Inner Space Stretching Part 6 (Final): Inner aspects of the flow

[Cleric]

Consciously bending the spacetime flow at deeper levels requires corresponding forms of inner activity and sacred attitude

If we return to our example with the spheres of potential centered around the bus, we should no longer naively see them only as filled with multiplied pictures of potential bodily happenings. It would be fully justified if we say that such pictures are only fantasies crystalizing at the horizon of condensation. But as we have seen, it is also possible to penetrate the completely real depth of these spheres by recognizing how the factors of our normally subconscious inner life filter and shape the incoming flow. In this light, our stretching exercise is obviously only ‘faking’ the deeper inner activity. Rotating an imaginary sphere, no matter how large, still manifests only as a mental image at the horizon of condensation. We can by no means rotate such an imagined sphere and expect that in this way we can augment something in the inert forces of our temperament, for example. Nevertheless, when these rotations are performed with the appropriate inner attitude, they already bring us in close vicinity to the scales of inner life where the corresponding forces of our inner activity can indeed be consciously taken hold of. This attitude is one of sacredness, prayer-like openness, and gratitude. This may seem like a completely made-up requirement but its validity becomes more and more obvious as our consciousness expands along the full spectrum of being. The fact that we can no longer see ourselves as a fully separate being that can stubbornly instill its own intents on the World flow, urges us to develop sensitivity and gentleness because the World flow that we come to know is a choir of many voices.

That’s why we said that the meditative resistance to the World flow is not an attempt of our lone ego to reshape the Cosmos according to its vain pretensions but the means to expand consciousness and gain intuitive orientation within the flow. There are things that we must reshape individually within our sphere, others that require our harmonized collective efforts, and still others that at present are beyond our human-scale flow-bending powers. Imagining that we can augment the latter would be like expecting that the rotation of the Earth around its axis or the Sun, should comply with our egoistical whims. Nevertheless, in meditation, we can resist even these Cosmic-scale intuitive curvatures – not in order to change them but to comprehend how they shape the intuitive contextuality of our existence and learn to lead our lives in harmony with them instead of stubbornly fighting them. The greater the scales that we can expand into and intimately know, the greater the need for humility, love, and self-sacrifice. This is evident from the fact that these greater intuitive spacetime curvatures contextualize the existential frames of many beings, and thus we can only comprehend them if we are willing to make the inner flows of other beings as important as ours and seek to see them in their constructive interference within the one World flow.

Approaching the inner reality of the above and the below

So far we’ve been speaking primarily of the incoming flow, while it seems that the compressing images of our frames of existence have no special significance since they only portray the past. Even though this is a convenient picture for our analyzing intellect, it would be misleading. The incoming macro and the compressing micro-flow are intrinsically related. As a matter of fact, we can separate them so leanly only for the intellect’s convenience. In particular, there’s no sharp geometric horizon for which we can say “Everything greater than this belongs to the incoming flow, everything smaller is the past compressing flow.” In reality, we can never conceive any one of them in isolation, just as we can’t have the faces of a coin in isolation. There’s large everywhere, just as there’s small everywhere. Thus the distinction between the flows is a qualitative one, that we grasp intuitively, and cannot be comfortably compartmentalized in a purely spatial way. This doesn’t mean that there’s no justification for speaking about above and below, encompassing and contained spheres, but we should always keep in mind that it is our deeper intuitive orientation within the flow of existence that we are expressing in this way.

The things that we speak of are not complicated. It’s not a matter of holding in our mind complex assemblies of philosophical mental images, but only of approaching the inner experiences that we are describing. And these experiences are accessible to any human being in our age. The problem is not that these experiences are remote and unverifiable but in that we are normally fully merged with them, thus we can’t recognize them. It’s really simple as long as we are willing to explore these inner realms instead of overintellectualizing and thus burying them under more and more complicated assemblies of mental Tetris pieces.

When we think of the incoming flow – as if we anticipate the condensation of our existential frames from all directions – we shouldn’t mechanically fill our imagination with pictures of potential future happenings but instead, try to feel here and now the contextuality of our existential flow. Something as simple as counting to ten can take us much farther than we are willing to imagine. If we can feel how the metamorphosing sounds of our inner voice do not pop up randomly but condense along the curvature of our intuitive intent, then we can easily feel also how our whole existential flow is shaped by such interleaved curvatures at different scales. We don’t need to fantasize these curvatures as perceptible objects in space but only try to feel how there are many factors that continuously steer our flow. Only a relatively small part of them are fully consciously determined, such as our intent to count. Yet this intent lasts only for a few seconds. Only for this short time span we feel to be the master of our mental flow. In the remaining time, our thoughts and actions are secretly steered by curvatures that we are barely conscious of. Yet, as we have seen, such consciousness is possible. It’s only that we need to reach into the corresponding scales of intuitive activity and musically cohere them along the full spectrum of spacetime scales, all the way to the physical kernel. We can already feel how transforming a desire or a tendency of our character requires deeper effort than mere thinking words, and how this would lead to a real bending of the condensation flow such that new kinds of existential frames would crystalize at our perceptual horizon. These are all real, tangible experiences that can be described, just like we are doing now. They remain abstract and speculative only as long as we try to picture them in intellectual mental images without ever ‘trying them on’. This is the exact same fallacy as imagining a rotating image of the Vitruvian Man instead of becoming that man in our imagination and rotate our full-scale imaginary hands.

When we think of the micro-scale sensations, instead of filling the spheres with mental images of neurons, atoms, waves, and so on, we can simply recognize how all these sensations only make sense because they are ingrained with the reverberating echoes of past experiences. For example, when we think in our inner voice we can hear the auditory mental replicas of bodily speech. As adults, most of our verbal constructs manifest quite effortlessly. We point our attention in a certain intuitive direction and a verbal description of what we dimly intuit simply flows out. However, if we contemplate the sounds of these thinking words we can recognize: “My voice can sound in this way only because of the innumerable repeated attempts to speak and think in speech.” And this is obvious. We were not born with the ability to speak and think verbally. The whole vocabulary and grammatical lawfulness of our language could only be absorbed from our environment. It is similar with our handwriting or playing a musical instrument. At a certain level of proficiency, we simply steer with our intuitive intents while our hands almost automatically break down the intuitions into sequences of motor movements. Yet these automatic movements didn’t just appear out of nowhere. When we look at our hand as it writes letter after letter we can feel “These movements remind me of all the innumerable attempts of writing throughout my life, which are now condensed into this skill. Without all this integrated intuition of past experiences, my intricate hand movements would be present in my consciousness as something completely miraculous and unexplainable.” The same holds also for purely mental skills, such as mathematical thinking.

