Essay: Spiritual Retracing - Principle Overview (Part I)

[Federica]

...As Murch says, “a complex vortex of decision making is set up, a logical but unpredictable chain of ifs and thens.” Yet somehow this steady improvisation finally leads—though not always, there’s the tension—to a final answer everyone can agree with, despite the odds.

At a very basic level, I don't understand how the negative game as described here doesn't always lead to a convergence of everyone's thoughts on one final object that does satisfy all questions and answers.

[AshvinP]

Again, I think this and many of the other aspects you expressed also deeply relate to cynicism with the Christ impulse. I'm not using that to mean synonymous with seeking the Good, but rather the specific way it has manifested in the course of the last 2,000 years through Western civilization. This partial manifestation of the Christ impulse is not inherently good, it can also become extremely one-sided and an obstacle to higher development, for ex. for those souls who remain chained to ecclesiastical traditions and dogmas, or who adopt a 'slave morality' and become quite resigned and resentful in the face of worldly happenings. It can also be expressed pathologically in rigid hierarchies where all sorts of corruption are justified in the name of 'religious ideals'.


Yet I also see the resistance from that one-sidedness as more easily navigated on the inner path than its opposite, which is expressed often in the form of cynicism toward the hierarchical structure of Western civilization and the soul forces of admiration, reverence, and devotion to the wisdom and examples of those who may stand at a higher stage of development than oneself. This inner stance simply dreads the prospect that others have already tread further on a path of evolutionary development than we have and therefore have something to teach us, even if it is patently obvious from the facts and healthy reasoning, and even if the teaching is how we ourselves can be raised to higher stages of understanding and thereby overcome the disparities.

I’m not entirely clear how you intend the Christ impulse then. If you are speaking of the evolution of Western civilization as it has unfolded after the coming of Christ, to the present day, then the attitude of those who are disgusted by phenomenology is a part of it too, by the same token the conservative worldview is. Why would “individual agency and sovereignty, hierarchical structure, moral ideals, inner perfection“ that is, the values of conservatism, constitute the (“partial, not inherently good", but still) only manifestation of the Christ impulse?

Again, I think that these values you mention are only a partial manifestation of the Christ impulse, firstly because there can be ideology (as you describe) but also, secondly, because they don’t exhaust the spectrum of Western values emerging from the Christ impulse in historical sense. Invention is also part of it. By the way, agency is not an exclusive conservative value. You can't have a spirit invention without agency. The same applies to striving for inner perfection (and there would be more to say here). Of course, ideology and weakness can vice all that, but this is true for the entire spectrum of Western values.

In this context, what does cynicism for the Christ impulse mean? If you put exclusively the conservative values behind the impulse, well yes, the liberal impulse will have to be said to have cynicism for the Christ impulse, since it doesn’t focus on the values of tradition, and conservatism, turned to the past, but on those of progression. Safe that, as said, I don’t see why only one side of the two (in their elevated, archetypal meaning, not as ideologies) should alone deserve the quality of representative of Western values "as manifested in the course of the last 2,000 years through Western civilization".

The fact that resistance to living thinking is less present on the side of conservative ideology than it is on the side of liberal ideology seems logical to me, since conservative are less struck by spiritual loneliness, because they find some comfort and protection within the structure provided by authority. However, that this allows for less resistance is also just accidental (not grounded in affinity for the phenomenology), and doesn't grant higher probability of higher development. Just because authority is not resisted in conservative ideology as it is in liberal ideology doesn’t mean that the indications in your essays have better chances to be followed up in conservative circles.

The reason is that submission to authority, when accepted as part of “how the world works”, isn't per se of much help to exploring and applying the phenomenological indications. What counts is the ability to recognize and respect authority independently, through agency, not by ascription, titles or conformism to external status quo. And this independence and agency are not an exclusive prerogative of the conservative worldview. So I believe that the more easily navigated resistance on that side of the conservative spectrum is true, as such, but also a superficial indicator of inner potential, which doesn’t affect the real chances of higher development. These chances do not depend on political preferences.

