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

[AshvinP]

Thanks for this synopsis, Federica.

However, if I am getting it right, these are two different destructive processes taking place in the human organization. On the one hand, the destructive nature of the chemical elements that make up our physical body - evident in the human corpse, the condition in which it is isolated from the restoring action of the life body - keeps us blindly true to the mineral nature of our current planetary incarnation, which is the densest; on the other hand, the destructive nature of our conscious activities, by which our entire organization is exhausted and consumed by the light of consciousness (and the sharper its ray the more exhausting the effect at the end of each day) is more like a sacrifice, not a blind destruction. By spending our mineral capital, we actually learn to deal with the light of consciousness, nurturing it and enlivening it. So this latter destructive process is our only means to honor and realize our human nature, instead of wasting it. And to the extent that we are not fully in control of it, bits and pieces of our activity fall back down at the level of our physicality, to increment and enlarge the first, blind process of destruction. In this way, whatever part of our activity is not enlightened and not fully mastered by the ray of our conscious activity - all the non-concentric, unconscious, uncontrolled or immoral thoughts, feelings, and actions we flow into - sink into our physical body and facilitate and accelerate its blindly self-destructive nature, by means of illnesses and accidents.

I would only emphasize here that the ray of spiritual activity can partake in the etheric restorative nature insofar as it is strengthened, enlivened, and infused with moral ideals. So if by 'sharper' we mean it is simply more intensely fueled by passions and mechanical intellectual activity, then yes it will exhaust and deplete our physical-etheric nature more quickly. Yet it can also be sharpened in the higher sense, when it then rediscovers its living essence through the Imagination (made possible by the sacrificial deeds of Christ). Steiner alludes to this in a passage that I think was quoted recently, where he mentions how we can think imaginatively without it ever exhausting us - that curvature of our being has an infinite supply of ideal energy.

So, then, we find in the human being still another process: we see how out of the whole organism the so-called higher feelings and emotions emerge again in the soul. What is the characteristic of these? Whoever deals with this question without prejudice, but also without false asceticism, without false piety and hypocrisy, will say: What we may call the higher moral feelings and those moods in a man which develop into enthusiasm for all that is good, beautiful and true, for all that brings about the progress of the world, this is alive in us only because we are able, by the disposition of our heart and soul, to rise above everything originally implanted in us by instinct; so that, in our spiritual feelings, in our spiritual enthusiasm, we raise ourselves above all that the bodily organism alone can arouse. This can go so far that he whose enthusiasm is in his spiritual life, sets so much store by the object of it that it is a light thing for him even to give his physical life for the sake of what has inspired his higher moral and aesthetic feelings.

The bolded has brought to the forefront of my thoughts a question I've been pondering over the last two weeks, namely: how to understand a fact such as this.

It seems to me the above can be related to this:

Schiller was also an important poet who dreamed much in the way I have described. Just imagine, however, that all those who in their youth were trained like Schiller to become doctors had given up the practice of medicine as he did and later, thanks to an extensive patronage, had been appointed “professor of history” without any real preparation or serious study of history! As a matter of fact, Schiller did deliver interesting lectures at the University of Jena, but his students did not get from them what they needed to learn. He also gradually stopped giving these university lectures and was happy when he did not have to give them anymore. Imagine that things would be the same with every professor of history or every young physician! Obviously, everything that is good also has its dark side. The world must be protected, so to speak, from standing still. It seems trivial to say this, but it is nevertheless a profound mystery-truth: not all people can dream in this way. The forces with which they dream must first be applied in the external world to something different so that through it a foundation may be created for a further evolution of the earth. It would come to a standstill were all men to dream as I have indicated.

