives me the consciousness of my ego. For what I have become, in that I have passed through Saturn existence and through Sun and through Moon existence — with that I can hover here outside in the World-All. It is the ego I must now add; and the ego I perceive by inscribing myself in the earth below, so that I can always read in the flashing of the blood what I am.” We were, therefore, not originally intended to walk the earth in bodies of flesh and bone as we do, but to circle around the earth and make records, as it were, down below from which we might recognise and know that we are that — that we are an ego. Whoever overlooks this fact has no true knowledge of the nature of man.

[Federica]

Ok, I understand in broad outlines. From your initial post I had received the impression that this work was achievable here and now (the Kingdom is at hand). But In the context of the whole solar evolution, it's less difficult to picture this progressive work. I am still not clear what the physical and etheric human body would have been like without the Fall, and what is left of ideal life once cycles and polarities are progressively streamlined (since the whole universe seems to be founded on the workings of cycles and polarities). But as I said, I am following the broad lines. It's probably enough for now. Thank you.

I think I've mentioned this before, but one of the most illuminating lecture cycles that I've read has been: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA134/En ... index.html

To me it was precisely this contrast between what existence would have been without the Fall, that gave me a leap of understanding. Without that, based on our physical state, we can't easily conceive otherwise but having a somewhat localized existence, even if in a more ethereal body. However, without a well-formed mineral body that templates every frame of our incarnate existence (and thus we feel localized within the sensory experiences), human consciousness would have been much more non-local. Human beings would be planetary spirits, as if overlapping electron clouds. The whole lecture cycle is very interesting but here's something that speaks directly to the issue:

Recall what we said yesterday about the whole origin of matter. We said that matter arises when spiritual form comes to a kind of boundary or limit and there breaks and scatters; this pulverised form then shows itself as matter. That is the actual earthly matter. It really only occurs directly in this way in the mineral world, for the other substances are changed and modified through being taken hold of by other things that intervene. The substance of blood, however, as such, is a unique substance.





Blood substance was originally also destined to come first of all to a certain limit. Suppose you have here (a) purely spiritual form-rays of the blood substance, and here (b) its force is exhausted. Now according to the tendencies originally inherent in it, blood substance was not meant to be dispersed and sprayed into space, but here at the boundary (b) it was to become just very slightly material and then spray back into itself, spray directly back again into the spiritual. That is how the blood ought to have been. To put it rather crudely, blood ought only to have come so far as to form as it were a skin of substance, fine and slight, it ought only to have come to the point of beginning to be material. It should be forever shooting out of the spiritual for a moment, becoming matter just to the extent of being materially perceptible, then again shooting back into the spiritual and being received up again into it. A perpetual surging forth from the spiritual and shooting back into it again — that is what blood should have been. Its inherent tendencies are directed to this end. Blood was designed to be a perpetual flashing up of light in the material. It was really intended to be something entirely spiritual. And it would have been so if men had at the beginning of earth evolution received their ego from the Spirits of Form alone; for then they would experience their ego through the resistance created by the momentary lighting up in the blood. In the lighting up in the blood man would experience the “I am”; it would be the organ for his ego perception. That would, however, be the one and only sense perception which man would have had at all; the others would not be there if everything had happened without the Luciferic influence. Man would have lived in union together with the ruling Will. The single sense perception that was designed for man was this — in the flash of blood substance and in the immediate rush back into the spiritual, to perceive his ego. Instead of beholding colours and hearing tones and perceiving tastes man ought really to live within the ruling Will; he ought to be, as it were, swimming in it. What was designed for him was that from out of the spiritual World-All, into which he would be placed as a pure Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, he should gaze down upon a being on the earth or in the environs of the earth — not feeling to himself: “I am in that being,” but: “I gaze down there — it belongs to me — the spiritual blood becomes for one moment material, and in what flashes up to me I perceive my I.” The one and only sense perception which should have come is the perception of the I or ego, and the one and only substance which was intended for man in the material world is the blood in this form of momentary flashing up. So that if man had become like this, if he had remained the man of Paradise, he would look down from the World-All upon that which was destined to symbolise him on this earth and to give him the consciousness of I, namely, a purely spiritual being consisting of Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions, within which the I shoots up in the attempt to break through. And in this flash man would be able to say: “I am, for through me has come into being that which is of me down below.”