Again, I think we can leave aside the liberal v. conservative categorization (which I admittedly employed first) for now and focus only on the phenomenological characteristics. In other words, I'm not trying to establish an encompassing theoretical model for what it means to be 'cynical of the Christ impulse', replete with categorical definitions for which political persuasions are cynical and which are not. I only want to explore the intuition of how the Christ impulse has manifested during this time and how, from what I can tell so far, the most fierce resistance to living self-knowledge comes from those who align themselves opposite many of those manifestations.

If we look at the development of Western civilization for most of the last 2,000 years, where obviously the Christ impulse has been most active so far, we see the characteristics of the hierarchical ordering of society, of submission to higher authorities within this hierarchy, of higher authorities serving the needs of the lower, of reverence and devotion for the personal and providential Divine, of redemption and forgiveness (as expressed in art, literature, etc.), of personal responsibility and individual freedom from collective identifications, and the role of logical thinking in exploring the foundations of reality. Of course, during the reformation, enlightenment, and so forth, the impulse manifested as the pursuit of individual freedom from many old hierarchical relations as well and identifications with religious customs. Although, even at the height of materialism in 19th century England, for ex., many of these relations and customs lived on and people just accepted them as part of the traditional order that should be respected, even if the spiritual basis for them was no longer believed.

To me, where there is great opposition to the inner path of self-knowledge, there is also a clear trend of taking a stance opposite to such manifestations, of being cynical of them in many ways. We could come up with countless examples on this forum alone. Would you agree with that? (again leaving aside how this does or does not fit with the liberal/conservative distinction in values)

[AshvinP]

...As Murch says, “a complex vortex of decision making is set up, a logical but unpredictable chain of ifs and thens.” Yet somehow this steady improvisation finally leads—though not always, there’s the tension—to a final answer everyone can agree with, despite the odds.

At a very basic level, I don't understand how the negative game as described here doesn't always lead to a convergence of everyone's thoughts on one final object that does satisfy all questions and answers.

I guess there is some slight chance that an object fitting the constraining parameters from the questions is not actually in the physical room.

[Federica]

Again, I think we can leave aside the liberal v. conservative categorization (which I admittedly employed first) for now and focus only on the phenomenological characteristics. In other words, I'm not trying to establish an encompassing theoretical model for what it means to be 'cynical of the Christ impulse', replete with categorical definitions for which political persuasions are cynical and which are not. I only want to explore the intuition of how the Christ impulse has manifested during this time and how, from what I can tell so far, the most fierce resistance to living self-knowledge comes from those who align themselves opposite many of those manifestations.

If we look at the development of Western civilization for most of the last 2,000 years, where obviously the Christ impulse has been most active so far, we see the characteristics of the hierarchical ordering of society, of submission to higher authorities within this hierarchy, of higher authorities serving the needs of the lower, of reverence and devotion for the personal and providential Divine, of redemption and forgiveness (as expressed in art, literature, etc.), of personal responsibility and individual freedom from collective identifications, and the role of logical thinking in exploring the foundations of reality. Of course, during the reformation, enlightenment, and so forth, the impulse manifested as the pursuit of individual freedom from many old hierarchical relations as well and identifications with religious customs. Although, even at the height of materialism in 19th century England, for ex., many of these relations and customs lived on and people just accepted them as part of the traditional order that should be respected, even if the spiritual basis for them was no longer believed.