Here he is speaking of how the imaginative life penetrated more into the waking life in personalities such as Goethe and Schiller for karmic reasons. This allowed them to notice many aspects of their surrounding environment that are aliased from the average person with normal waking consciousness. Yet it can also carry people away from otherwise important vocations that plant the seeds for future evolution, as he referenced for Schiller. I'm not saying Bushnell was in the same situation, I have no idea, but I think there is a similar principle at work insofar as one becomes convinced that it is doing more for the Palestinian people to self-immolate in protest than to gradually transform oneself and one's environment from the inside-out. The way that the latter would benefit humanity can only be discerned by living thinking that perceives the spiritual threads weaving through the Cosmic evolutionary process, linking seemingly 'trivial' tasks on Earth to even the furthest reaches of Solar evolution.

[Federica]

Thanks for this synopsis, Federica.

However, if I am getting it right, these are two different destructive processes taking place in the human organization. On the one hand, the destructive nature of the chemical elements that make up our physical body - evident in the human corpse, the condition in which it is isolated from the restoring action of the life body - keeps us blindly true to the mineral nature of our current planetary incarnation, which is the densest; on the other hand, the destructive nature of our conscious activities, by which our entire organization is exhausted and consumed by the light of consciousness (and the sharper its ray the more exhausting the effect at the end of each day) is more like a sacrifice, not a blind destruction. By spending our mineral capital, we actually learn to deal with the light of consciousness, nurturing it and enlivening it. So this latter destructive process is our only means to honor and realize our human nature, instead of wasting it. And to the extent that we are not fully in control of it, bits and pieces of our activity fall back down at the level of our physicality, to increment and enlarge the first, blind process of destruction. In this way, whatever part of our activity is not enlightened and not fully mastered by the ray of our conscious activity - all the non-concentric, unconscious, uncontrolled or immoral thoughts, feelings, and actions we flow into - sink into our physical body and facilitate and accelerate its blindly self-destructive nature, by means of illnesses and accidents.

I would only emphasize here that the ray of spiritual activity can partake in the etheric restorative nature insofar as it is strengthened, enlivened, and infused with moral ideals. So if by 'sharper' we mean it is simply more intensely fueled by passions and mechanical intellectual activity, then yes it will exhaust and deplete our physical-etheric nature more quickly. Yet it can also be sharpened in the higher sense, when it then rediscovers its living essence through the Imagination (made possible by the sacrificial deeds of Christ). Steiner alludes to this in a passage that I think was quoted recently, where he mentions how we can think imaginatively without it ever exhausting us - that curvature of our being has an infinite supply of ideal energy.

So, then, we find in the human being still another process: we see how out of the whole organism the so-called higher feelings and emotions emerge again in the soul. What is the characteristic of these? Whoever deals with this question without prejudice, but also without false asceticism, without false piety and hypocrisy, will say: What we may call the higher moral feelings and those moods in a man which develop into enthusiasm for all that is good, beautiful and true, for all that brings about the progress of the world, this is alive in us only because we are able, by the disposition of our heart and soul, to rise above everything originally implanted in us by instinct; so that, in our spiritual feelings, in our spiritual enthusiasm, we raise ourselves above all that the bodily organism alone can arouse. This can go so far that he whose enthusiasm is in his spiritual life, sets so much store by the object of it that it is a light thing for him even to give his physical life for the sake of what has inspired his higher moral and aesthetic feelings.

The bolded has brought to the forefront of my thoughts a question I've been pondering over the last two weeks, namely: how to understand a fact such as this.

It seems to me the above can be related to this:

Schiller was also an important poet who dreamed much in the way I have described. Just imagine, however, that all those who in their youth were trained like Schiller to become doctors had given up the practice of medicine as he did and later, thanks to an extensive patronage, had been appointed “professor of history” without any real preparation or serious study of history! As a matter of fact, Schiller did deliver interesting lectures at the University of Jena, but his students did not get from them what they needed to learn. He also gradually stopped giving these university lectures and was happy when he did not have to give them anymore. Imagine that things would be the same with every professor of history or every young physician! Obviously, everything that is good also has its dark side. The world must be protected, so to speak, from standing still. It seems trivial to say this, but it is nevertheless a profound mystery-truth: not all people can dream in this way. The forces with which they dream must first be applied in the external world to something different so that through it a foundation may be created for a further evolution of the earth. It would come to a standstill were all men to dream as I have indicated.