It is strange but it is a fact. Man was intended to live in the environment of the earth. Suppose a man were living here (a) in the environment of the earth, then it was intended he should him-self produce on the earth his reflection, and only through this reaction ray back again his ego, and then he would say: “There below is my sign.” It was not intended that man should carry round about with him his man of bones and his man of glands, etc. — still less that he should pronounce the grotesque verdict: “That is I.” It should have happened quite differently. Man should have lived in the environs of the earth planet, and sunk a sign and symbol into the earth in the flashing up of form in blood, and he should then have said to himself: “There I drive in my stake — my sign and my seal, which gives me the consciousness of my ego. For what I have become, in that I have passed through Saturn existence and through Sun and through Moon existence — with that I can hover here outside in the World-All. It is the ego I must now add; and the ego I perceive by inscribing myself in the earth below, so that I can always read in the flashing of the blood what I am.” We were, therefore, not originally intended to walk the earth in bodies of flesh and bone as we do, but to circle around the earth and make records, as it were, down below from which we might recognise and know that we are that — that we are an ego. Whoever overlooks this fact has no true knowledge of the nature of man.

Thanks for pointing this out, Cleric.
The quote alone remains difficult to relate to for me at first, but I will soon read the lecture cycle. Every little bit of understanding seems to require disproportionate effort right now, which means it will become easier soon.

[Federica]

re: physical-etheric bodies without the Fall - this post by Cleric was very illuminating for me.

I am struggling with that post:

Actually the physical body is not the source of evil but it has become what it is (and the whole environment) in the process of the Fall. In spiritual sense, the physical body can be thought of from the inner side, as the 'screen' of the senses and sensory-like imagination, as pure experiences, without looking for something 'behind' them. In another type of evolution, this physicality may have never reached the level of fragmentation that we witness. To use an analogy from the quantum world, it can probably be said that physical existence would live on the borderline, where it barely collapses to more complex particles, maybe just photons, physical light. I'm using these terms loosely. So the higher human parts - the etheric, astral and the "I" - would still experience the screen of imagination and senses but that screen would be more like a Cosmic mirror. Man would never succumb into the error that he's seeing external reality in that mirror (in the same sense that man today doesn't confuse the image in a mirror for some other world). Instead, he would slowly gain his own self-consciousness, by recognizing his own activity within the mirror - just as we now recognize ourselves in thoughts - and then he would be aware that everything he experiences in that mirror of physicality is reflecting the doings of all kinds of beings, just as he himself is one of these beings. The need for a picture of some external world would never emerge. The senses would not at all be used to look 'outside'. Actually we should think of the senses only through their inner experiences of tone, light, smell, taste, etc., without imagining some physical organs. These sensory experiences would reflect the spectrum of spiritual life. There's simply no 'outside' world - everything that explains reality is within the spiritual. The physical world is just a barely manifested inner experience of light and warmth, where Cosmic life projects its image.

Through the Fall, man becomes tempted to dive into the mirror images themselves. This is the moment in Genesis where it's said for Adam and Eve "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked". This signifies the moment where human beings begin to experience the images on the mirror screen as things in themselves, they no longer understand them as reflections of the Spirit.

...the borderline? I thought there was no "borderline"...
...particles "more complex" than what?


How would the higher bodies experience the screen of the senses without sense organs? only as imaginative experience?
Why is physical light "less fragmented"? How to perceive it without physical eyes...
I understand that the mirror of physicality could be grasped as a mirror of the spiritual, as the reflection of interconnected spiritual activity, but what would that experience of "physicality" consist of that is different from our current experience of it? Why would that be called physicality? If there is no picture of an external world to interpret, what makes that physicality a physicality, distinguished from an experience of the soul?