It is obvious that we can’t separate the incoming and the receding flow. Every Tetris piece that condenses can only take form in relation to everything that has already been condensed. We could not think a single verbal thought unless our speaking habits were already there to accommodate the incoming intuitions and give them form. Similarly, our compressed skills and habits wouldn’t be there if at some point we were not trying to accommodate something completely new, as when we strive to learn to speak or ride a bicycle.

This returns us to our spacetime-warping metaphor. As John Wheeler famously said: “Spacetime tells matter (energy) how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.“ As long as we contemplate this statement only from our intellectual pedestal, we have two abstract mental images in our mind: one for “spacetime” and one for “matter/energy”. We then try to conceive how they are related and how this may eventually map to some facts about the ‘real’ universe outside our inner cognitive flow. If we are to move from abstract intellectual pictures to realities, we need to enter into the flow of reality and describe from within how it feels like. Not that we have ever been outside that flow but through the scientific and philosophical habits developed in the last few centuries, we pretend to be standing outside it (as some pure external observer) and contemplate floating mental images, whose true origin and place in the World flow we don’t recognize.

When we try to assume our concentric stance within the World flow, we discover that our intuitive intents are the livingly willed curvature of the spacetime flow (the intuitive backdrop of our conscious experience) which tells how the condensing inner phenomena should move (analogy with matter/energy). At the same time, however, our curving intents cannot be completely arbitrary. If we are to experience continuity of existence, the compressing kernel can be metamorphosed only incrementally. The World kernel grounds our intuitive spacetime flow and tells it how far it can creatively morph if we are not to lose the incremental continuity of existence. This is most readily observable with respect to the physical kernel, which can’t be arbitrarily reimagined but can only be gradually transformed. But it is also true for our purely mental and imaginative activity, which is still constrained by the accumulated palette of prior experiences.

If we completely let go and let ‘matter tell spacetime how to curve’, then our intuitive spacetime flow becomes completely formatted by the reverberating patterns ingrained in the kernel of accumulated past condensations. Conversely, if we, in our human condition, pridefully imagine that ‘spacetime tells matter how to move’ in an absolute and unidirectional way, we’ll soon be crushed by the backlash of the condensing World flow (which in a sense elastically protects the continuity of conscious existence). Thus we need a fine balance between activity and receptivity, and as said, initially this can be found in its purest form in our mentation. If this whole metaphor can’t come alive in the experience of our thinking activity (that is, the metaphor could be seen as an artistically appropriate way of depicting how our inner intuitive process feels like), everything else will sound like a mere fairytale. It is only from the point of concentrated intuitive activity, that the two great poles of existence can initiate their sacred dance and expand into a harmonious and meaningful symphony, instead of fighting each other and thus leading to a World flow exhibiting ever greater friction, decoherence and limitation. If we can’t discover how our intuitive flow tells the compressing mental images how to condense, and how prior condensations constrain the flow, we surely won’t find this as a reality anywhere else either.

Moral life on Earth is a constrained expression of flow-bending potential at the scale of Cosmic Creativity

It is inevitable that the incoming flow can initially be grasped only through that which we are already familiar with. In a sense, our compressed kernel serves as the ‘lowest common denominator’. It is for this reason that when we think of the more encompassing forms of inner activity, which can bend the spacetime flow at greater scales, initially we can only grasp them as far as they intersect with the images of our meso-scale bodily life. For example, when we awaken to our inner being, we realize that we have the inner freedom to support a lifelong curvature of our existential flow. This is what usually has been achieved in the ages by having a certain religious orientation in life. In today’s superficial age, we dimly steer through the consumption of condensing mental images, feelings, and sensations. There’s very little in our materialistic culture that can give us a greater-scale intuitive orientation within our flow. The genuine religions of the past have aimed to instill such curvatures into human destinies by inspiring them through scaled images of Divine spacetime curvatures of the World flow. Today we can approach this in a much more conscious way. Such a lifelong curvature can serve as our firm moral determination to always grow in consciousness of what is good and beautiful, and allow it to flow out through our will, thus striving for an individual flow that musically nests within the total World flow and as such, benefitting and ennobling it. This is not something that we set in place once and then leave on autopilot. We need constant vigilance to support that ideal curvature in the ‘now’. It is as if we have intended to count but this intention is spread over our whole life span and even beyond, and at any point of our daily life, no matter what kind of momentary Tetris pieces condense at our perceptual horizon, we can remember “I’m counting” – that is: “I don’t forget that I strive to always guide my flow in harmony with my freely intended lifelong curvature, such that at any point I can give a meaningful trajectory of my existential movie. In this way, even the smallest thoughts and acts can be experienced as meaningfully nested within a great musical contextuality.” This lifelong moral curvature is not something fixed but a high ideal striving for the ever-evolving intuition of what we are, how we are embedded in the World flow, what that World flow is doing on all scales, how our activity reverberates in it, and how we can creatively contribute to the total symphony. Thus, at the beginning this moral curvature that we support at the great spacetime scales can only be comprehended as far as it finds its reflection in the meso-scale images of bodily life – what we do, what we say, and so on. But as our intuition expands we gradually understand that concealed in these flow-bending moral forces are possibilities that in time can help humanity as a whole to artistically shape and steer the collectively harmonized spacetime flow in ways that presently are in the most literal sense unimaginable. This collective harmonization is not a formal agreement to follow the decrees of some utopic ideological system, but the result of our innermost beings finding each other within the Solar Cosmic Spheres of inner space, from whence the voice of conscience speaks.

The practical value of the Inner Space Stretching exercise

The ignition of our physical kernel and the stretching of inner space are not an end in themselves but only serve as the preparation of a fertile soil in which proper concentrative meditation can continue. Initially, they may require a lot of effort and may feel jittery and clumsy, but just like mastering a musical instrument, in time we’ll find out that we can perform the ignition of the physical kernel and the torsions through the spacetime scales, in one smooth and continuous inner act.

