Donald Hoffman's search for a mathematical theory of consciousness

[Federica]

One of the images that has come to mind, reading Cleric’s last prodigious walkthrough, is that of the apocalyptic ghost town, or wasteland, abandoned by all lifeforms, found in science-fiction. Perhaps this image can help consolidate the sense that perception is the memory picture. The entire perceptible world-content is an ever-evolving, large-spectrum memory tableau that doesn’t bear true life. The biological life we perceive and study does not bear life. It is reminiscent of life, it’s the memory picture of true life, that can only be found in the introspective realm first.

Looking at a lush natural scenery, teeming with life, or at an admirable man-made panorama, teeming with life, one could keep in mind that it’s in reality an abandoned landscape one is looking at - a display of decayed forms, in which the signs of the previous activity of beings can be recognized, and laws of physical interconnectedness can be read. I guess the drama in the ghost town picture can help bring forth the realization that perception is the memory picture. By the time we perceive, the life of the up-stream activity that made perception possible in the first place has receded from the forms, and any regularities describing the three-dimensional forms in relation with one another (a sort of vocabulary, a way to read/perceive the forms) hint to past intentions and gestures of beings belonging to an ur-dimensional reality.

So maybe it's a good exercise to see the marvelous demonstration of life, as represented for example by the leaf of a plant in spring, and remind oneself that this is the wasteland of perception. The wasteland of perception only fulfils its purpose when it enables one to resist the perceptual appeal, when it serves as portal to retrace the Ls from within.

[Cleric K]

One of the images that has come to mind, reading Cleric’s last prodigious walkthrough, is that of the apocalyptic ghost town, or wasteland, abandoned by all lifeforms, found in science-fiction. Perhaps this image can help consolidate the sense that perception is the memory picture. The entire perceptible world-content is an ever-evolving, large-spectrum memory tableau that doesn’t bear true life. The biological life we perceive and study does not bear life. It is reminiscent of life, it’s the memory picture of true life, that can only be found in the introspective realm first.

Looking at a lush natural scenery, teeming with life, or at an admirable man-made panorama, teeming with life, one could keep in mind that it’s in reality an abandoned landscape one is looking at - a display of decayed forms, in which the signs of the previous activity of beings can be recognized, and laws of physical interconnectedness can be read. I guess the drama in the ghost town picture can help bring forth the realization that perception is the memory picture. By the time we perceive, the life of the up-stream activity that made perception possible in the first place has receded from the forms, and any regularities describing the three-dimensional forms in relation with one another (a sort of vocabulary, a way to read/perceive the forms) hint to past intentions and gestures of beings belonging to an ur-dimensional reality.

So maybe it's a good exercise to see the marvelous demonstration of life, as represented for example by the leaf of a plant in spring, and remind oneself that this is the wasteland of perception. The wasteland of perception only fulfils its purpose when it enables one to resist the perceptual appeal, when it serves as portal to retrace the Ls from within.

Thank you for this Imagination, Federica! It really puts things very well. I remember how some years ago I couldn't really understand why Steiner often says that in our thoughts we are dying. This is so much more clear when we understand it in the context of the above.

BTW, Roger Penrose is one of the most intuitive thinkers of those who are knee-deep in the abstract intellect. Even though he seeks the answers in mathematical thinking, it's interesting to see how in this way he tries to express ideas that stem from deeper intuition (and he is to some extent aware of this because he believes that mathematical ideas are real and give structure to reality. For example, his view is that, roughly speaking, gravity causes the collapse of the wavefunction. Of course, one can get lost here in the specific technical details of his claim, but nevertheless, the idea can be imaginatively experienced. When we meditate and contemplate the receding flow of our spiritual activity - how our living thinking becomes memory images and sinks into the total integrated World state - we have a picture of gravity. This is such a rich topic because so many fundamental intuitions intersect there. For example, as Ashvin hinted in the essays, when we meditate and try to shift our attention from our human-scale thoughts and feelings down toward the minuscule parts of our bodily structure, not only that we trace the path of gravity but we also trace the accumulated layers of the World state, almost like geological layers or tree rings. So in a strange way, our body is not simply an object in the present time but it is as if made of different layers of Time.

I realize how obscure and abstract this sounds but hopefully, gradually we'll be able to refine these intuitions and put them in clearer phenomenological images.