To me, where there is great opposition to the inner path of self-knowledge, there is also a clear trend of taking a stance opposite to such manifestations, of being cynical of them in many ways. We could come up with countless examples on this forum alone. Would you agree with that? (again leaving aside how this does or does not fit with the liberal/conservative distinction in values)

Well, I don't entirely agree with your description of what we see during most of the last 2000 years, for example that there's been a consistent impulse of "higher authorities serving the needs of the lower"
There have been disruptions at various junctures, and revolutions, but they are smeared out in your reading. Even if we look at things from the perspective of "the people", I am not sure a continuity of submission to traditional order can be identified as a red thread of this epoch, where "people just accepted". So when you speak of "taking a stance opposite to such manifestations" I struggle to see the unity you see, and what would that stance consist of, opposite to what manifestations, other than from the perspective of the current political spectrum that you want to leave behind, but seem to implicitly continue to hint to. Moreover general submission to authority and hierarchy was there before the coming of Chirst. How can the Christ impulse be condensed in that way, be read in that feature?

That you refer to this "taking a stance" only by contrast, in negative terms, in contrast to an impulse that you see as obvious and unitary, and framed by Christ, and that you define it as the constant and generalized acceptance of hierarchical authority through the last 2000 years, is confusing to me, because I don't see this constant acceptance. I don't see that, when it has been there, it's been 'thanks' to Christ, and therefore, even less, do I see what this "stance" you speak of really consist of (again, besides its characterization in terms of present-day liberal impulse). Do you mean that a French Revolutionary would have had a lesser chance than a man of the old regime to be open to the phenomenology of spiritual activity? That rebellion against external oppression and hierarchies is a bad omen for higher development? Take someone who supported the fall of the Ceausescu regime, or any similar one, are you saying there is a chance they would be disgusted by higher cognition as well? What about Joan of Arc? I don't get it.

[AshvinP]

Again, I think we can leave aside the liberal v. conservative categorization (which I admittedly employed first) for now and focus only on the phenomenological characteristics. In other words, I'm not trying to establish an encompassing theoretical model for what it means to be 'cynical of the Christ impulse', replete with categorical definitions for which political persuasions are cynical and which are not. I only want to explore the intuition of how the Christ impulse has manifested during this time and how, from what I can tell so far, the most fierce resistance to living self-knowledge comes from those who align themselves opposite many of those manifestations.

If we look at the development of Western civilization for most of the last 2,000 years, where obviously the Christ impulse has been most active so far, we see the characteristics of the hierarchical ordering of society, of submission to higher authorities within this hierarchy, of higher authorities serving the needs of the lower, of reverence and devotion for the personal and providential Divine, of redemption and forgiveness (as expressed in art, literature, etc.), of personal responsibility and individual freedom from collective identifications, and the role of logical thinking in exploring the foundations of reality. Of course, during the reformation, enlightenment, and so forth, the impulse manifested as the pursuit of individual freedom from many old hierarchical relations as well and identifications with religious customs. Although, even at the height of materialism in 19th century England, for ex., many of these relations and customs lived on and people just accepted them as part of the traditional order that should be respected, even if the spiritual basis for them was no longer believed.

To me, where there is great opposition to the inner path of self-knowledge, there is also a clear trend of taking a stance opposite to such manifestations, of being cynical of them in many ways. We could come up with countless examples on this forum alone. Would you agree with that? (again leaving aside how this does or does not fit with the liberal/conservative distinction in values)

Well, I don't entirely agree with your description of what we see during most of the last 2000 years, for example that there's been a consistent impulse of "higher authorities serving the needs of the lower"
There have been disruptions at various junctures, and revolutions, but they are smeared out in your reading. Even if we look at things from the perspective of "the people", I am not sure a continuity of submission to traditional order can be identified as a red thread of this epoch, where "people just accepted". So when you speak of "taking a stance opposite to such manifestations" I struggle to see the unity you see, and what would that stance consist of, opposite to what manifestations, other than from the perspective of the current political spectrum that you want to leave behind, but seem to implicitly continue to hint to. Moreover general submission to authority and hierarchy was there before the coming of Chirst. How can the Christ impulse be condensed in that way, be read in that feature?