Here he is speaking of how the imaginative life penetrated more into the waking life in personalities such as Goethe and Schiller for karmic reasons. This allowed them to notice many aspects of their surrounding environment that are aliased from the average person with normal waking consciousness. Yet it can also carry people away from otherwise important vocations that plant the seeds for future evolution, as he referenced for Schiller. I'm not saying Bushnell was in the same situation, I have no idea, but I think there is a similar principle at work insofar as one becomes convinced that it is doing more for the Palestinian people to self-immolate in protest than to gradually transform oneself and one's environment from the inside-out. The way that the latter would benefit humanity can only be discerned by living thinking that perceives the spiritual threads weaving through the Cosmic evolutionary process, linking seemingly 'trivial' tasks on Earth to even the furthest reaches of Solar evolution.

By “sharper” I meant to include conscious orientations toward higher ideals.
I couldn’t find the passage you evoque, however from the lecture I have referenced, and in general, I understand that consciousness, even when experienced as concentric with moral ideals, uses up physical forces. The ideal energy might be in infinite supply, but physical energy in the physical body is burned up and exhausted nonetheless. My understanding is, this is the deal of being incarnated on Earth, no matter how elevated a stage one has attained. Is this compatible with what you have pointed out? I believe it is. From the references lecture:

Now, can we not say that consciousness itself, man's spiritual life itself, causes — in order that it may subsist, that it may indeed be there at all — the exhaustion and weariness of the organism? And so, in order to throw a little light on this investigator's hypothesis, we might answer the question: Why, then, do the enemies of life described by him come into our organism? By saying: Because, fundamentally, the consciousness process always confronts what is merely organic life in man as a kind of poisoning process, and we could not rise to our higher spiritual life at all if we did not destroy the organism. In the very processes hostile to the organism lies the whole potentiality of our consciousness. When we speak of the effect of poison with reference to organic activity, we are bound to say: What we must regard as the blessing, the salvation of our life — namely, that we can be a conscious being in a physical body and can develop conscious activity — we owe to the circumstance that, with our conscious life, we encroach destructively, poisonously, upon our organism.
…
Here, however, it is not our concern to explain these purely materialistic hypotheses, but to establish the fact that consciousness with its content must itself intrude destructively into the organism which contains the external instrument of the consciousness, and that the sleep condition compensates for the destructive process which is thus really repaired. Hence we may say: Sleep is the healer of those conditions which, as processes of ill health, consciousness is obliged to bring about in the organism.

Thanks for sharing your idea on Bushnell's act. For my part, I don't have a clear opinion yet. But I wonder if we can say that he was convinced that he was doing more for the Palestinian people in this way. I'm not sure this is self-evident.

[AshvinP]

By “sharper” I meant to include conscious orientations toward higher ideals.
I couldn’t find the passage you evoque, however from the lecture I have referenced, and in general, I understand that consciousness, even when experienced as concentric with moral ideals, uses up physical forces. The ideal energy might be in infinite supply, but physical energy in the physical body is burned up and exhausted nonetheless. My understanding is, this is the deal of being incarnated on Earth, no matter how elevated a stage one has attained. Is this compatible with what you have pointed out? I believe it is. From the references lecture:

Now, can we not say that consciousness itself, man's spiritual life itself, causes — in order that it may subsist, that it may indeed be there at all — the exhaustion and weariness of the organism? And so, in order to throw a little light on this investigator's hypothesis, we might answer the question: Why, then, do the enemies of life described by him come into our organism? By saying: Because, fundamentally, the consciousness process always confronts what is merely organic life in man as a kind of poisoning process, and we could not rise to our higher spiritual life at all if we did not destroy the organism. In the very processes hostile to the organism lies the whole potentiality of our consciousness. When we speak of the effect of poison with reference to organic activity, we are bound to say: What we must regard as the blessing, the salvation of our life — namely, that we can be a conscious being in a physical body and can develop conscious activity — we owe to the circumstance that, with our conscious life, we encroach destructively, poisonously, upon our organism.
…
Here, however, it is not our concern to explain these purely materialistic hypotheses, but to establish the fact that consciousness with its content must itself intrude destructively into the organism which contains the external instrument of the consciousness, and that the sleep condition compensates for the destructive process which is thus really repaired. Hence we may say: Sleep is the healer of those conditions which, as processes of ill health, consciousness is obliged to bring about in the organism.