[Federica]

BTW, Roger Penrose is one of the most intuitive thinkers of those who are knee-deep in the abstract intellect. Even though he seeks the answers in mathematical thinking, it's interesting to see how in this way he tries to express ideas that stem from deeper intuition (and he is to some extent aware of this because he believes that mathematical ideas are real and give structure to reality. For example, his view is that, roughly speaking, gravity causes the collapse of the wavefunction. Of course, one can get lost here in the specific technical details of his claim, but nevertheless, the idea can be imaginatively experienced. When we meditate and contemplate the receding flow of our spiritual activity - how our living thinking becomes memory images and sinks into the total integrated World state - we have a picture of gravity. This is such a rich topic because so many fundamental intuitions intersect there. For example, as Ashvin hinted in the essays, when we meditate and try to shift our attention from our human-scale thoughts and feelings down toward the minuscule parts of our bodily structure, not only that we trace the path of gravity but we also trace the accumulated layers of the World state, almost like geological layers or tree rings. So in a strange way, our body is not simply an object in the present time but it is as if made of different layers of Time.

I realize how obscure and abstract this sounds but hopefully, gradually we'll be able to refine these intuitions and put them in clearer phenomenological images.

Thank you for the introspective cues, Cleric. It would be interesting to hear where they take the reader. On gravity, the following has crossed my mind.

As spiritual collective of beings, our humanity was born in the warmth of Saturn, it awakened to life in the Sun environment, and grew up in the Moon’s. Therefrom we descended onto Earth. The Earthly environment is special in that it’s meant to host our awakening to the higher self, that is, the attainment of spiritual adulthood. And maybe, as a spiritual collective, we will always remember these Earthly eons as special times, similar to how each of us, in this incarnation, may recall the last years of education: basically a momentous but risky business, dense with potential for both painful mistakes and huge progressions.

So the Earth-being is our living home, or mother, hosting these momentous phases of our growth, and gravity is like its etheric body. Thus the physical Earth - the material planet with its attractive life force - is like the collapsed manifestation of the backdrop against which our collective incarnate existence, as humanity, takes definite shape, and impresses, at any given moment. In this sense, gravity appears like the force that continually precipitates the human environment into the perceptual spectrum - including all incarnated forms: our own physical-etheric bodies, that of animals, plants and minerals - and holds it together as a coherent flow of collective becoming that also keeps us connected to one another, through the common environment.

And because our entire incarnate flow of becoming (sensations, but also feeling and thinking) is filtered through the Earthly experience, gravity keeps recording for us not only the memory picture of our sensory interactions, but also the memory of how the higher thinking waves are continuously collapsed into the Earthly sphere, squeezed through the aliasing filter of our brain, to become our usual thought- and feeling pictures, in the wasteland of perception. [From the perspective of a physicist/mathematician like RP, I'm not sure what it means to imagine that the wave function is collapsed by gravity. Maybe that the quantum understanding is divested of one layer of abstraction, brought closer to a phenomenological approach, since the "non local" is somewhat re-contextualized within the scope of gravity? I'm not sure, and what that means in terms of his understanding of the universe.]

From another side, gravity as an outward force is also an energy of love. We are given a chance to harmonize our flow with the Earth’s life body, and to thrive in that alignment - a language through which we can connect with each other too, down to our physical interactions. All gestures of bodily movement, and those of creating, bearing, carrying, giving, taking, are all structured by gravity. And the inner gravity that drags the weavy field of ideal potential down into fixed configurations of thoughts is also a loving force, because it provides us with the favorable context in which the retracing work can begin, back towards the waves of living potential. So in this sense, the wasteland of perception, the sequence of perceived frames that make up our flow of becoming, which we have called “dead”, can be resurrected. The collapsed wasteland, pinned down by gravity, is also the solid foundation on which we can stand and educate ourselves on how to initiate the way back.

[Cleric K]

Thank you for the introspective cues, Cleric. It would be interesting to hear where they take the reader. On gravity, the following has crossed my mind.

As spiritual collective of beings, our humanity was born in the warmth of Saturn, it awakened to life in the Sun environment, and grew up in the Moon’s. Therefrom we descended onto Earth. The Earthly environment is special in that it’s meant to host our awakening to the higher self, that is, the attainment of spiritual adulthood. And maybe, as a spiritual collective, we will always remember these Earthly eons as special times, similar to how each of us, in this incarnation, may recall the last years of education: basically a momentous but risky business, dense with potential for both painful mistakes and huge progressions.

So the Earth-being is our living home, or mother, hosting these momentous phases of our growth, and gravity is like its etheric body. Thus the physical Earth - the material planet with its attractive life force - is like the collapsed manifestation of the backdrop against which our collective incarnate existence, as humanity, takes definite shape, and impresses, at any given moment. In this sense, gravity appears like the force that continually precipitates the human environment into the perceptual spectrum - including all incarnated forms: our own physical-etheric bodies, that of animals, plants and minerals - and holds it together as a coherent flow of collective becoming that also keeps us connected to one another, through the common environment.