That you refer to this "taking a stance" only by contrast, in negative terms, in contrast to an impulse that you see as obvious and unitary, and framed by Christ, and that you define it as the constant and generalized acceptance of hierarchical authority through the last 2000 years, is confusing to me, because I don't see this constant acceptance. I don't see that, when it has been there, it's been 'thanks' to Christ, and therefore, even less, do I see what this "stance" you speak of really consist of (again, besides its characterization in terms of present-day liberal impulse). Do you mean that a French Revolutionary would have had a lesser chance than a man of the old regime to be open to the phenomenology of spiritual activity? That rebellion against external oppression and hierarchies is a bad omen for higher development? Take someone who supported the fall of the Ceausescu regime, or any similar one, are you saying there is a chance they would be disgusted by higher cognition as well? What about Joan of Arc? I don't get it.

Ok, let's approach this from the other direction. Your post listed a few things that stood out to you as characteristic of those who we have encountered that strongly resist lending a serious ear to the living thinking path of modern esotericism:

- Galactic loneliness
- Hard dissociative boundary
- Longing for camaraderie and gregariousness
- A resistance to being taught, instructed, equipped in existential matters
- A preference to feel 'side by side' with others in spiritual development
- A preference to avoid 'cold objective logic' and discuss personal struggles, achievements, feelings, etc.
- A preference to find commonalities no matter the differences pointed to by logical reasoning

You also pointed out how much of the above can overlap with the current liberal spectrum of political ideology, which I agree with, but we can leave that aside for now.

Given those characteristics, do you see any common throughline in terms of spiritual evolution, the archetypal polar influences that have shaped World cultures over the millennia?

[lorenzop]

Lorenzo, imagine someone is fully initiated into the modern mystery such that he is not only exploring the structure of spiritual reality in his daytime thinking, but is in a fully conscious state every night during sleep from whence he can artistically contribute the very 'lines of force' along which the Earthly destiny of many beings unfolds. I know this is probably a highly off-putting thing to imagine for you, but just imagine it for a second. Do you think this individuality would also be on Facebook, X, YouTube, etc. trying to build a reputation, selling subscriptions and books, making videos, trying to prove to you and Marco that higher cognitive realities exist? (btw I don't remember Marco ever questioning whether such realities exist, only indicating that he believed they are entirely discontinuous with what we experience as 'logical thinking').

This is just one of many questions that could be asked to try and highlight the flawed presuppositions in the questions you are asking, which are many. The only difficult part of developing intuitive thinking further and further is sacrificing these convenient assumptions, beliefs, and presuppositions about 'how reality works' and 'what it means to be successful'. Actually, there are many YT channels and Substack publications oriented around spiritual science, some of which have been shared here, but that should not be pursued to 'be successful', but rather out of sheer love for the truth and for others to participate in that truth. The higher intuitions have been shared here over and over again. The only question is whether you are standing in relation to them in the same way as the materialist stands in relation to the teachings of Ramana Maharishi, feeling the latter is simply delusional and has given up on the 'real world' and 'real life'.

I wasn’t thinking hawking t-shirts, but in general if one comes across a good thing, one wants to share it. I am not hearing of folks perceiving hierarchies of beings or intuitions re the future of climate change, and being a practical man, I am suspicious.

I was going to say you are hearing it already and link this post, but then I noticed you joined the forum on the same day it was written! So perhaps you never saw it, in which case you are in for a treat.

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.

There is much more and I hope you take some time to work through it. But, at the same time, if we were to present you with a dozen different first-person testimonies of people who have perceived angelic beings via higher cognition, would that make you suddenly interested in doing the hard phenomenological work to develop the faculties yourself? It wouldn't, and it shouldn't!

In fact, it would make most people even more suspicious and recalcitrant. How many people have seen the Virgin Mary over the centuries, while atheist skepticism only grows stronger? The real issue is not how many reports of extraordinary beings we amass, so that we can reflect on and interpret with the intellect, understandably feeling it is just imaginative speculation made to look like 'knowledge'. The issue is the very type of thinking with which we approach all of these topics. One person can read that linked post and find it profound, insightful, and inspiring, another person can read it and say, 'what's the big deal?' or not even realize it is speaking of 'perceiving hierarchies of beings'. How do you explain the difference? Is it that the few who find it insightful have fallen into a well of unsurpassed gullibility for the last few years? Have we fallen victim to a cult and choose to write endlessly about its ideas because we feel it brings us hope and promise, some sense of meaning and purpose to our lives? I am really curious about how you perceive us here on this forum in light of such posts.