The question that arises for me (which confirms that I'm not getting it) is: If there would be no outside world, all reality explained spiritually... wouldn't it be more accurate to say: there would have been no physicality?

[AshvinP]

re: physical-etheric bodies without the Fall - this post by Cleric was very illuminating for me.

I am struggling with that post:

Actually the physical body is not the source of evil but it has become what it is (and the whole environment) in the process of the Fall. In spiritual sense, the physical body can be thought of from the inner side, as the 'screen' of the senses and sensory-like imagination, as pure experiences, without looking for something 'behind' them. In another type of evolution, this physicality may have never reached the level of fragmentation that we witness. To use an analogy from the quantum world, it can probably be said that physical existence would live on the borderline, where it barely collapses to more complex particles, maybe just photons, physical light. I'm using these terms loosely. So the higher human parts - the etheric, astral and the "I" - would still experience the screen of imagination and senses but that screen would be more like a Cosmic mirror. Man would never succumb into the error that he's seeing external reality in that mirror (in the same sense that man today doesn't confuse the image in a mirror for some other world). Instead, he would slowly gain his own self-consciousness, by recognizing his own activity within the mirror - just as we now recognize ourselves in thoughts - and then he would be aware that everything he experiences in that mirror of physicality is reflecting the doings of all kinds of beings, just as he himself is one of these beings. The need for a picture of some external world would never emerge. The senses would not at all be used to look 'outside'. Actually we should think of the senses only through their inner experiences of tone, light, smell, taste, etc., without imagining some physical organs. These sensory experiences would reflect the spectrum of spiritual life. There's simply no 'outside' world - everything that explains reality is within the spiritual. The physical world is just a barely manifested inner experience of light and warmth, where Cosmic life projects its image.

Through the Fall, man becomes tempted to dive into the mirror images themselves. This is the moment in Genesis where it's said for Adam and Eve "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked". This signifies the moment where human beings begin to experience the images on the mirror screen as things in themselves, they no longer understand them as reflections of the Spirit.

...the borderline? I thought there was no "borderline"...
...particles "more complex" than what?


How would the higher bodies experience the screen of the senses without sense organs? only as imaginative experience?
Why is physical light "less fragmented"? How to perceive it without physical eyes...
I understand that the mirror of physicality could be grasped as a mirror of the spiritual, as the reflection of interconnected spiritual activity, but what would that experience of "physicality" consist of that is different from our current experience of it? Why would that be called physicality? If there is no picture of an external world to interpret, what makes that physicality a physicality, distinguished from an experience of the soul?

The question that arises for me (which confirms that I'm not getting it) is: If there would be no outside world, all reality explained spiritually... wouldn't it be more accurate to say: there would have been no physicality?

Federica,

I'll just add a brief comment for now and perhaps Cleric will expand.

I think what you are saying is generally correct, if we define "physicality" to mean 'a state of mineralized consciousness by which we necessarily believe that we are experiencing an external world unrelated to our spiritual activity'. But then if we say, 'and hence there would be no physicality without this state', we aren't any closer to understanding the inner nature of the physical-sensory body that does exist for us today and which is undergoing a path of spiritualization.

Remember, even through the current physical body, we are perceiving a limited temporal aperture that reflects Cosmic constellations of ideal activity. So the question is how do we translate, in our thinking, our current phenomenal experience of a mineralized 'external world' into the underlying reality that is concealed by it? We want to unveil what is already the case for sensory existence but is obscured by the convolution of the Fall. Every 'body' has its corresponding spiritual archetype, its true inner nature, its true intended function in the depth hierarchy of spiritual intents.