And because our entire incarnate flow of becoming (sensations, but also feeling and thinking) is filtered through the Earthly experience, gravity keeps recording for us not only the memory picture of our sensory interactions, but also the memory of how the higher thinking waves are continuously collapsed into the Earthly sphere, squeezed through the aliasing filter of our brain, to become our usual thought- and feeling pictures, in the wasteland of perception. [From the perspective of a physicist/mathematician like RP, I'm not sure what it means to imagine that the wave function is collapsed by gravity. Maybe that the quantum understanding is divested of one layer of abstraction, brought closer to a phenomenological approach, since the "non local" is somewhat re-contextualized within the scope of gravity? I'm not sure, and what that means in terms of his understanding of the universe.]

From another side, gravity as an outward force is also an energy of love. We are given a chance to harmonize our flow with the Earth’s life body, and to thrive in that alignment - a language through which we can connect with each other too, down to our physical interactions. All gestures of bodily movement, and those of creating, bearing, carrying, giving, taking, are all structured by gravity. And the inner gravity that drags the weavy field of ideal potential down into fixed configurations of thoughts is also a loving force, because it provides us with the favorable context in which the retracing work can begin, back towards the waves of living potential. So in this sense, the wasteland of perception, the sequence of perceived frames that make up our flow of becoming, which we have called “dead”, can be resurrected. The collapsed wasteland, pinned down by gravity, is also the solid foundation on which we can stand and educate ourselves on how to initiate the way back.

Great, Federica! I think you have caught the thread very precisely. Another angle on the above is that we can speak of gravity even in the first eon. Actually, there we have it in the cleanest form because all that we have on Saturn is nothing but a vast Cosmic spiritual state of imploding memory. Seen in an alternative way, we can say that it's not that the Cosmic memory shrinks/collapses but that the greatest delight of the Spirit is to continuously outgrow itself. Thus the memory pictures can be seen as the attempt of the Spirit to expand and include in its consciousness an image of its form - which, however, immediately becomes a past form, because the new form is one that has consciousness of the old one. So we can imagine how this continuous outgrowing encompasses the whole present state in a new sphere of consciousness and thus the previous spheres seem to recede and implode toward the center. This reminds me of something:

When it is possible to survey the period of life from the 56th to the 63rd year—and I myself am now in this position—one gazes at the influences exercised upon man between death and rebirth by Saturn, by the Beings of Saturn. This is an even more startling vista, a vista that causes bewilderment, nay indeed actual pain.

The Beings associated with Saturn are Beings who by their very nature take no heed at all of what they do in the immediate present; they act as it were unconsciously, under the sway of much loftier Beings into whose world they enter on reaching maturity. But as soon as they have done something, it stands there in powerful, living remembrance.

Try for a moment to imagine yourselves in this position ... I am not referring to any particular vocation or profession ... but just picture yourselves doing something, no matter what, and not noticing anything at all while you are actually doing it; but once you have done it, it stands there in living remembrance as an intensely vivid picture. Take a singer: he sings but is unconscious that he is doing so; he is simply being used by the Gods to sing. Imagine a large audience listening to him; as long as he is actually singing he is aware of nothing at all; he knows nothing, either about himself or about what he is experiencing. But the moment it is all over and the concert ended, the whole event is there and does not fade away; it remains and forms part of the content of his very life. On Saturn, man is the past, only the past.

Think of yourselves walking over the earth. As you walk you see nothing of yourself. But when you have gone a little further and look back, you see a little snowman—he is a figure of yourself as you were before you took the last step. Again you observe nothing, but walk on, and another little snowman stands behind you. And so it continues, with more and more little snowmen standing behind you. To all of them you say “I”.—Now transpose this imagery into the spiritual and you have the key to the nature of the Saturn Beings. Between death and a new birth man has to encounter these Beings—Beings who live wholly in the past. And there are men who in the elaboration of their karma have a particularly strong connection with these Saturn Beings.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA236/En ... 29p01.html

And another one:

Truth to tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters connected with the Saturn existence.

As I said, Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with something that might happen on the Earth—it does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible. Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that you exist. You act, you do something—you do not see this at the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but immediately afterwards these movements change into a snowman—and you draw the whole movement after you when you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless. Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma during his Saturn existence.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA240/En ... 01p01.html

Now this may sound indeed strange. It sounds like the highest beings are somewhat inferior. How could it be that we, feeble humans, have consciousness of the present, but these lofty beings don't?