I may not have been clear in this and other threads, I believe that a hierarchy of beings exist, such as angels, my position has been that the pursuit of these beings is not spiritual growth as these beings simply exist in the finite world as do all beings. More specifically 99.99% of people have bigger spiritual fish to fry than the pursuit of angels.
Regarding the quote from the distant past, about angels, who is making these claims and how did they acquire this knowledge.

[Federica]

Ok, let's approach this from the other direction. Your post listed a few things that stood out to you as characteristic of those who we have encountered that strongly resist lending a serious ear to the living thinking path of modern esotericism:

- Galactic loneliness
- Hard dissociative boundary
- Longing for camaraderie and gregariousness
- A resistance to being taught, instructed, equipped in existential matters
- A preference to feel 'side by side' with others in spiritual development
- A preference to avoid 'cold objective logic' and discuss personal struggles, achievements, feelings, etc.
- A preference to find commonalities no matter the differences pointed to by logical reasoning

You also pointed out how much of the above can overlap with the current liberal spectrum of political ideology, which I agree with, but we can leave that aside for now.

Given those characteristics, do you see any common throughline in terms of spiritual evolution, the archetypal polar influences that have shaped World cultures over the millennia?

Yes, Ashvin, I do see a throughline. In short: since the birth of the third-person perspective, at about the midpoint of the past millennium, science and philosophy have more and more predominantly evolved into dualistic conceptions. Initially the dualism between spirit and perception was assumed, like in Newton and Kant, and Kant's philosophy can perhaps ungenerously be described like a journalistic report on the event of the split of knowledge, or a third-person report on the raise of the third-person perspective. Later, and down to our present day, dualism has become predominantly unassumed.

Among the unassumed dualists, we have: the physicalist - who, while waiting to discover how the brain makes thoughts, keeps squatting in their supersensible constitution; the modern idealist - who, while waiting to triumph over the physicalist, keeps squatting in the latter’s epistemology and models; and the non-dualist/neo-buddhist/neo-Advaita - who, while on a fast track to spirit, waiting for their thoughts to be suppressed, keeps spending them on both physicalist and idealist mind circuits. And here’s the throughline: the spiritual loneliness I was talking about is typical of all these three families of unassumed dualists, precisely because they wish and speak of unity, but they live and act in duality.

With that said, I wonder what you think about the reasoning in the rest of my comment

[AshvinP]

Ok, let's approach this from the other direction. Your post listed a few things that stood out to you as characteristic of those who we have encountered that strongly resist lending a serious ear to the living thinking path of modern esotericism:

- Galactic loneliness
- Hard dissociative boundary
- Longing for camaraderie and gregariousness
- A resistance to being taught, instructed, equipped in existential matters
- A preference to feel 'side by side' with others in spiritual development
- A preference to avoid 'cold objective logic' and discuss personal struggles, achievements, feelings, etc.
- A preference to find commonalities no matter the differences pointed to by logical reasoning

You also pointed out how much of the above can overlap with the current liberal spectrum of political ideology, which I agree with, but we can leave that aside for now.

Given those characteristics, do you see any common throughline in terms of spiritual evolution, the archetypal polar influences that have shaped World cultures over the millennia?

Yes, Ashvin, I do see a throughline. In short: since the birth of the third-person perspective, at about the midpoint of the past millennium, science and philosophy have more and more predominantly evolved into dualistic conceptions. Initially the dualism between spirit and perception was assumed, like in Newton and Kant, and Kant's philosophy can perhaps ungenerously be described like a journalistic report on the event of the split of knowledge, or a third-person report on the raise of the third-person perspective. Later, and down to our present day, dualism has become predominantly unassumed.