That function generally relates to perceptually manifesting spiritual activity so it can become conscious of its weaving at ever-more integrated (holistic) levels of intents, approaching the Absolute. But perceptions don't only need to be mineralized and 'outer', just as our thought-perceptions are felt to be 'inner' testimonies of our activity and can become encompassing ideas/imaginations. Then they exist more at the 'borderline' of manifestation. We can have the experience of colors, sounds, etc. that are not attached to any objects but weave freely as more perfect reflections of the spiritual activity that is animating them. It's interesting to consider how we normally feel like the inner life is flattened and the outer perceptual world is extended infinitely in all directions. Imagine a reversal of that situation - the inner life is infinitely deep (in temporal sense) and the sensory screen is 2D, yet its content is rich with living feeling and ideal meaning that speaks to our ongoing role in the Cosmic symphony of evolution.

Also, I would say we should distinguish between 'sense organs' and 'physical organs'. We can understand everything, even our thinking activity, as a sense organ (it senses ideal meaning). Yet some of these sense organs have already reached the culmination of their development and are therefore experienced as 'physical organs' that currently provide the most support for our self-reflective activity, which again are only felt as mineralized spatial structures due to the Fall. Over the course of evolution, the higher (more integrated) sense organs will unfold and provide the support for our self-reflective activity. These evolutionary stages can already be glimpsed now through modern initiation.

[Cleric K]

...the borderline? I thought there was no "borderline"...
...particles "more complex" than what?


How would the higher bodies experience the screen of the senses without sense organs? only as imaginative experience?
Why is physical light "less fragmented"? How to perceive it without physical eyes...
I understand that the mirror of physicality could be grasped as a mirror of the spiritual, as the reflection of interconnected spiritual activity, but what would that experience of "physicality" consist of that is different from our current experience of it? Why would that be called physicality? If there is no picture of an external world to interpret, what makes that physicality a physicality, distinguished from an experience of the soul?

The question that arises for me (which confirms that I'm not getting it) is: If there would be no outside world, all reality explained spiritually... wouldn't it be more accurate to say: there would have been no physicality?

I try to address some of these questions in the coming essays (BTW I haven't yet posted the next part because I keep rewriting parts of it) So it will be difficult to give a satisfactory answer without basically writing a whole essay.

Nevertheless, some intuition can be gained by returning to the fundamentals. Remember: fundamentally our experience is always some totality of qualia going through metamorphosis and imbued with intuition (e.g. the Taylor series).

Imagine a condition of existence where all that we know is an inner qualitative space. It's as if colors are spread out and superimposed - tones, warmth, and so on too. However, imagine all these qualia are not simply statically present and changing relations but in a way they continually recede from us, as we have tried to picture in many ways, for example by the IFS iterations or even simple video feedback:



Of course, we should grasp this not in a literal visual sense but as a feeling. The receding is actually the continuous implosion of memory. So we have to imagine that we not only encompass qualia frame by frame, but our frames of existence implode in such a way, as if our consciousness tries to grow into a new frame that encompasses and integrates into a unity everything experienced so far.

Notice in the gif above how the movement of the hand recedes towards the infinite depth of the feedback tunnel. This is more or less how we feel our thoughts to recede when we experience them meditatively. Now imagine that we try to follow qualia as they sink in such a way. Of course, qualia don't literally sink in some exotic depth dimension, just like the hand on the TV above doesn't sink in space. So if we try to conceive of this limit that the sinking qualia asymptotically reaches as it recedes, we arrive at something that we can call physicality.

This may sound puzzling. I don't remember if it's in GA13 or somewhere else but RS emphasizes that we shouldn't confuse physicality and minerality. For example, ancient Saturn also goes through a physical stage, although it can barely be compared to what we conceive as a physical world today. So to have intuition of physicality we need to picture a stage of existence in which we can follow qualia as continually receding and becoming embedded in the phenomenal panorama. This doesn't mean that this panorama looks like a perception of an outer World. No, it's simply a configuration of qualia in inner space. Yet, the panorama has a quality of objectivity, it is the effects of spiritual deeds that are now embedded in the totality and continue to recede. What makes it objective is not some quality of solidity but simply the fact that we recognize the effects of our past deeds as embedded in it.