When we get distracted in meditation we can often sense how in reference to our glowing and expanded preparatory state, it is as if our inner movements have unnoticeably contracted in some region of bodily space and our thinking and imagination traverse only a very limited configuration of movement scales (usually dimly buzzing in head-scale mental images). In this way, we also realize how most of our daily life passes within such crooked inner postures. In such cases, we can quickly re-ignite and re-stretch our inner space with a few quick ‘strokes’ along the vortical scale and return to our main meditative effort. Granted we have mastered the described inner gestures, this skill proves useful in our daily life too, where we can quickly restore balance by performing for a few seconds these inner movements and thus quickly gain awareness of conflicting feelings and chaotic thoughts that can then be musically re-aligned with the grand curvatures of our high moral ideal.

Yet we should also be aware that these inner gestures should always be performed with a fresh impulse, as if we do them for the first. Otherwise, we may be surprised how quickly our human nature becomes habituated and then we don’t even notice how instead of stretching our imaginary arms and doing the movements, we only superficially remember how we did that previously and effectively stay enclosed in our bodily sphere while we contemplate a mental image of our past activity (the Vitruvian Man fallacy again).

Now we can retrace the steps so far.

1. We can start from the purely bodily experiences, how we have sensations, and how we will our movements.
2. We can gradually reduce the amplitude of movements and focus on the threshold where our willing intents are perceptible as a tingling glow in the physical kernel, yet without producing noticeable movement. Then we energize in this way our whole bodily space while we feel centered and naturally buoyant within this sphere of sensations.
3. Then we gradually recognize how in our imagination we can liberate a first-person ‘double’ of our bodily life. The images are reverberations of past bodily experiences but can also be shaped in novel ways. Usually, this imaginative double is fully sucked into the bodily kernel. For many people, the only place where to some extent the decoupling can be noticed more clearly is the inner voice. Here our imaginative double is freed from the bodily larynx (were that not the case we would only be able to think out loud in our physical voice). So just like we can withdraw our will from the larynx and will only imaginative speaking, so we can learn to decouple our will from the whole body and will the imaginative movements of a complete double of our bodily life.
4. We begin seeking forms of inner activity that are not strict replicas of bodily life, yet we can’t jump straight into activity that we don’t even know how to imagine/perform. Thus through the smooth sphere rotations over the gradient of scales, we aim to ‘stretch’ our ‘imaginative muscles’ and come to know them more intimately.
5. The larger scales are not simply greater volumes of space but should feel related to greater lengths of time too. Yet this length is not simply a longer movie strip of purely physical happenings (the chopping wood caricature) but the inner experience of more encompassing factors that rule the nature of the continuous narrowing of potential. These movements are no longer merely physical and intellectual but expand into flow-bending factors such as desires, interests, hopes, fears, religious feelings, and moral impulses. Each of these factors can only be known and worked upon if we awaken to the corresponding scale of our inner intuitive activity. The imagined spacetime rotations that we stretch into are not in themselves the intrinsic activity of deeper shaping of potential but if done with the appropriate soul attitude they can help us attune to similar ‘wavelengths’, and thus we become more sensitive and prepared to recognize the true deeper inner movements. Without such an attunement we will in vain expect to find the deeper movements at the scale of crystalizing Tetris pieces. The true inner movements remain completely subconscious and we hardly realize how the sequences of our mental Tetris pieces are funneled.
6. The goal of meditative concentration is to support a region of spacetime flow where our real-time intuitive activity is tightly reflected in the condensing phenomena (Mode 2). In a way, our intuitive activity is the dynamically willed spacetime curvature within which phenomena manifest and is conversely constrained by other interfering flow-bending forces and the already compressed kernel of existence (supporting the incremental continuity of consciousness). Only from within this state we can continue the musical integration of the Cosmic spectrum. We are no longer patching together a storyboard of fragmented mental images that are supposed to ‘explain’ what space, time, and existence are, but our innermost being unites with the creative intuitive currents of the World flow.

As indicated before, it is very important to note that everything we’ve been discussing so far concerns the narrowing down of our inner life of thinking, feeling, and willing (or soul life). That is, we shouldn’t imagine that in our present embodied human state, the wider physical world, the structure of the body and its life processes, condense out of our soul movements (that is, that they are simply dreamed up). Our physical structure and life processes pose an even deeper mystery within which our soul potential is narrowed. We’ll try to investigate these questions in future discussions.

[Federica]

Now we can retrace the steps so far.

1. We can start from the purely bodily experiences, how we have sensations, and how we will our movements.
2. We can gradually reduce the amplitude of movements and focus on the threshold where our willing intents are perceptible as a tingling glow in the physical kernel, yet without producing noticeable movement. Then we energize in this way our whole bodily space while we feel centered and naturally buoyant within this sphere of sensations.
3. Then we gradually recognize how in our imagination we can liberate a first-person ‘double’ of our bodily life. The images are reverberations of past bodily experiences but can also be shaped in novel ways. Usually, this imaginative double is fully sucked into the bodily kernel. For many people, the only place where to some extent the decoupling can be noticed more clearly is the inner voice. Here our imaginative double is freed from the bodily larynx (were that not the case we would only be able to think out loud in our physical voice). So just like we can withdraw our will from the larynx and will only imaginative speaking, so we can learn to decouple our will from the whole body and will the imaginative movements of a complete double of our bodily life.
4. We begin seeking forms of inner activity that are not strict replicas of bodily life, yet we can’t jump straight into activity that we don’t even know how to imagine/perform. Thus through the smooth sphere rotations over the gradient of scales, we aim to ‘stretch’ our ‘imaginative muscles’ and come to know them more intimately.
5. The larger scales are not simply greater volumes of space but should feel related to greater lengths of time too. Yet this length is not simply a longer movie strip of purely physical happenings (the chopping wood caricature) but the inner experience of more encompassing factors that rule the nature of the continuous narrowing of potential. These movements are no longer merely physical and intellectual but expand into flow-bending factors such as desires, interests, hopes, fears, religious feelings, and moral impulses. Each of these factors can only be known and worked upon if we awaken to the corresponding scale of our inner intuitive activity. The imagined spacetime rotations that we stretch into are not in themselves the intrinsic activity of deeper shaping of potential but if done with the appropriate soul attitude they can help us attune to similar ‘wavelengths’, and thus we become more sensitive and prepared to recognize the true deeper inner movements. Without such an attunement we will in vain expect to find the deeper movements at the scale of crystalizing Tetris pieces. The true inner movements remain completely subconscious and we hardly realize how the sequences of our mental Tetris pieces are funneled.
6. The goal of meditative concentration is to support a region of spacetime flow where our real-time intuitive activity is tightly reflected in the condensing phenomena (Mode 2). In a way, our intuitive activity is the dynamically willed spacetime curvature within which phenomena manifest and is conversely constrained by other interfering flow-bending forces and the already compressed kernel of existence (supporting the incremental continuity of consciousness). Only from within this state we can continue the musical integration of the Cosmic spectrum. We are no longer patching together a storyboard of fragmented mental images that are supposed to ‘explain’ what space, time, and existence are, but our innermost being unites with the creative intuitive currents of the World flow.