Among the unassumed dualists, we have: the physicalist - who, while waiting to discover how the brain makes thoughts, keeps squatting in their supersensible constitution; the modern idealist - who, while waiting to triumph over the physicalist, keeps squatting in the latter’s theories and models; and the non-dualist/neo-buddhist/neo-Advaita - who, while on a fast track to spirit, waiting for their thoughts to be suppressed, keeps spending them on both physicalist and idealist mind circuits. And here’s the throughline: the spiritual loneliness I was talking about is typical of all these three families of unassumed dualists, precisely because they wish and speak of unity, but they live and act in duality.

Yes, the galactic loneliness from the dualistic split is characteristic of practically everyone in modern times, which is why I wouldn't hone in on that particular broad factor for the differences in reactions that we most certainly see in these discussions. The rest of the ones you outlined seem more keyed in on the reactions we have witnessed here and elsewhere. Another one I would add is the tendency to engage the discussion for a while and try to point out the flaws in the emphasis on 'thinking' and related aspects of the path, whereas others simply ignore the comments or make a brief response and then disappear after losing interest.

I was wondering if you see any relation between these characteristics and the archetypal polar distinctions between, for ex., Southern-Northern, Eastern-Western, Buddha-Christ, Lu-Ahr, or anything similar? I'm now trying to approach this in an open-ended way, without presupposing the categories into which they should fit. Perhaps the 'Christ impulse' category was not the most appropriate, but my sense is that they fit into some constellation of more specific influences that we can trace.

With that said, I wonder what you think about the reasoning in the rest of my comment

I wasn't trying to debate the detailed history of the last 2,000 years, because I sense that will only provide fertile ground for more misunderstanding between us. Anything we write on that will look quite arbitrary to the other person in terms of what events and outlooks we are choosing to focus on when distilling the 'Christ impulse'. Perhaps we can return to that later.

[AshvinP]

I may not have been clear in this and other threads, I believe that a hierarchy of beings exist, such as angels, my position has been that the pursuit of these beings is not spiritual growth as these beings simply exist in the finite world as do all beings. More specifically 99.99% of people have bigger spiritual fish to fry than the pursuit of angels.
Regarding the quote from the distant past, about angels, who is making these claims and how did they acquire this knowledge.

It was Cleric, as the link clearly shows, and it was acquired via higher cognition, the basics of which he has outlined in many posts since the very beginning of this forum. Practically every early post speaks about it to some extent, which is why I would encourage you to revisit old ones or visit the ones you may have missed.

Do you see any problem whatsoever with assuming both humans and 'angels' are atomic bubbles that sometimes mess with each other in the 'finite world', but the latter has nothing to do with the very structure of our soul life? You don't have to believe they structure our soul life to at least understand the position. Could it perhaps be that these assumptions have something to do with blocking your understanding of the facts communicated from higher cognitive perception?

Also, it should be noted, that you first asked about why no one has perceived higher beings in the spiritual hierarchy. Now, when shown they have, you say those perceptions have nothing to do with spiritual growth. Ok, but that's simply your belief about the higher beings, whereas spiritual perception reveals they have everything to do with the expansion of consciousness into the depths of spiritual reality.

[Federica]

Ok, let's approach this from the other direction. Your post listed a few things that stood out to you as characteristic of those who we have encountered that strongly resist lending a serious ear to the living thinking path of modern esotericism:

- Galactic loneliness
- Hard dissociative boundary
- Longing for camaraderie and gregariousness
- A resistance to being taught, instructed, equipped in existential matters
- A preference to feel 'side by side' with others in spiritual development
- A preference to avoid 'cold objective logic' and discuss personal struggles, achievements, feelings, etc.
- A preference to find commonalities no matter the differences pointed to by logical reasoning

You also pointed out how much of the above can overlap with the current liberal spectrum of political ideology, which I agree with, but we can leave that aside for now.