Asking such a question bears great inertia from our present Earthly conceptions. We still imagine that the World exists as something objective, independent of any being, and thus time flows as an objective process regardless of whether anyone is watching. In this sense, some beings can observe it closely, while others may be 'looking in another direction', so to speak, and when they look back, they may have missed some event. So we imagine that the lofty beings are handicapped and they are blind to whatever happens in the present segment of the World-process and only grasp it later, while we are so advanced that we grasp the time that the Seraphim miss. This is, of course, not how things stand.

First, we have to realize that the inner life of the highest beings is very different. They don't have a private inner life, they don't reflect, don't make plans, don't desire things, and so on. Yet their inner life is the Cosmic phenomenal sphere of which we experience an aliased perspective. The imploding shells of this sphere are the 'snowmen' for the highest beings. All this forms the temporal backbone of our whole evolutionary existence. Everything else is a concretization of this foundational temporal envelope of potential. We are beings with consciousness of existence through time and having memory because our frames of existence are aliased from this foundational flow, which is the life of the highest beings.

Man's existence is folded in three more convolutions in relation to that pure Cosmic Time-existence. Now this 'snowman' process is reflected several times and is nested in one another. The most proximate to our lucid consciousness is that of our thinking. In its essence, our thoughts appear as snowmen. As a matter of fact, we gain intuition of the Saturn stage precisely when we are able to purify this fact and experience the thought process in this way. Yet in the full Earthly picture, this innermost sphere of thought is embedded in the snowman process of the higher context spheres. We can imagine that these spheres oscillate in complex ways one within another (remember the multiarm pendulum) and for this reason our thinking life is very complex. We can think of past, present and future precisely because our thoughts can reflect these complicated rotations. However, in its innermost essence, when we consider not what we are thinking about (we can be thinking about past, present, future), but the flow of thoughts itself, then we have the essence of the Saturn snowman. The moment we begin to reflect on this fact, the spheres rotate out of phase (we enter hysteresis-like state). We think about past, present and future but we forget that we are thinking. So at its core, our thinking process is still a Saturnine snowman process, however, because of the complicated reflections, the thought-snowmen that we lay down, reflect not simply pure becoming but also how our thoughts, feelings and will should be directed according to our intuition of what existence is and what we should do with it. In the pure Saturn state we don't need to think, control emotions, or direct actions because, in a sense, existence is as simple as it could be - there's a single attractor of existence: becoming the Godhead, continually outgrowing ourselves and encompassing the shells that we emerge from.

Seen in this way, we realize that our ability to think about past, present and future, is not something that makes us superior to the highest beings (as if we know more about reality than them) but is due to the fact that the primordial Time-memory flow is reflected and nested several times. Each eon adds a mirror, so to speak. In the first eon we live in the pure Time flow and behold only the implosion of memory (snowmen). The second eon adds a mirror, as if to have consciousness not only of being the Time-memory flow but also as if consciousness tries to differentiate from that flow and partly objectify it. At the same time, however, the innermost flow of that consciousness is still of the first kind, it's still laying snowmen. So it is in our fourth eon too. We behold swinging reflections of the original Time-memory flow, but now bouncing in the most complicated ways. Thus in a sense, we reach the possibility of a complicated experience of existence, yet at the price of being enmeshed in the reflections, deeply buried in the spirals of Time. And now we start retracing!

[Federica]

Great, Federica! I think you have caught the thread very precisely. Another angle on the above is that we can speak of gravity even in the first eon. Actually, there we have it in the cleanest form because all that we have on Saturn is nothing but a vast Cosmic spiritual state of imploding memory. Seen in an alternative way, we can say that it's not that the Cosmic memory shrinks/collapses but that the greatest delight of the Spirit is to continuously outgrow itself. Thus the memory pictures can be seen as the attempt of the Spirit to expand and include in its consciousness an image of its form - which, however, immediately becomes a past form, because the new form is one that has consciousness of the old one. So we can imagine how this continuous outgrowing encompasses the whole present state in a new sphere of consciousness and thus the previous spheres seem to recede and implode toward the center. This reminds me of something:

When it is possible to survey the period of life from the 56th to the 63rd year—and I myself am now in this position—one gazes at the influences exercised upon man between death and rebirth by Saturn, by the Beings of Saturn. This is an even more startling vista, a vista that causes bewilderment, nay indeed actual pain.

The Beings associated with Saturn are Beings who by their very nature take no heed at all of what they do in the immediate present; they act as it were unconsciously, under the sway of much loftier Beings into whose world they enter on reaching maturity. But as soon as they have done something, it stands there in powerful, living remembrance.