As indicated before, it is very important to note that everything we’ve been discussing so far concerns the narrowing down of our inner life of thinking, feeling, and willing (or soul life). That is, we shouldn’t imagine that in our present embodied human state, the wider physical world, the structure of the body and its life processes, condense out of our soul movements (that is, that they are simply dreamed up). Our physical structure and life processes pose an even deeper mystery within which our soul potential is narrowed. We’ll try to investigate these questions in future discussions.

Reflecting on the overall trajectory of the inner space stretching exercise in connection with what Steiner said about conscious breathing as basis for meditative practice in our times versus ancient times, a question has arisen.

Is the beginning from purely bodily experience (firing the bodily will) a first best, that is the most appropriate way for our times to progressively awaken to our existence beyond the bodily constraints, or is it a reasonable compromise, given the difficulty of the task, a facilitation that maximizes the chances to first reach some form of direct sense of that existence, therefore supporting motivation for further introspective work, and conviction that there is something to know there, beyond the personal physical sphere?

In other words, I am wondering: wouldn't the start from the bodily will risk encountering hindrances similar to those which made Steiner discourage the student from pursuing higher knowledge through the control of breath? (paraphrasing Steiner, the hindrance being that, contrary to ancient man, we are now at a pick of entanglement with the physical body, therefore independence from it should be sought through impulses coming from the opposite side, that is from the side of pure thinking, rather than through trying to bring the bodily rhythms onto the side of consciousness).

[Cleric]

Reflecting on the overall trajectory of the inner space stretching exercise in connection with what Steiner said about conscious breathing as basis for meditative practice in our times versus ancient times, a question has arisen.

Is the beginning from purely bodily experience (firing the bodily will) a first best, that is the most appropriate way for our times to progressively awaken to our existence beyond the bodily constraints, or is it a reasonable compromise, given the difficulty of the task, a facilitation that maximizes the chances to first reach some form of direct sense of that existence, therefore supporting motivation for further introspective work, and conviction that there is something to know there, beyond the personal physical sphere?

In other words, I am wondering: wouldn't the start from the bodily will risk encountering hindrances similar to those which made Steiner discourage the student from pursuing higher knowledge through the control of breath? (paraphrasing Steiner, the hindrance being that, contrary to ancient man, we are now at a pick of entanglement with the physical body, therefore independence from it should be sought through impulses coming from the opposite side, that is from the side of pure thinking, rather than through trying to bring the bodily rhythms onto the side of consciousness).

Very important remark, Federica!

Yes, I spent quite some time on this question. I had precisely the concerns that you raise. The short answer is: I'm not absolutely sure.

On one hand, this initial grounding proves very fruitful in my own practice. If I start directly with mental concentration, it often happens that I don't recognize how there are certain tensions in my body, that hinder the meditative process. Finding this pleasant glow and our naturally buoyant center within it proves a great start for my further activity.

But you are completely right that if we brood too much on that exercise, it is practically a method leading to abdominal clairvoyance. Actually, maybe those who have tried it have already sensed that. When we keep the tingling it soon begins to gain fractal-like complexity, it can be mesmerizing. I realize that this can be very seducing. I can easily imagine that someone may enjoy too much this first preparatory step and the psychedelic-like effects that it can eventually lead to, and thus postone everything else. But at the same time, I found that this experience is a great way to become intensely aware of our physical sensations and from thence easily follow how they can be lifted as mental/memory images. Just compare how it feels if you tell somebody to imagine clenching their fist or first try that physically and then repeat it in imagination. It feels to me, that this route allows to gain consciousness of our inner double in a way that feels like naturally building onto our physical life.

Then, my other rationale, which maybe I'm too naive for taking seriously, is that I thought that by building such a gradual build-up, the intellect will be likewise gradually engaged in more and more free inner activity. For example, when you tell somebody "Here, meditate on the rose cross", this feels so floating. I admit that I barely tried that mediation in my early years. It simply felt as demanding too much trust. On the other hand, when we start from our familiar physical experiences it feels like learning to swim with our feet on the sea floor, where we can gradually hop and experiment with short periods of floating. As always, this can work in the opposite way too. One may never feel ready enough to lift their feet. But anyway, it was my hope that the further discussion would be engaging and accessible enough to the intellect that the natural impulse should arise not to stop at the preparatory exercise but continue further.

I was really worried whether it is responsible to lay out things in this way, but in the end, I felt certain peace with it, so I decided to go on.

PS: In a sense, just like you noted, by introducing this preliminary step, we basically recapitulate the evolutionary past of man. Igniting the physical kernel indeed corresponds to what the ancient Hindus did when they sought the experience of their "I" in the concentrated will-reflection of breathing. In the end, probably those who are not ready for the cognitive evolution would simply have no interest in the stretching exercise even if it was presented without the ignition part. Conversely, those who stop short at the ignition are probably the same those people who wouldn't have considered the exercise at all, were it given without the ignition part. I don't know. That's why I have placed a warning in the text, that we shouldn't spend too much time on the ignition part, and that it is only a way for preparation. I really hope that what follows is way more engaging and the intellect will naturally want to experiment, sensing the expanding possibilities of its unsuspected spiritual core (instead of simply staring in our will-glow).

[Federica]

Very important remark, Federica!

Yes, I spent quite some time on this question. I had precisely the concerns that you raise. The short answer is: I'm not absolutely sure.

On one hand, this initial grounding proves very fruitful in my own practice. If I start directly with mental concentration, it often happens that I don't recognize how there are certain tensions in my body, that hinder the meditative process. Finding this pleasant glow and our naturally buoyant center within it proves a great start for my further activity.

But you are completely right that if we brood too much on that exercise, it is practically a method leading to abdominal clairvoyance. Actually, maybe those who have tried it have already sensed that. When we keep the tingling it soon begins to gain fractal-like complexity, it can be mesmerizing. I realize that this can be very seducing. I can easily imagine that someone may enjoy too much this first preparatory step and the psychedelic-like effects that it can eventually lead to, and thus postone everything else. But at the same time, I found that this experience is a great way to become intensely aware of our physical sensations and from thence easily follow how they can be lifted as mental/memory images. Just compare how it feels if you tell somebody to imagine clenching their fist or first try that physically and then repeat it in imagination. It feels to me, that this route allows to gain consciousness of our inner double in a way that feels like naturally building onto our physical life.