If we think about it from the overarching principles of spiritual evolution, we know that Christ incarnated and went through the portal of death to turn the tide of evolution so that the poles of existence may be gradually spiraled together through our spiritual activity, including the poles of death and life. This is why we can say he truly conquered death and provided the impulse for humanity to do so as well, through free imitation of his ideal.

The reason we die physically is because we lack the strength and life of spiritual activity to remain conscious and active in the deeper curvatures of the World groove, so we can only consciously work on our development through the sensory support of the body. But only so much can be attained within the aliased sensory spectrum, so we cast it off (unfold the convolution) and return to the deeper curvatures, resting in the support of higher beings and their activity which advance our evolution. These higher beings can then rebuild our etheric and physical vehicles so we can continue developing our conscious spiritual activity and soul capacities in the next incarnation. Actually we do this every night as well so that the higher beings can renew our physical-etheric vehicle. When our thinking merely follows the sensory spectrum or weaves in abstract theories, it is oriented toward consuming the spiritual (as reflected through our lower bodies) and brings nothing new or creative to spiritual existence. 

Yet on the path of initiation we can learn to remain conscious and active within the deeper curvatures independently of the sensory support, bringing the holistic after-death experience more and more into the incarnate experience. Then our thinking becomes more artistic and creative in relation to sensory events, seeding new potential for spiritual development within the sensory. In this way, we gradually spiritualize the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, i.e. we inflow the infinite ideal forces and energy that are at the root of physical existence. With more holistic insight into the streams of destiny embedded within these bodies (that we normally only attain after death), we gradually take more and more creative responsibility for maintaining and renewing them during life. This develops more and more continuity of consciousness, so eventually we don't experience the transition as 'death' but simply as metamorphosis from one stage of existence to another, just as we may experience the rhythms of individual life development or cultural development over the epochs.

This is all a very abstract way of putting it. As a concrete example, we could imagine how there are many unsuspected healing forces embedded within the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms (which our ancestors used to know through instinctive clairvoyance). As we develop our higher thinking, we begin to trace these forces and how they can be used to support healthy lifestyle, mitigate and cure various ailments, reversing various degenerative processes, and so forth. We are only at the earliest stages of that process as a whole, the very beginning, yet the tide has been shifted and now, instead of the poles of spiritual life (what we experience as 'death') and physical life growing farther apart, they are growing closer together. Of course, this will only be manifested consciously for those who remain watchful, vigilant, and devoted to the cultivation of aesthetic and moral spiritual activity. 

Spiritual science knows that the spirit creates the physical; therefore, when spiritual forces work upon the ether body, they have a health-giving effect also on the physical body. If our concepts and ideas about the world and life are sound, these healthy thoughts will act as a powerful force of healing. Anthroposophical truths can be harmful only to natures made weak by materialism and naturalism; when they can be absorbed and digested they make a person strong. Only when that happens can anthroposophy fulfill its task.

Goethe answered the question concerning life and death beautifully when he said: “Everything in nature is life; she only invented death to have more life.” One could add that, as well as death, nature also invented illness in order to produce strong health. Furthermore, she had to endow wisdom with apparently harmful effects to make it a powerful force of healing.

The anthroposophical world movement differs from other movements that may provide logical proofs to be argued and debated. Anthroposophy does not wish to be something that can be proved simply through logical arguments. It wishes to provide both spiritual and bodily health. Living proof of its truth will be increasingly discovered the more it is seen to enhance life, transforming discontentment into contentment. Spiritual science is like the so-called poison which, when transformed, fructifies life and becomes a source of healing.