Try for a moment to imagine yourselves in this position ... I am not referring to any particular vocation or profession ... but just picture yourselves doing something, no matter what, and not noticing anything at all while you are actually doing it; but once you have done it, it stands there in living remembrance as an intensely vivid picture. Take a singer: he sings but is unconscious that he is doing so; he is simply being used by the Gods to sing. Imagine a large audience listening to him; as long as he is actually singing he is aware of nothing at all; he knows nothing, either about himself or about what he is experiencing. But the moment it is all over and the concert ended, the whole event is there and does not fade away; it remains and forms part of the content of his very life. On Saturn, man is the past, only the past.

Think of yourselves walking over the earth. As you walk you see nothing of yourself. But when you have gone a little further and look back, you see a little snowman—he is a figure of yourself as you were before you took the last step. Again you observe nothing, but walk on, and another little snowman stands behind you. And so it continues, with more and more little snowmen standing behind you. To all of them you say “I”.—Now transpose this imagery into the spiritual and you have the key to the nature of the Saturn Beings. Between death and a new birth man has to encounter these Beings—Beings who live wholly in the past. And there are men who in the elaboration of their karma have a particularly strong connection with these Saturn Beings.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA236/En ... 29p01.html

And another one:

Truth to tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters connected with the Saturn existence.

As I said, Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with something that might happen on the Earth—it does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible. Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that you exist. You act, you do something—you do not see this at the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but immediately afterwards these movements change into a snowman—and you draw the whole movement after you when you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless. Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma during his Saturn existence.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA240/En ... 01p01.html

Now this may sound indeed strange. It sounds like the highest beings are somewhat inferior. How could it be that we, feeble humans, have consciousness of the present, but these lofty beings don't?

Asking such a question bears great inertia from our present Earthly conceptions. We still imagine that the World exists as something objective, independent of any being, and thus time flows as an objective process regardless of whether anyone is watching. In this sense, some beings can observe it closely, while others may be 'looking in another direction', so to speak, and when they look back, they may have missed some event. So we imagine that the lofty beings are handicapped and they are blind to whatever happens in the present segment of the World-process and only grasp it later, while we are so advanced that we grasp the time that the Seraphim miss. This is, of course, not how things stand.

First, we have to realize that the inner life of the highest beings is very different. They don't have a private inner life, they don't reflect, don't make plans, don't desire things, and so on. Yet their inner life is the Cosmic phenomenal sphere of which we experience an aliased perspective. The imploding shells of this sphere are the 'snowmen' for the highest beings. All this forms the temporal backbone of our whole evolutionary existence. Everything else is a concretization of this foundational temporal envelope of potential. We are beings with consciousness of existence through time and having memory because our frames of existence are aliased from this foundational flow, which is the life of the highest beings.

Man's existence is folded in three more convolutions in relation to that pure Cosmic Time-existence. Now this 'snowman' process is reflected several times and is nested in one another. The most proximate to our lucid consciousness is that of our thinking. In its essence, our thoughts appear as snowmen. As a matter of fact, we gain intuition of the Saturn stage precisely when we are able to purify this fact and experience the thought process in this way. Yet in the full Earthly picture, this innermost sphere of thought is embedded in the snowman process of the higher context spheres. We can imagine that these spheres oscillate in complex ways one within another (remember the multiarm pendulum) and for this reason our thinking life is very complex. We can think of past, present and future precisely because our thoughts can reflect these complicated rotations. However, in its innermost essence, when we consider not what we are thinking about (we can be thinking about past, present, future), but the flow of thoughts itself, then we have the essence of the Saturn snowman. The moment we begin to reflect on this fact, the spheres rotate out of phase (we enter hysteresis-like state). We think about past, present and future but we forget that we are thinking. So at its core, our thinking process is still a Saturnine snowman process, however, because of the complicated reflections, the thought-snowmen that we lay down, reflect not simply pure becoming but also how our thoughts, feelings and will should be directed according to our intuition of what existence is and what we should do with it. In the pure Saturn state we don't need to think, control emotions, or direct actions because, in a sense, existence is as simple as it could be - there's a single attractor of existence: becoming the Godhead, continually outgrowing ourselves and encompassing the shells that we emerge from.

Seen in this way, we realize that our ability to think about past, present and future, is not something that makes us superior to the highest beings (as if we know more about reality than them) but is due to the fact that the primordial Time-memory flow is reflected and nested several times. Each eon adds a mirror, so to speak. In the first eon we live in the pure Time flow and behold only the implosion of memory (snowmen). The second eon adds a mirror, as if to have consciousness not only of being the Time-memory flow but also as if consciousness tries to differentiate from that flow and partly objectify it. At the same time, however, the innermost flow of that consciousness is still of the first kind, it's still laying snowmen. So it is in our fourth eon too. We behold swinging reflections of the original Time-memory flow, but now bouncing in the most complicated ways. Thus in a sense, we reach the possibility of a complicated experience of existence, yet at the price of being enmeshed in the reflections, deeply buried in the spirals of Time. And now we start retracing!