Then, my other rationale, which maybe I'm too naive for taking seriously, is that I thought that by building such a gradual build-up, the intellect will be likewise gradually engaged in more and more free inner activity. For example, when you tell somebody "Here, meditate on the rose cross", this feels so floating. I admit that I barely tried that mediation in my early years. It simply felt as demanding too much trust. On the other hand, when we start from our familiar physical experiences it feels like learning to swim with our feet on the sea floor, where we can gradually hop and experiment with short periods of floating. As always, this can work in the opposite way too. One may never feel ready enough to lift their feet. But anyway, it was my hope that the further discussion would be engaging and accessible enough to the intellect that the natural impulse should arise not to stop at the preparatory exercise but continue further.

I was really worried whether it is responsible to lay out things in this way, but in the end, I felt certain peace with it, so I decided to go on.

PS: In a sense, just like you noted, by introducing this preliminary step, we basically recapitulate the evolutionary past of man. Igniting the physical kernel indeed corresponds to what the ancient Hindus did when they sought the experience of their "I" in the concentrated will-reflection of breathing. In the end, probably those who are not ready for the cognitive evolution would simply have no interest in the stretching exercise even if it was presented without the ignition part. Conversely, those who stop short at the ignition are probably the same those people who wouldn't have considered the exercise at all, were it given without the ignition part. I don't know. That's why I have placed a warning in the text, that we shouldn't spend too much time on the ignition part, and that it is only a way for preparation. I really hope that what follows is way more engaging and the intellect will naturally want to experiment, sensing the expanding possibilities of its unsuspected spiritual core (instead of simply staring in our will-glow).

Cleric, I’m stunned (of course, I shouldn't be). I didn’t dare to ask whether the exercise had been fruitful in your practice, but you have answered that; I wanted to call the firing of the will a sort of ‘etheric psychedelics’, then I didn’t write it, not to sound challenging, but you’ve still read it; and I had the rose cross meditation as a point of comparison in the back of my mind, since it is the meditation I am doing these days.

But to the main point, thank you for such a level of openness, and level of care in crafting the exercise in the first place! All you say makes sense to me, it clarifies even more. Ultimately it comes down to individual responsibility, and I believe you took all imaginable and unimaginable precautions in preparing and laying out the exercise.

[AshvinP]

I have finally made it through the final part. Bravo, Cleric! And thank you for such an exquisitely crafted inner exploration chock full of illustrations, metaphors, concrete examples, and very accessible philosophical lines of reasoning. It is evident that you have developed a deeper inner sensitivity to all the common mental obstacles we meet along the way when attempting to explore our intimate soul constitution, and you have addressed these obstacles in very intricate and practical ways.

I will, of course, be revisiting these essays many times in the coming months. I hope any others who come across them will feel similarly inspired to spend a lot of time with them and really commit to the imaginative/meditative effort. I could sense a good deal of hesitation within myself to work with the expanding spacetime spheres exercise, for example, because it seemed like a lot of 'moving parts' when just reading over the details the first time, but these things become much simpler when we work with them inwardly and start to flow our intuitive intents within their archetypal movements. It starts to feel like a quite natural axis of our imaginative activity.

Now we can retrace the steps so far.
We can start from the purely bodily experiences, how we have sensations, and how we will our movements.
We can gradually reduce the amplitude of movements and focus on the threshold where our willing intents are perceptible as a tingling glow in the physical kernel, yet without producing noticeable movement. Then we energize in this way our whole bodily space while we feel centered and naturally buoyant within this sphere of sensations.
Then we gradually recognize how in our imagination we can liberate a first-person ‘double’ of our bodily life. The images are reverberations of past bodily experiences but can also be shaped in novel ways. Usually, this imaginative double is fully sucked into the bodily kernel. For many people, the only place where to some extent the decoupling can be noticed more clearly is the inner voice. Here our imaginative double is freed from the bodily larynx (were that not the case we would only be able to think out loud in our physical voice). So just like we can withdraw our will from the larynx and will only imaginative speaking, so we can learn to decouple our will from the whole body and will the imaginative movements of a complete double of our bodily life.

The ignition of the physical kernel, as you guys have already started discussing, is a very interesting first stage and immediately reminded me of ancient yoga techniques as well. It seems, however, that we are not uniting our activity so fully/deeply with the bodily spectrum as we would through the breath, but remaining more on the 'surface' of that spectrum at the etheric boundary between the sensory life and our life of mental picturing, memories, thoughts. Thus it feels like a very natural and helpful way to anchor the gradual transition to body-free imaginative activity, a modern form of preparatory 'yoga' in keeping with our cognitive stage of development.

The energizing of the will but withholding it from physical movements and particularly from the movement of the larynx also reminded me of what Steiner discusses here, which I feel is an extremely powerful exercise (I think we have mentioned it before on the forum) and technically 'easy' (but as we know, the 'easy' is most difficult due to etched soul tendencies) to work with during the daily course of life.


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA084/En ... 20in%20the

You will understand better what I mean when I tell you, for instance, that in ordinary, everyday life one does not think in the true sense of the word. One does think in the field of mathematics if, for instance, one makes a mental picture of a triangle in the way I have described. One does some real thinking particularly when the mind is occupied with unusual things of a kind for which the language has no words. But when completely absorbed in the things which nowadays make up the content of current popular interest, one does not really do any actual thinking, for in this mental process the organs of speech constantly co-vibrate, albeit so quietly that one does not hear it. The mental activity of modern man, who so dislikes thinking about anything that is not to be found in the external world of the senses, is not real thinking. The mind is merely weaving in shadow-pictures of words..

You can test it yourself and you will find this weaving of the soul in the shadow-pictures of words to be a fact. When one can really bring the larynx inwardly into a state of complete rest while still maintaining that inner activity of the soul which normally animates the movements of the larynx, so that the escape from the spoken word remains an entirely inward exercise—if, in other words, one does with the activity of speech what one has previously done with the activity of thinking that is a transformed faculty of memory (where one pushes only as far as the nerve-endings, while now one exercises the activity of speech only as far as the larynx, just to the point where the latter is about to break into speech)—then gradually there will develop what in recent lectures I have called “the deep silence of the human soul,” because checking and preventing speech inwardly means developing the deep silence of the soul.