Now remember that our perspective of qualia implosion is not the result only of our own spiritual activity. There are other contextual IFS Ls, deeper levels of the intuitive minds who also take part. Imagine that the constellation of these minds assumes such a configuration that in our qualitative space, just like the IFS attracts the implosion in certain patterns, so for example tactile qualia are attracted in one pattern within inner space, color in another, etc. Put aside the idea of an external physical world for a moment. For simplicity, imagine only some tactile qualia. Imagine that it fills the whole infinite inner space completely uniformly. Now imagine that this inner space differentiates. The tactile qualia are diminished everywhere except in the places where you feel your head, torso, limbs. This is what I mean by qualia pattern.

This is of course all very simplified but it tries to point attention to the fact that our experiences of existence can be conceived in such a way - as if by blotting out the uniformly spread and superimposed qualia in specific ways.

Thus, physicality doesn't refer to an external physical world and having a rigid body form. As we saw, physicality can be thought of as the process of objectifying our inner flow, as it implodes and sinks into the overall qualitative panorama. Whether these imploding qualia are spread out (as on ancient Saturn) or they feel constrained (attracted) within a certain configuration, is a different thing.

Now the fact that we describe things from a single perspective doesn't mean that there aren't other valid perspectives within the World totality. Every differentiation of one perspective is complemented by infinite other perspectives, just like the existence of a single number automatically implies the existence of infinite other numbers that complement it on the number axis. For this reason, every perspective is implicitly embedded in a World.

Why do I say this? Imagine the computer screen. By tweaking the pixels one by one we can produce any conceivable image that can be displayed. Analogously, if we imagine the uniform qualitative space, we can tweak the 'qualia pixels' and produce a state that feels human - color and sound pixels in the head area, tactile pixels in the limbs, and so on. But such a state cannot emerge in such an arbitrary way. It needs to be complemented from all sides by the World's totality. By 'side' I don't mean spatially. What is blotted out from one perspective may be part of another and they are all superimposed as it were. For this reason, the color qualia pixels in our head area are not arbitrary. They have some relation with other perspectives that are blotted out from our own.

The visual picture of the external world, which is simply a specific configuration of the color qualia pixels in our inner head space is Maya. It's a secondary interpretation of the color pixels.

I know that this is a lot to take in a few paragraphs but focus on the two essential ideas here:
1/ physicality as the sense of qualia receding and embedding in inner space. This happens also in highly spiritual states, except that there it doesn't feel to such a severe extent as something within which our existence is enmeshed.
2/ physicality can be 'filtered' in specific ways through the complicated contextual interference of the Cosmic minds (Ls). This can feel as an inner Earthly human configuration with its complementing World.

[Federica]

...the borderline? I thought there was no "borderline"...
...particles "more complex" than what?


How would the higher bodies experience the screen of the senses without sense organs? only as imaginative experience?
Why is physical light "less fragmented"? How to perceive it without physical eyes...
I understand that the mirror of physicality could be grasped as a mirror of the spiritual, as the reflection of interconnected spiritual activity, but what would that experience of "physicality" consist of that is different from our current experience of it? Why would that be called physicality? If there is no picture of an external world to interpret, what makes that physicality a physicality, distinguished from an experience of the soul?

The question that arises for me (which confirms that I'm not getting it) is: If there would be no outside world, all reality explained spiritually... wouldn't it be more accurate to say: there would have been no physicality?

I try to address some of these questions in the coming essays (BTW I haven't yet posted the next part because I keep rewriting parts of it) So it will be difficult to give a satisfactory answer without basically writing a whole essay.

Nevertheless, some intuition can be gained by returning to the fundamentals. Remember: fundamentally our experience is always some totality of qualia going through metamorphosis and imbued with intuition (e.g. the Taylor series).

Imagine a condition of existence where all that we know is an inner qualitative space. It's as if colors are spread out and superimposed - tones, warmth, and so on too. However, imagine all these qualia are not simply statically present and changing relations but in a way they continually recede from us, as we have tried to picture in many ways, for example by the IFS iterations or even simple video feedback:



Of course, we should grasp this not in a literal visual sense but as a feeling. The receding is actually the continuous implosion of memory. So we have to imagine that we not only encompass qualia frame by frame, but our frames of existence implode in such a way, as if our consciousness tries to grow into a new frame that encompasses and integrates into a unity everything experienced so far.