Given those characteristics, do you see any common throughline in terms of spiritual evolution, the archetypal polar influences that have shaped World cultures over the millennia?

Yes, Ashvin, I do see a throughline. In short: since the birth of the third-person perspective, at about the midpoint of the past millennium, science and philosophy have more and more predominantly evolved into dualistic conceptions. Initially the dualism between spirit and perception was assumed, like in Newton and Kant, and Kant's philosophy can perhaps ungenerously be described like a journalistic report on the event of the split of knowledge, or a third-person report on the raise of the third-person perspective. Later, and down to our present day, dualism has become predominantly unassumed.

Among the unassumed dualists, we have: the physicalist - who, while waiting to discover how the brain makes thoughts, keeps squatting in their supersensible constitution; the modern idealist - who, while waiting to triumph over the physicalist, keeps squatting in the latter’s theories and models; and the non-dualist/neo-buddhist/neo-Advaita - who, while on a fast track to spirit, waiting for their thoughts to be suppressed, keeps spending them on both physicalist and idealist mind circuits. And here’s the throughline: the spiritual loneliness I was talking about is typical of all these three families of unassumed dualists, precisely because they wish and speak of unity, but they live and act in duality.

Yes, the galactic loneliness from the dualistic split is characteristic of practically everyone in modern times, which is why I wouldn't hone in on that particular broad factor for the differences in reactions that we most certainly see in these discussions. The rest of the ones you outlined seem more keyed in on the reactions we have witnessed here and elsewhere. Another one I would add is the tendency to engage the discussion for a while and try to point out the flaws in the emphasis on 'thinking' and related aspects of the path, whereas others simply ignore the comments or make a brief response and then disappear after losing interest.

I was wondering if you see any relation between these characteristics and the archetypal polar distinctions between, for ex., Southern-Northern, Eastern-Western, Buddha-Christ, Lu-Ahr, or anything similar? I'm now trying to approach this in an open-ended way, without presupposing the categories into which they should fit. Perhaps the 'Christ impulse' category was not the most appropriate, but my sense is that they fit into some constellation of more specific influences that we can trace.

Yes, I see the Ahrimanic-Luciferic forces, let's say the forces 'of fragmentation', operating in the background of these attitudes. These cause fear of the abyss, appeased with spiritual anesthesia and focus on matter, on one side, and/or 'aspirational pride' in one's divine nature, fed with the illusion of elevation, on the other. Entering the conscious experience of thinking interferes with both desires, therefore it is resisted. Living thinking would burn up the metastatic proliferations of the Ahrimanic dream, and burn down the glorious escape of the Luciferic dream. Since these forces are present in humanity at large, in all of us, it's a matter of how the individual is able to fight back by nurturing a humble connection of some sort with the divine, be it through deeds of artistic and loving nature, through a religious feeling, or else. In this sense, those who for example cultivate religious devotion, or poetry, or music, or love, or work as a sincere soul impulse (not as a convention) have an advantage since they are less exposed to the 'galactic loneliness', less pressed to defend a fragmented dreamscape, and so less opposed to your illustrations of living thinking, as you have experienced.

I may be wrong, but I don't see a direct significance of the archetypes East-West in determining the resistance we are discussing (other than their Luciferic and Ahrimanic correlations). Because in the current phase, the whole world seems to be leaning West in a sense, which is also why the Eastern-Luciferic type of fragmentation is less momentous, and less crucial in this epoch, hence less dynamic, and also less necessary, as it seems. I am not sure about that, but maybe those who are and will continue to fall for the Luciferic illusion - though they may seem less separate from the truth - run the risk of remaining side-tracked in a stagnant spiritual limbo, while most awakenings and the strongest realizations are likely to come from those who are presently captive in materialistic beliefs. They are the ones who are now taking the full tour, so to say, and will either end up lost forever, or take the big leap towards safety some time 'soon'.