[Federica]

By “sharper” I meant to include conscious orientations toward higher ideals.
I couldn’t find the passage you evoque, however from the lecture I have referenced, and in general, I understand that consciousness, even when experienced as concentric with moral ideals, uses up physical forces. The ideal energy might be in infinite supply, but physical energy in the physical body is burned up and exhausted nonetheless. My understanding is, this is the deal of being incarnated on Earth, no matter how elevated a stage one has attained. Is this compatible with what you have pointed out? I believe it is. From the references lecture:

Now, can we not say that consciousness itself, man's spiritual life itself, causes — in order that it may subsist, that it may indeed be there at all — the exhaustion and weariness of the organism? And so, in order to throw a little light on this investigator's hypothesis, we might answer the question: Why, then, do the enemies of life described by him come into our organism? By saying: Because, fundamentally, the consciousness process always confronts what is merely organic life in man as a kind of poisoning process, and we could not rise to our higher spiritual life at all if we did not destroy the organism. In the very processes hostile to the organism lies the whole potentiality of our consciousness. When we speak of the effect of poison with reference to organic activity, we are bound to say: What we must regard as the blessing, the salvation of our life — namely, that we can be a conscious being in a physical body and can develop conscious activity — we owe to the circumstance that, with our conscious life, we encroach destructively, poisonously, upon our organism.
…
Here, however, it is not our concern to explain these purely materialistic hypotheses, but to establish the fact that consciousness with its content must itself intrude destructively into the organism which contains the external instrument of the consciousness, and that the sleep condition compensates for the destructive process which is thus really repaired. Hence we may say: Sleep is the healer of those conditions which, as processes of ill health, consciousness is obliged to bring about in the organism.

If we think about it from the overarching principles of spiritual evolution, we know that Christ incarnated and went through the portal of death to turn the tide of evolution so that the poles of existence may be gradually spiraled together through our spiritual activity, including the poles of death and life. This is why we can say he truly conquered death and provided the impulse for humanity to do so as well, through free imitation of his ideal.

The reason we die physically is because we lack the strength and life of spiritual activity to remain conscious and active in the deeper curvatures of the World groove, so we can only consciously work on our development through the sensory support of the body. But only so much can be attained within the aliased sensory spectrum, so we cast it off (unfold the convolution) and return to the deeper curvatures, resting in the support of higher beings and their activity which advance our evolution. These higher beings can then rebuild our etheric and physical vehicles so we can continue developing our conscious spiritual activity and soul capacities in the next incarnation. Actually we do this every night as well so that the higher beings can renew our physical-etheric vehicle. When our thinking merely follows the sensory spectrum or weaves in abstract theories, it is oriented toward consuming the spiritual (as reflected through our lower bodies) and brings nothing new or creative to spiritual existence. 

Yet on the path of initiation we can learn to remain conscious and active within the deeper curvatures independently of the sensory support, bringing the holistic after-death experience more and more into the incarnate experience. Then our thinking becomes more artistic and creative in relation to sensory events, seeding new potential for spiritual development within the sensory. In this way, we gradually spiritualize the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, i.e. we inflow the infinite ideal forces and energy that are at the root of physical existence. With more holistic insight into the streams of destiny embedded within these bodies (that we normally only attain after death), we gradually take more and more creative responsibility for maintaining and renewing them during life. This develops more and more continuity of consciousness, so eventually we don't experience the transition as 'death' but simply as metamorphosis from one stage of existence to another, just as we may experience the rhythms of individual life development or cultural development over the epochs.