Notice in the gif above how the movement of the hand recedes towards the infinite depth of the feedback tunnel. This is more or less how we feel our thoughts to recede when we experience them meditatively. Now imagine that we try to follow qualia as they sink in such a way. Of course, qualia don't literally sink in some exotic depth dimension, just like the hand on the TV above doesn't sink in space. So if we try to conceive of this limit that the sinking qualia asymptotically reaches as it recedes, we arrive at something that we can call physicality.

This may sound puzzling. I don't remember if it's in GA13 or somewhere else but RS emphasizes that we shouldn't confuse physicality and minerality. For example, ancient Saturn also goes through a physical stage, although it can barely be compared to what we conceive as a physical world today. So to have intuition of physicality we need to picture a stage of existence in which we can follow qualia as continually receding and becoming embedded in the phenomenal panorama. This doesn't mean that this panorama looks like a perception of an outer World. No, it's simply a configuration of qualia in inner space. Yet, the panorama has a quality of objectivity, it is the effects of spiritual deeds that are now embedded in the totality and continue to recede. What makes it objective is not some quality of solidity but simply the fact that we recognize the effects of our past deeds as embedded in it.

Now remember that our perspective of qualia implosion is not the result only of our own spiritual activity. There are other contextual IFS Ls, deeper levels of the intuitive minds who also take part. Imagine that the constellation of these minds assumes such a configuration that in our qualitative space, just like the IFS attracts the implosion in certain patterns, so for example tactile qualia are attracted in one pattern within inner space, color in another, etc. Put aside the idea of an external physical world for a moment. For simplicity, imagine only some tactile qualia. Imagine that it fills the whole infinite inner space completely uniformly. Now imagine that this inner space differentiates. The tactile qualia are diminished everywhere except in the places where you feel your head, torso, limbs. This is what I mean by qualia pattern.

This is of course all very simplified but it tries to point attention to the fact that our experiences of existence can be conceived in such a way - as if by blotting out the uniformly spread and superimposed qualia in specific ways.

Thus, physicality doesn't refer to an external physical world and having a rigid body form. As we saw, physicality can be thought of as the process of objectifying our inner flow, as it implodes and sinks into the overall qualitative panorama. Whether these imploding qualia are spread out (as on ancient Saturn) or they feel constrained (attracted) within a certain configuration, is a different thing.

Now the fact that we describe things from a single perspective doesn't mean that there aren't other valid perspectives within the World totality. Every differentiation of one perspective is complemented by infinite other perspectives, just like the existence of a single number automatically implies the existence of infinite other numbers that complement it on the number axis. For this reason, every perspective is implicitly embedded in a World.

Why do I say this? Imagine the computer screen. By tweaking the pixels one by one we can produce any conceivable image that can be displayed. Analogously, if we imagine the uniform qualitative space, we can tweak the 'qualia pixels' and produce a state that feels human - color and sound pixels in the head area, tactile pixels in the limbs, and so on. But such a state cannot emerge in such an arbitrary way. It needs to be complemented from all sides by the World's totality. By 'side' I don't mean spatially. What is blotted out from one perspective may be part of another and they are all superimposed as it were. For this reason, the color qualia pixels in our head area are not arbitrary. They have some relation with other perspectives that are blotted out from our own.

The visual picture of the external world, which is simply a specific configuration of the color qualia pixels in our inner head space is Maya. It's a secondary interpretation of the color pixels.

I know that this is a lot to take in a few paragraphs but focus on the two essential ideas here:
1/ physicality as the sense of qualia receding and embedding in inner space. This happens also in highly spiritual states, except that there it doesn't feel to such a severe extent as something within which our existence is enmeshed.
2/ physicality can be 'filtered' in specific ways through the complicated contextual interference of the Cosmic minds (Ls). This can feel as an inner Earthly human configuration with its complementing World.