Thank you Cleric, all these cues feel like opportunities for breathtaking exercises, when the threads are followed, expanded, and then the strings are pulled back again. I have finally reread the post with the sock metaphor and the one with the shadertoy Moiré animation and it's definitely been easier to go throught them this time, which is surprising. The various metaphors and relationships are swirling together, so it feels like improvement.

Yes, I understand we can call gravity the essential driving force of the fundamental process of becoming which is still at the core of our spiritual activity in the Earthly sphere. Trying to put this in my own words: gravity constitutes the dynamism of the process of consciousness in its most primordial and undivided nature, which in the Saturn sphere translates in a flow of imploding memory. But memory of what? There’s no perception, no ‘other side’. Even if we think of our receding memory pictures of inner phenomena (like moving an imaginary dot) this can’t be it, because the thought perception could’t be there, in the Saturn sphere. This memory is very different from Earthly memory. For the Saturn beings, memory pictures are memories of self/selves in ‘previous’ states. Since there is no severed perception and no severed time, "previous" only means a self that has not yet lived as much, not yet become conscious of as much.
In other words, there’s nothing else to make the flowing state grow more expansive, filled with more consciousness, than more self (“outgrowing themselves”). Steiner says, they call all those snowmen “I”. You said it’s a memory of the being’s form. So this form can only be pure creation, without object; creation of a creating self, and maybe this is why Steiner says it is painful to take in...
In this sense, the past-oriented consciousness of the Saturn sphere is probably the only possible consciousness of self, when there’s only direct consciousness of (interconnected) being. Outgrowing oneself with consciousness of previous states is the only possible dynamism, because their 'now' is vast, but so simple (less is more!) and indeterminate (it contains all potential of potential). Then, the only way for them to find their identity 'in there' (no-where) is to allow implosion of potential within themselves (inner gravity), through interconnectedness, and behold the resulting form of being, which is only their interconnected being. There's no object it could be. I hope the above is an acceptable reformulation. However, when it comes to the details, some questions remain. One is:

I understand well all you say about these beings not missing things, and that we must be careful to filter out the Earthly biases. You refer to these Saturn beings as the highest beings, or the Seraphim. And here I wonder: in which relation do the colonies of planetary beings (and star beings) stand to the Hierarchies? I'm confused about that. Sometimes I believe I understand they are the same, and at other times, it seems they are not. For example, in the excerpts you quoted, Steiner speaks of these Saturn beings who become conscious of the snowmen as acting “under the sway of much loftier Beings into whose world they enter on reaching maturity”. It sounds like these snowmen beings are not the Seraphim. Or are they? Are they the decoherence of the Seraphim's brightest potential that comes to constitute the outgrowth of Seraphim-self? Also, I suspect the Seraphim is more like a unified being - and maybe the indistinguishable singular-plural in their name is a testimony of that?

[Cleric K]

I understand well all you say about these beings not missing things, and that we must be careful to filter out the Earthly biases. You refer to these Saturn beings as the highest beings, or the Seraphim. And here I wonder: in which relation do the colonies of planetary beings (and star beings) stand to the Hierarchies? I'm confused about that. Sometimes I believe I understand they are the same, and at other times, it seems they are not. For example, in the excerpts you quoted, Steiner speaks of these Saturn beings who become conscious of the snowmen as acting “under the sway of much loftier Beings into whose world they enter on reaching maturity”. It sounds like these snowmen beings are not the Seraphim. Or are they? Are they the decoherence of the Seraphim's brightest potential that comes to constitute the outgrowth of Seraphim-self? Also, I suspect the Seraphim is more like a unified being - and maybe the indistinguishable singular-plural in their name is a testimony of that?

Maybe the following, even though largely out of context, can give you some orientation.