This is all a very abstract way of putting it. As a concrete example, we could imagine how there are many unsuspected healing forces embedded within the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms (which our ancestors used to know through instinctive clairvoyance). As we develop our higher thinking, we begin to trace these forces and how they can be used to support healthy lifestyle, mitigate and cure various ailments, reversing various degenerative processes, and so forth. We are only at the earliest stages of that process as a whole, the very beginning, yet the tide has been shifted and now, instead of the poles of spiritual life (what we experience as 'death') and physical life growing farther apart, they are growing closer together. Of course, this will only be manifested consciously for those who remain watchful, vigilant, and devoted to the cultivation of aesthetic and moral spiritual activity. 

Ashvin,

I understand your reasoning, we have discussed this many times: Imitatio Christi, and the evolutionary path of man towards ascending the spiritual hierarchies. But the topic I addressed with my initial comment, and subsequent ones, is the constitution of man in our epoch, or, to use Steiners words, the nature of humanity, as described in SSiO.

If we look at a picture of an Initiate like Rudolf Steiner at 50 or 60, we can definitely see that the physical body was being exhausted, despite the high ideals, and the attainment of the highest levels of Initiation. A highly developed individual who is able to maintain consciousness during sleep, as you describe, and thus is able to transition into physical death more or less ‘seamlessly’, is still consumed in his physical body by that very consciousness as a whole, as long as it partakes in physical, incarnated life on Earth, as an inevitable rule of earthly existence in the present planetary condition. That’s my understanding. Based on your elaboration, I am not sure if you agree with that or not.

[AshvinP]

By “sharper” I meant to include conscious orientations toward higher ideals.
I couldn’t find the passage you evoque, however from the lecture I have referenced, and in general, I understand that consciousness, even when experienced as concentric with moral ideals, uses up physical forces. The ideal energy might be in infinite supply, but physical energy in the physical body is burned up and exhausted nonetheless. My understanding is, this is the deal of being incarnated on Earth, no matter how elevated a stage one has attained. Is this compatible with what you have pointed out? I believe it is. From the references lecture:

If we think about it from the overarching principles of spiritual evolution, we know that Christ incarnated and went through the portal of death to turn the tide of evolution so that the poles of existence may be gradually spiraled together through our spiritual activity, including the poles of death and life. This is why we can say he truly conquered death and provided the impulse for humanity to do so as well, through free imitation of his ideal.

The reason we die physically is because we lack the strength and life of spiritual activity to remain conscious and active in the deeper curvatures of the World groove, so we can only consciously work on our development through the sensory support of the body. But only so much can be attained within the aliased sensory spectrum, so we cast it off (unfold the convolution) and return to the deeper curvatures, resting in the support of higher beings and their activity which advance our evolution. These higher beings can then rebuild our etheric and physical vehicles so we can continue developing our conscious spiritual activity and soul capacities in the next incarnation. Actually we do this every night as well so that the higher beings can renew our physical-etheric vehicle. When our thinking merely follows the sensory spectrum or weaves in abstract theories, it is oriented toward consuming the spiritual (as reflected through our lower bodies) and brings nothing new or creative to spiritual existence. 

Yet on the path of initiation we can learn to remain conscious and active within the deeper curvatures independently of the sensory support, bringing the holistic after-death experience more and more into the incarnate experience. Then our thinking becomes more artistic and creative in relation to sensory events, seeding new potential for spiritual development within the sensory. In this way, we gradually spiritualize the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, i.e. we inflow the infinite ideal forces and energy that are at the root of physical existence. With more holistic insight into the streams of destiny embedded within these bodies (that we normally only attain after death), we gradually take more and more creative responsibility for maintaining and renewing them during life. This develops more and more continuity of consciousness, so eventually we don't experience the transition as 'death' but simply as metamorphosis from one stage of existence to another, just as we may experience the rhythms of individual life development or cultural development over the epochs.

This is all a very abstract way of putting it. As a concrete example, we could imagine how there are many unsuspected healing forces embedded within the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms (which our ancestors used to know through instinctive clairvoyance). As we develop our higher thinking, we begin to trace these forces and how they can be used to support healthy lifestyle, mitigate and cure various ailments, reversing various degenerative processes, and so forth. We are only at the earliest stages of that process as a whole, the very beginning, yet the tide has been shifted and now, instead of the poles of spiritual life (what we experience as 'death') and physical life growing farther apart, they are growing closer together. Of course, this will only be manifested consciously for those who remain watchful, vigilant, and devoted to the cultivation of aesthetic and moral spiritual activity. 