Thank you Cleric.
I have to admit, I'm not able to distinguish physicality as you describe it here from the rest of spiritual experience. It seems to me that objectivity is the essence of phenomenology itself, the quality one wishes to find in all things spiritual. I don't see the difference between the image of the waterfall and this receding character. Even less, am I able to grasp the common element between physicality as described here and physicality in the common sense. Not to say that I don't highly appreciate your attempts to communicate these ideas. I think I have to focus on patience and persistence now, lest the thing I'll see receding is my ability to approach all of these ideas altogether

What did Steiner really mean when he said that any normal person (paraphrased) is able to understand these things...

[Cleric K]

Thank you Cleric.
I have to admit, I'm not able to distinguish physicality as you describe it here from the rest of spiritual experience. It seems to me that objectivity is the essence of phenomenology itself, the quality one wishes to find in all things spiritual. I don't see the difference between the image of the waterfall and this receding character. Even less, am I able to grasp the common element between physicality as described here and physicality in the common sense. Not to say that I don't highly appreciate your attempts to communicate these ideas. I think I have to focus on patience and persistence now, lest the thing I'll see receding is my ability to approach all of these ideas altogether

What did Steiner really mean when he said that any normal person (paraphrased) is able to understand these things...

Remember that many of the things we're talking about are part of the given experience, and 'not getting it' often comes from expecting something else.

For example, you can try to experience the difference between physical sensations (for example, scratching your hand) and then the memory image of the sensation. We can of course generalize everything as a 'spiritual experience' but the differentiation matters. There's something to the sensory perceptions (even though they are of similar qualia to the corresponding memory images) that gives them mysterious 'gravity'. When you look at a colored surface you can imagine another color on top of it, yet the sensory color outweighs it. Don't be in hurry to arrive at some intellectual conclusion. Just quietly investigate the experiences as if you are gathering experimental material that will be used later. It doesn't matter if at the time of experimentation, nothing clicks.

I think you had similar trouble before with the differentiation of will. Then you had some insight when you thought about the difference between imagining getting out of bed in the morning and actually doing it. Something very similar needs to be felt in relation to the difference between sensory perceptions and images.

[Federica]

re: physical-etheric bodies without the Fall - this post by Cleric was very illuminating for me.

I am struggling with that post:

Actually the physical body is not the source of evil but it has become what it is (and the whole environment) in the process of the Fall. In spiritual sense, the physical body can be thought of from the inner side, as the 'screen' of the senses and sensory-like imagination, as pure experiences, without looking for something 'behind' them. In another type of evolution, this physicality may have never reached the level of fragmentation that we witness. To use an analogy from the quantum world, it can probably be said that physical existence would live on the borderline, where it barely collapses to more complex particles, maybe just photons, physical light. I'm using these terms loosely. So the higher human parts - the etheric, astral and the "I" - would still experience the screen of imagination and senses but that screen would be more like a Cosmic mirror. Man would never succumb into the error that he's seeing external reality in that mirror (in the same sense that man today doesn't confuse the image in a mirror for some other world). Instead, he would slowly gain his own self-consciousness, by recognizing his own activity within the mirror - just as we now recognize ourselves in thoughts - and then he would be aware that everything he experiences in that mirror of physicality is reflecting the doings of all kinds of beings, just as he himself is one of these beings. The need for a picture of some external world would never emerge. The senses would not at all be used to look 'outside'. Actually we should think of the senses only through their inner experiences of tone, light, smell, taste, etc., without imagining some physical organs. These sensory experiences would reflect the spectrum of spiritual life. There's simply no 'outside' world - everything that explains reality is within the spiritual. The physical world is just a barely manifested inner experience of light and warmth, where Cosmic life projects its image.

Through the Fall, man becomes tempted to dive into the mirror images themselves. This is the moment in Genesis where it's said for Adam and Eve "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked". This signifies the moment where human beings begin to experience the images on the mirror screen as things in themselves, they no longer understand them as reflections of the Spirit.