To get an idea of what this deep silence in the soul means, imagine yourself in a town, not Basle, perhaps, but in London or in a city even noisier still. You are right within this noise and turmoil. Now you leave the town and the noise gradually fades as you get further away. Presently you find yourself in the stillness and solitude of a wood. You say: All is quiet within and without. There comes a point when the stillness reaches the degree ‘nought.’ First the noise, then it grows quieter, then absolute stillness at point ‘nought.’

But now this can go further. And indeed this process of not only experiencing the quietness of a silent outer world and the soul at rest, but of passing into the deep silence, can be the direct result of abstaining from the use of words while maintaining that full inner activity which normally is bent on becoming vocal. One merely refrains from making use of the physical body. (I have described the various meditative exercises in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.”) Then one realises that there is something beyond the point ‘nought’ of stillness. In public lectures I have made use of a commonplace comparison. I said: Supposing someone with a certain amount of capital spends some of it and reduces his means; then continues to spend until finally there is nothing left; he has reached point ‘nought.’ But he goes on spending and runs into debt. Now he has less than nought; and so it goes on. Here the mathematicians have introduced the negative numbers: -6, -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. In a similar way you can also imagine how in the realm of sound the stillness at point ‘nought’ passes over into the negative, into a state that is stiller than stillness, quieter than quietness. You can establish the same conditions in the depths of your soul.

[Federica]

I have finally made it through the final part. Bravo, Cleric! And thank you for such an exquisitely crafted inner exploration chock full of illustrations, metaphors, concrete examples, and very accessible philosophical lines of reasoning. It is evident that you have developed a deeper inner sensitivity to all the common mental obstacles we meet along the way when attempting to explore our intimate soul constitution, and you have addressed these obstacles in very intricate and practical ways.

I will, of course, be revisiting these essays many times in the coming months. I hope any others who come across them will feel similarly inspired to spend a lot of time with them and really commit to the imaginative/meditative effort. I could sense a good deal of hesitation within myself to work with the expanding spacetime spheres exercise, for example, because it seemed like a lot of 'moving parts' when just reading over the details the first time, but these things become much simpler when we work with them inwardly and start to flow our intuitive intents within their archetypal movements. It starts to feel like a quite natural axis of our imaginative activity.

Now we can retrace the steps so far.
We can start from the purely bodily experiences, how we have sensations, and how we will our movements.
We can gradually reduce the amplitude of movements and focus on the threshold where our willing intents are perceptible as a tingling glow in the physical kernel, yet without producing noticeable movement. Then we energize in this way our whole bodily space while we feel centered and naturally buoyant within this sphere of sensations.
Then we gradually recognize how in our imagination we can liberate a first-person ‘double’ of our bodily life. The images are reverberations of past bodily experiences but can also be shaped in novel ways. Usually, this imaginative double is fully sucked into the bodily kernel. For many people, the only place where to some extent the decoupling can be noticed more clearly is the inner voice. Here our imaginative double is freed from the bodily larynx (were that not the case we would only be able to think out loud in our physical voice). So just like we can withdraw our will from the larynx and will only imaginative speaking, so we can learn to decouple our will from the whole body and will the imaginative movements of a complete double of our bodily life.

The ignition of the physical kernel, as you guys have already started discussing, is a very interesting first stage and immediately reminded me of ancient yoga techniques as well. It seems, however, that we are not uniting our activity so fully/deeply with the bodily spectrum as we would through the breath, but remaining more on the 'surface' of that spectrum at the etheric boundary between the sensory life and our life of mental picturing, memories, thoughts. Thus it feels like a very natural and helpful way to anchor the gradual transition to body-free imaginative activity, a modern form of preparatory 'yoga' in keeping with our cognitive stage of development.

The energizing of the will but withholding it from physical movements and particularly from the movement of the larynx also reminded me of what Steiner discusses here, which I feel is an extremely powerful exercise (I think we have mentioned it before on the forum) and technically 'easy' (but as we know, the 'easy' is most difficult due to etched soul tendencies) to work with during the daily course of life.


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA084/En ... 20in%20the

You will understand better what I mean when I tell you, for instance, that in ordinary, everyday life one does not think in the true sense of the word. One does think in the field of mathematics if, for instance, one makes a mental picture of a triangle in the way I have described. One does some real thinking particularly when the mind is occupied with unusual things of a kind for which the language has no words. But when completely absorbed in the things which nowadays make up the content of current popular interest, one does not really do any actual thinking, for in this mental process the organs of speech constantly co-vibrate, albeit so quietly that one does not hear it. The mental activity of modern man, who so dislikes thinking about anything that is not to be found in the external world of the senses, is not real thinking. The mind is merely weaving in shadow-pictures of words..

You can test it yourself and you will find this weaving of the soul in the shadow-pictures of words to be a fact. When one can really bring the larynx inwardly into a state of complete rest while still maintaining that inner activity of the soul which normally animates the movements of the larynx, so that the escape from the spoken word remains an entirely inward exercise—if, in other words, one does with the activity of speech what one has previously done with the activity of thinking that is a transformed faculty of memory (where one pushes only as far as the nerve-endings, while now one exercises the activity of speech only as far as the larynx, just to the point where the latter is about to break into speech)—then gradually there will develop what in recent lectures I have called “the deep silence of the human soul,” because checking and preventing speech inwardly means developing the deep silence of the soul.

To get an idea of what this deep silence in the soul means, imagine yourself in a town, not Basle, perhaps, but in London or in a city even noisier still. You are right within this noise and turmoil. Now you leave the town and the noise gradually fades as you get further away. Presently you find yourself in the stillness and solitude of a wood. You say: All is quiet within and without. There comes a point when the stillness reaches the degree ‘nought.’ First the noise, then it grows quieter, then absolute stillness at point ‘nought.’

But now this can go further. And indeed this process of not only experiencing the quietness of a silent outer world and the soul at rest, but of passing into the deep silence, can be the direct result of abstaining from the use of words while maintaining that full inner activity which normally is bent on becoming vocal. One merely refrains from making use of the physical body. (I have described the various meditative exercises in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.”) Then one realises that there is something beyond the point ‘nought’ of stillness. In public lectures I have made use of a commonplace comparison. I said: Supposing someone with a certain amount of capital spends some of it and reduces his means; then continues to spend until finally there is nothing left; he has reached point ‘nought.’ But he goes on spending and runs into debt. Now he has less than nought; and so it goes on. Here the mathematicians have introduced the negative numbers: -6, -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. In a similar way you can also imagine how in the realm of sound the stillness at point ‘nought’ passes over into the negative, into a state that is stiller than stillness, quieter than quietness. You can establish the same conditions in the depths of your soul.