We have already pointed out that what we observe as the physical form of the planet is a creation of the Spirits of Form. Our Earth-form is also a creation of the Spirits of Form. Now with regard to our earth we know that it is never at rest; that this earth is in a state of perpetual inner change and movement. It will be remembered from the description given in the Akasha Chronicle that the external aspect of our earth to-day is quite different from what was presented, for example, at the time we call the Atlantean epoch. In this primeval Atlantean epoch the surface of the earth-globe, to-day covered by the Atlantic ocean, was a mighty continent; while where Europe, Asia and Africa are now situated, scarcely any continents were as yet formed. Thus the solid matter, the substance of the earth has been transformed by its inner motion. The earth-planet is in a continual state of inner motion. Consider, for instance, that what we know to-day as the island of Heligoland is but a small part of that land which in the ninth and tenth centuries still projected out into the sea. Although the periods during which the inner changes alter the earth's surface are comparatively great yet without going deeply into these matters, we can all say that our planet is in perpetual inner motion. Indeed, if we do not merely include the solid earth in the planet, but also the water and the air, then daily life teaches us that the planet is in inner motion. In the formation of clouds and rain, in all the phenomena of atmospheric conditions, in the rise and fall of the water, in all these we see the inner mobility of the planetary substance. That is a life of the planet. Just as the etheric body works in the life of the individual man, so does that which we designate as the Spirits of Motion work in the life of the planet. We may therefore say: The external form of the planet is the creation by the Spirits of Form. The inner livingness is regulated by the beings we call the Spirits of Motion or Movement. Now to the occultist, such a planet is in every way an actual being, a being regulating what goes on within it, according to thought. Not only is that which has just been described as inner vitality present in the planet but the planet as a whole has consciousness, for it is indeed a being. This consciousness which corresponds to the consciousness of man, to the lower form of consciousness—the subconsciousness in the astral body—is regulated in the planet by the Spirits of Wisdom. We may therefore say: The lowest consciousness of the planet is regulated by the Spirits of Wisdom. In thus describing the planet, we still refer to the planet itself. We look up to the planet saying: It has a definite form, that corresponds to the Spirits of Form; it has an inner mobility, that corresponds to the Spirits of Motion. All this is permeated by consciousness, which corresponds to the Spirits of Wisdom. Now let us follow the planet further. It passes through space; it has an inner impulse which drives it through space, just as man has an inner impulse of will which causes him to take steps, to walk along in space. That which leads the planet through space, which governs its movement through space and causes it to revolve around the fixed star, corresponds to the Spirits of Will, or Thrones. Now if these Spirits of Will were only to give the impulse of motion to the planet, every planet would go its own way through the universe; but this is not the case, for every planet acts in conformity with the whole system. The motion is not only so regulated that the planet moves, but it is brought into due order with the whole planetary system. Just as due order is brought let us say, to a group of people, of whom one goes in one direction and another in another to reach a common goal—the movements of the planets are also so arranged that they harmonize. The harmony of movement between one planet and another corresponds to the activity of the Cherubim. The regulation of the combined movements of the system is the work of the Cherubim. Each planetary system with its fixed star, which is in a sense the Commander-in-Chief under the guidance of the Cherubim, is again related to the other planetary systems to which other fixed stars belong. These systems mutually arrange their positions in space with due regard to the neighboring systems, just as individual persons agree together, deliberate with one another with regard to their common action. Just as men found a social system by virtue of this reciprocity, so is there also a reciprocity of the planetary systems. Mutual understanding prevails between one fixed star and another. By this means alone does the cosmos come into existence. That which, so to speak, the planetary systems discuss with one another in cosmic space in order to become a cosmos is regulated by those beings we call the Seraphim. We have now, as it were, exhausted what we find in man, as far as the consciousness soul. Just as in man we ascend to his higher spirit-nature, to that which alone gives meaning to the whole system up to the consciousness soul, so if we ascend above the Seraphim we come to what we tried to describe to-day as the Highest Trinity of Cosmic Being; we come to that which governs in the Universe as the All-pervading, Divine, Threefold Divine Life, Which creates for Itself sheaths in the different Planetary Systems. Just as that which lives in man as Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man, (Manas, Buddhi, Atma), creates sheaths in the consciousness soul, intellectual soul, and sentient soul, astral, etheric, and physical bodies: so do the Fixed Stars of planetary systems move through space as the bodies of Divine Beings. Inasmuch as we contemplate the life of the world of Stars, we contemplate the bodies of the Gods, and finally of the Divine in general.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA136/En ... 07p01.html

To form some conception of the perspective of these lofty beings it can help if we do not try to imagine them as appearing out of nothing. This is tempting because we explain how at the core of existence we find Divine simplicity (which ordinary science also seeks as mathematical simplicity, elegance, and beauty in the theories). This makes it look as if we can start with the concept of this Cosmic consciousness that continually outgrows itself and work our way outward, just like we can imagine doing that with the Big Bang. However, as we have spoken before, this is not how things stand. Every such divine state of being exists in relation to the infinite potential. In that sense, we have used this example before, we can't say that first the number one has appeared, then two was created and so on. As soon as we have any one number, all other infinite numbers are also implicitly there. Thus, these divine states are experienced as the integration of a whole ongoing evolutionary development that didn't start from some blank state but appears as growing from the seed of a still prior development and so on. In other words, this state is not simply a simple one but one that is exceedingly imbued with Wisdom. This reminds me of the popular verse "A Wise Old Owl":

There was an owl liv'd in an oak
The more he heard, the less he spoke
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
O, if men were all like that wise bird.