...the borderline? I thought there was no "borderline"...
...particles "more complex" than what?


How would the higher bodies experience the screen of the senses without sense organs? only as imaginative experience?
Why is physical light "less fragmented"? How to perceive it without physical eyes...
I understand that the mirror of physicality could be grasped as a mirror of the spiritual, as the reflection of interconnected spiritual activity, but what would that experience of "physicality" consist of that is different from our current experience of it? Why would that be called physicality? If there is no picture of an external world to interpret, what makes that physicality a physicality, distinguished from an experience of the soul?

The question that arises for me (which confirms that I'm not getting it) is: If there would be no outside world, all reality explained spiritually... wouldn't it be more accurate to say: there would have been no physicality?

Federica,

I'll just add a brief comment for now and perhaps Cleric will expand.

I think what you are saying is generally correct, if we define "physicality" to mean 'a state of mineralized consciousness by which we necessarily believe that we are experiencing an external world unrelated to our spiritual activity'. But then if we say, 'and hence there would be no physicality without this state', we aren't any closer to understanding the inner nature of the physical-sensory body that does exist for us today and which is undergoing a path of spiritualization.

Remember, even through the current physical body, we are perceiving a limited temporal aperture that reflects Cosmic constellations of ideal activity. So the question is how do we translate, in our thinking, our current phenomenal experience of a mineralized 'external world' into the underlying reality that is concealed by it? We want to unveil what is already the case for sensory existence but is obscured by the convolution of the Fall. Every 'body' has its corresponding spiritual archetype, its true inner nature, its true intended function in the depth hierarchy of spiritual intents.

That function generally relates to perceptually manifesting spiritual activity so it can become conscious of its weaving at ever-more integrated (holistic) levels of intents, approaching the Absolute. But perceptions don't only need to be mineralized and 'outer', just as our thought-perceptions are felt to be 'inner' testimonies of our activity and can become encompassing ideas/imaginations. Then they exist more at the 'borderline' of manifestation. We can have the experience of colors, sounds, etc. that are not attached to any objects but weave freely as more perfect reflections of the spiritual activity that is animating them. It's interesting to consider how we normally feel like the inner life is flattened and the outer perceptual world is extended infinitely in all directions. Imagine a reversal of that situation - the inner life is infinitely deep (in temporal sense) and the sensory screen is 2D, yet its content is rich with living feeling and ideal meaning that speaks to our ongoing role in the Cosmic symphony of evolution.

Also, I would say we should distinguish between 'sense organs' and 'physical organs'. We can understand everything, even our thinking activity, as a sense organ (it senses ideal meaning). Yet some of these sense organs have already reached the culmination of their development and are therefore experienced as 'physical organs' that currently provide the most support for our self-reflective activity, which again are only felt as mineralized spatial structures due to the Fall. Over the course of evolution, the higher (more integrated) sense organs will unfold and provide the support for our self-reflective activity. These evolutionary stages can already be glimpsed now through modern initiation.

Ashvin,

Here you seem to say that manifestation (not only mineral but all phenomena) equals being conscious, and we should understand physicality as that??
Are you saying that there is for example a true and a fake astral body, the true being the truly-true astral and the fake being the physical astral? And the same for the etheric and physical?
Does then physical mean whatever level of (self)-knowledge one might have reached?

So the question is how do we translate, in our thinking, our current phenomenal experience of a mineralized 'external world' into the underlying reality that is concealed by it? We want to unveil what is already the case for sensory existence but is obscured by the convolution of the Fall. Every 'body' has its corresponding spiritual archetype, its true inner nature, its true intended function in the depth hierarchy of spiritual intents.

That function generally relates to perceptually manifesting spiritual activity so it can become conscious of its weaving at ever-more integrated (holistic) levels of intents, approaching the Absolute. But perceptions don't only need to be mineralized and 'outer', just as our thought-perceptions are felt to be 'inner' testimonies of our activity and can become encompassing ideas/imaginations.