I was wondering what your perspective was, Ashvin, thanks for bringing it here. With regards to this:

"The ignition of the physical kernel, as you guys have already started discussing, is a very interesting first stage and immediately reminded me of ancient yoga techniques as well. It seems, however, that we are not uniting our activity so fully/deeply with the bodily spectrum as we would through the breath, but remaining more on the 'surface' of that spectrum at the etheric boundary between the sensory life and our life of mental picturing, memories, thoughts."


I felt that the union of activity with the bodily spectrum is deeper in the ignition of the physical kernel than through the breath. As said above, the mentioned risks would manifest only if one indulges in that phase in a distorted way, and I am not warning against this ignition step in any ways at all. I nonetheless feel that such ignition does not remain on the surface, and has the potential to go even deeper than the stirring of feeling obtained through breath control exercises. However, I have not extensively experimented with that yet, and I could be wrong (though intellectual piecing of what Steiner said also seems to support that the bodily will and its ignition has the potential to go deeper than lifting up of breath/feeling).


Regarding what you say about the larynx (I didn't know/remember that Steiner passage - thanks!):

"The energizing of the will but withholding it from physical movements and particularly from the movement of the larynx also reminded me of what Steiner discusses here"


Here again, I may be wrong. Moreover the following is not necessarily incompatible with your thoughts. Still I believe that, when Steiner speaks of bringing the larynx to a "state of complete rest while maintaining the inner activity of soul that normally animates its movements", he refers to bringing to rest the inner verbalizing instinct, while letting the pictorial flow of becoming stream into consciousness, resisting the common inner verbalization (co-vibration of the organs of speech, as he calls it). Conversely, in the context of this series, Cleric’s ignition of the bodily muscles through the will impulse, up (but not across) the threshold of triggering physical movement, would correspond to being about to pronounce some words out loud - trying to sense all the small muscles which would be involved - some of them are part of the larynx organ - but without emitting any sounds.
Therefore, this particular case of igniting the bodily kernel would not be the same as resisting inner verbalization, and it could become confusing within the context of the inner space stretching exercise, which is perhaps why the larynx is not mentioned in Part 1, but only the diaphragm muscle is. In this sense, I believe the exercise Steiner gave in the quote is different in essence from the firing of the bodily will as presented in this series - though one may definitely remind of the other.

[AshvinP]

I was wondering what your perspective was, Ashvin, thanks for bringing it here. With regards to this:

"The ignition of the physical kernel, as you guys have already started discussing, is a very interesting first stage and immediately reminded me of ancient yoga techniques as well. It seems, however, that we are not uniting our activity so fully/deeply with the bodily spectrum as we would through the breath, but remaining more on the 'surface' of that spectrum at the etheric boundary between the sensory life and our life of mental picturing, memories, thoughts."


I felt that the union of activity with the bodily spectrum is deeper in the ignition of the physical kernel than through the breath. As said above, the mentioned risks would manifest only if one indulges in that phase in a distorted way, and I am not warning against this ignition step in any ways at all. I nonetheless feel that such ignition does not remain on the surface, and has the potential to go even deeper than the stirring of feeling obtained through breath control exercises. However, I have not extensively experimented with that yet, and I could be wrong (though intellectual piecing of what Steiner said also seems to support that the bodily will and its ignition has the potential to go deeper than lifting up of breath/feeling).

I haven't experimented with it too extensively, either. For me, it has not gotten to the stage of mesmerizing fractal-like complexity that Cleric mentioned, only a dim non-localized tingling feeling (even dimmer than when a body part 'goes to sleep' and tingles, but not strictly localized in that way). One way I would think about the bodily depth that these exercises reach is whether it's possible to convince ourselves we are not experiencing physical sensations but only imagined thoughts of this sensation that are somewhat more intense than our normal thoughts. I feel that is indeed possible with the ignition exercise, at least at the initial stages, and that's why Cleric spoke about how we need to intensify our willing gestures in that case. If we engage in a prolonged and systematic breathing exercise (which I haven't really done), on the other hand, I doubt we can convince ourselves we are only imagining the physical sensations.

That said, I also don't doubt that if we prolong and deepen the ignition enough, it can lead quite deep into the bodily spectrum and perhaps lead to abdominal clairvoyant experiences that we become intoxicated with. So there are definitely risks involved if we become indulgent and complacent with such exercises, rather than using them as preliminary anchors and stepping stones to lifting the imaginative activity from its bodily constraints. Overall, if taken within the context it is given, I think it is a mostly gentle way of exploring the degrees of freedom of our willing gestures within the bodily spectrum before expanding those DoF within the purely imaginative spectrum.

Regarding what you say about the larynx (I didn't know/remember that Steiner passage - thanks!):

"The energizing of the will but withholding it from physical movements and particularly from the movement of the larynx also reminded me of what Steiner discusses here"


Here again, I may be wrong. Moreover the following is not necessarily incompatible with your thoughts. Still I believe that, when Steiner speaks of bringing the larynx to a "state of complete rest while maintaining the inner activity of soul that normally animates its movements", he refers to bringing to rest the inner verbalizing instinct, while letting the pictorial flow of becoming stream into consciousness, resisting the common inner verbalization (co-vibration of the organs of speech, as he calls it). Conversely, in the context of this series, Cleric’s ignition of the bodily muscles through the will impulse, up (but not across) the threshold of triggering physical movement, would correspond to being about to pronounce some words out loud - trying to sense all the small muscles which would be involved - some of them are part of the larynx organ - but without emitting any sounds.
Therefore, this particular case of igniting the bodily kernel would not be the same as resisting inner verbalization, and it could become confusing within the context of the inner space stretching exercise, which is perhaps why the larynx is not mentioned in Part 1, but only the diaphragm muscle is. In this sense, I believe the exercise Steiner gave in the quote is different in essence from the firing of the bodily will as presented in this series - though one may definitely remind of the other.

It's not the same exercise, true, but there are very similar principles involved. The most important thing is that we are doing all of this consciously and with the explicit intent of becoming more sensitive to how our inner activity and its subtle gestures modulate the phenomenal (sensory and imaginative) spectrum.