Thus, when we think of the Seraphim, we shouldn't imagine a simple implosion of inner states but an inner perspective that is exceeding wise, integrated innumerable lived experiences within.

Speaking of gold veins, I was quite surprised when I read the quote below. I had decided to write about this inner silent wisdom before I looked through the archive. I was looking for the description of the planetary beings but also found the following which spoke precisely about what I had in mind. I have read these lectures quite some years ago and I don't consciously remember this part. Yet it only shows that when things are followed in depth, in one way or another everything converges in Truth.

Still more difficult to describe are those beings called the Seraphim who form the first and highest category of the First Hierarchy. It would only be possible to gain some idea of the impression which the Seraphim make upon occult vision, if we take the following comparison from life. We will pursue the comparison just made. We will consider a man who for decades has built up experiences which have brought him overwhelming wisdom, and we will imagine that such a wise man speaks from his most impersonal life wisdom, that out of this most impersonal wisdom his whole being is permeated as if with inner fire, so that he need say nothing, but just appear before us. The wisdom of those decades, that life-long wisdom, will be apparent in his countenance, so that his look can tell us of the sorrows and experiences of decades; and this look can make such an impression on us that it speaks to us as the world itself, which we experience. If we imagine such a look or imagine that such a wise man does not speak to us in words alone; but that in the tone and in the peculiar coloring of his words he can give us such an impression of all this rich life of experience that we hear in what he says something like an undertone, conveying the nature of his experiences, then again we gain something of the feeling which the occultist has when he ascends to the Seraphim. Just like a countenance matured by life which tells of the experience of decades, or like a phrase which is so expressed that we hear not merely the thoughts, but realise: “This phrase expressed with resonance, has been acquired in pain and by the experience of life. It is no theory, it has been attained by struggles and suffering. It has passed through the battles and victories of life, and has sunk into the heart.” If we hear all this as in an undertone, we gain an idea of the impression which the trained occultist receives when he lifts himself to the beings we call the Seraphim.

(same lecture)

Here's something more about the inner life.

In the Third Hierarchy we have manifestation and being filled with spirit. In the Second Hierarchy, self-creation, and stimulation of life. In the First Hierarchy, which consists of the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, we have a form of creation in which the part created is detached—we have there not only self-creation, but world-creation. That which proceeds from the beings of the First Hierarchy is a detached world, such an independent world that this world-phenomenon is a fact, even when the beings are no longer there. Now we may ask: “What then is the actual life of this First Hierarchy?” The actual life of this First Hierarchy is such that When such objective, independent, detached beings proceed from it, it realizes itself. For the inner condition of consciousness, the inner experience of the beings of the First Hierarchy, lies in creation, in forming independent beings. We may say: They contemplate that which they create and which becomes a world, and it is not when they look into themselves but when they look out of themselves upon the world which is their own creation, that they possess themselves. To create other beings is their inner life; to live in other beings, is the inner experience of these beings of the First Hierarchy. Creation of worlds is their external life—creation of beings their inner life.

(same lecture)

[Federica]

...
If we take something like agriculture we see that it is a constant war with pests, diseases, bad weather, and so on. This may seem crazy today, but when we better organize the flow, the whole environment will be steered differently. Some people even today may have experience with this in their gardens, where the moral forces of the gardener overflow the etheric body and positively influence the etheric body of the whole garden, they become fused. It's as if the gardener connects his blood and lymph system to that of the surrounding environment and now his inner strength and immune forces spread out and benefit the common organism.

Yes, such things indeed seem crazy today. It's hard to believe that the gardeners of the future would have to fuse their etheric bodies to that of the garden. Then, just like we have inner experiences within our brain, limbs, etc., so our consciousness expands and have inner experiences in the whole volume of the garden. Then movements of our Ls can implode the World state in a direction that results in better health for our common organism. Then pests, for example, will simply have no interest in the garden. They would find it distasteful, just like a scoundrel has no interest in going to the library.
...

Probably, another consideration here is that the pests could still have interest in our garden, but our thoughts may change. If we come to see the pests as beings trying to nourish and shelter themselves, manifesting an inner interconnected reality, and in so doing, contributing to a large-spectrum karmic balance in spiritual interaction - and if we also have the same holistic approach to all other outer phenomena (weather, weeds, other animals) possibly diminishing the harvested quantities - we may also achieve better alignment of the layers, and the perceptual reality could remain the same, when it comes to the presence of those pests. The better alignment could manifest in other perceptual forms.