When Cleric writes for ex., "It is an interesting exercise to make this glow as intense as possible yet without resorting to noticeable muscle contraction.", this aligns with the inner experience of weaving intensely in soul movements that would normally result in noticeable speech (larynx movements) but without letting it get so far. Actually, I think the latter requires much more vigilance and inner activity at a more expansive spacetime scale. Steiner mentioned this in the context of developing Inspiration through the astral body:

Of this Third, astral Man, we become aware when we reach the deep silence of the soul, and from out of this profound silence the Spiritual sounds forth, a sounding which is the opposite of physical sound.

This astral body, as you will see, takes us in every respect further than the etheric body alone could have done. To make this clear, let me deal with it from a cosmic point of view.

Of course, the astral body and speech are intimately connected with our breathing rhythms as well. The ancient yogis reached the spiritual music of the spheres by uniting their inner activity more closely with the physical rhythms since the Spirit was still active there to some extent, but now it has withdrawn much more inwardly and therefore we reach the same spiritual music by renouncing outward speech-breathing with our inner activity (which doesn't mean we stop breathing, of course, but resist ordinary inner thinking-feeling patterns closely tied to the breath). With the ignition exercise, we renounce outward muscle contraction but this is still connected with the etheric and doesn't extend so far into the astral scale of inner activity as does the breathing.

[Cleric]

Thank you, Ashvin and Federica, for the positive feedback!

I'm aware that giving out such exercises is a great responsibility and one is held accountable. I don't do that lightheartedly. But I really hope that by giving it in such an extended form, it should feel more like a shared experimental journey, and not as offering some product with promises and warranties. I think we live in exciting times where we can largely understand - at least on a thinking level - much of the steps in our journey and thus can feel that we are not simply consuming something but taking an active part in developing small tools that hopefully will help us go forward.

Thank you also for the larynx exercise - it was new to me too.

About the surface and the core activity - this is something that I myself still have some lingering questions about. The trouble is that even though we can arrange things on a linear axis, things are not likewise linearly simple. If we imagine the Saturn condition things are relatively simpler. There we indeed have intuitive will-activity reflecting in World sense-like 'substance'. But things become more manifold as we go through the convolutions, because then we have increasingly complicated forms of inner activity, like adding additional mirrors in an optical system. Now different levels of inner activity contextualize each other in complicated ways. So this makes things difficult to grasp on a single axis. For example, the igneous sensations seem most extraneous (surface) in relation to our innermost spiritual activity. But at the same time, if we look at things through the context of the Saturn sphere, the igneous sensations actually reach deepest into the World content - they reflect the workings of the Spirits of Will. In our fourth convolution, however, we are not yet fully consciously creative at that depth. Anyway, I just wanted to share that we need to be careful when trying to put our inner activity on a linear axis from most intimate to most surface.

[Federica]

When Cleric writes for ex., "It is an interesting exercise to make this glow as intense as possible yet without resorting to noticeable muscle contraction.", this aligns with the inner experience of weaving intensely in soul movements that would normally result in noticeable speech (larynx movements) but without letting it get so far.

Yes - this is what I've also said. What this aligns less with, however, is the inner experience of refraining from inwardly formulating verbal thoughts, which is what Steiner refers to in the quoted larynx exercise. I think this has less to do with bodily will and more to do with working at the horizon of condensation of the intuitive context.

[AshvinP]

When Cleric writes for ex., "It is an interesting exercise to make this glow as intense as possible yet without resorting to noticeable muscle contraction.", this aligns with the inner experience of weaving intensely in soul movements that would normally result in noticeable speech (larynx movements) but without letting it get so far.

Yes - this is what I've also said. What this aligns less with, however, is the inner experience of refraining from inwardly formulating verbal thoughts, which is what Steiner refers to in the quoted larynx exercise. I think this has less to do with bodily will and more to do with working at the horizon of condensation of the intuitive context.

I think they all work with the horizon of condensation (technically this is the only place we can ever creatively work). It's just the scale of inner activity that varies, although I take Cleric's point that it's not simply a linear axis from 'easy' to 'difficult', or 'surface' to 'deeply intimate', but there are complex overlaps and interrelations. Steiner also gives an example of renouncing outer speech in that lecture:

Now you can say: A dull fellow indeed, going about practising silence in people's company, walking up to them and, instead of talking to them, just looking at them and remaining wrapped in silence. Well, I admit, my dear friends, that socially this would certainly be anything but pleasant; it could, however, actually prove exceedingly fruitful for spiritual advancement, and beneficial results could ensue if, for instance, one attended a party at which people, including oneself, were by no means silent as a rule, and if one now began to practise silence. One says nothing although one knows a great deal and, in giving freely of one's store of knowledge, has formerly always been a great talker. I say that one could do this, but one need not do it outwardly and, although it could be fruitful, it would not be so very helpful when aiming high; the idea is that the entire exercise, as I have described it, is carried out inwardly, that one is fully prepared to speak but has the ability to suppress the impulse inwardly.

If I imagine myself in that situation, assuming I was someone who was inclined to attend and be actively conversing at parties (not at all my inclination), I can sense how much inner strength I would need to pull it off for even a short while. Even without that inclination, it would be difficult, especially considering how the social circumstances would be constantly generating impulses to speak a little bit given the fear of how one looks in the eyes of others, otherwise. This requires a deeper modulation within the intuitive context, in my view, than guiding the condensation flow to condense Tetris pieces that only tingle the muscle fibres without contracting them.

On the other hand, similar to how hand gestures cannot convey the refined meaning of vocal gestures, the physical kernel ignition is more easily condensed according to our intent but does not convey refined meaning for me. It reminds me of an experiment I came across recently:





When we hear the sound of the feedback from her intent to move the arm, it really highlights how we are asleep in our will when conducted through the body - the feedback we receive is literally static noise. On the other hand, when we conduct the will through our imaginative being, the feedback we receive is mental pictures and thoughts imbued with intuitive clarity. We would need to expand our inner activity to the scale of the Saturn sphere to imbue the igneous sensation with that level of intuitive clarity. In that sense, our creative condensation seems quite limited with the physical ignition - we turn it either off or on, and then perhaps intensify the feeling when it's on. When creatively condensing at the level of speech impulses, on the other hand, we can receive feedback that is imbued with much more intuitive insight related to what is steering our existential flow.