Ashvin,

I understand your reasoning, we have discussed this many times: Imitatio Christi, and the evolutionary path of man towards ascending the spiritual hierarchies. But the topic I addressed with my initial comment, and subsequent ones, is the constitution of man in our epoch, or, to use Steiners words, the nature of humanity, as described in SSiO.

If we look at a picture of an Initiate like Rudolf Steiner at 50 or 60, we can definitely see that the physical body was being exhausted, despite the high ideals, and the attainment of the highest levels of Initiation. A highly developed individual who is able to maintain consciousness during sleep, as you describe, and thus is able to transition into physical death more or less ‘seamlessly’, is still consumed in his physical body but that very consciousness as a whole, as long as it partakes in physical, incarnated life on Earth, as an inevitable rule of earthly existence in the present planetary condition. That’s my understanding. Based on your elaboration, I am not sure if you agree with that or not.

Sure, everything unfolds on a gradient over many iterations. We can say for sure that Steiner's physical body was not as exhausted as it would have been had he not developed his higher spiritual consciousness (assuming all else is equal, whereas things are rarely that neat - for ex. initiates begin to take responsibility for broader spheres of humanity, such as various groups, the nation, the species, which could then deplete their life forces more than if they were only responsible for their own soul life).

It's true that we can speak of the average 'nature of humanity' at our current time as that which has polar opposition between spiritual activity and the physical-organic nature. Yet, as we know, there are many streams of evolution currently superimposed on each other within incarnate existence. So we can't really speak of a single 'constitution of man', because those on a path of higher development have already started transmuting that nature to some lesser or greater extent. In fact, our current stage of evolution and its unfoldment only makes sense in light of the fact that it is facilitated by human beings who have advanced to much higher stages.

So it's important not to take the indications provided by Steiner as inflexible rules that apply to Earthly life no matter what the circumstance, rather they are simply the condition for the average person which helps us get our initial bearings. The sensory spectrum will remain in its decohered state so long as most of humanity has not integrated the cognitive etheric nature, but eventually it will become more 'imaginatively pliable' and incarnate existence will be quite different, not necessarily with the strict polar opposition between spiritual activity and physical coherence. The polar dynamic will become more pure, so to speak, so that spiritual activity works with the sensory spectrum for its further development more than against it. We can already intimate concrete signs of this inversion in the initial stages of inner development.

First it begins in our thinking, such as Cleric described at the end of Part 2:

Our understanding of the flow of being coincides with our expanding awareness within the greater intuitive curvatures of the World groove. This can happen in the right way only if we strive to harmonize these nested intuitive curvatures. For example, when such harmony is attained, our thinking life feels to be musically embedded within the soul flow. In a sense, the curvatures through which our conceptual thinking flows are felt to be self-similar to the curvatures of the dreamy soul flow, even though of a different scale and quality. Now our thoughts are not simply about some theoretical existence, while the true World process that makes these thoughts possible remains in the background, but they are experienced like sub-harmonics of our deeper intuitive flow. Every thought now feels like a testimony that tries to focus certain qualities of the deeper intuitive flow into a concept.

When our thinking simply tries to model the sensory spectrum and produce thoughts about some theoretical entities that should explain that spectrum, then we can truly speak about thinking working against the spectrum - it incrementally benefits from the effort, but at the same time it gets lost in a maze of horizontal content and keeps the spectrum as something independent of its activity, something it has disclaimed responsibility for. Yet when our thoughts about the spectrum become a testimony for the deeper intuitive flow, we are already starting to work with it more. We are using it more as a sounding board for our intuitive activity so the latter can perfect its inner configuration in accordance with Cosmic intents. This is the very process by which the spectrum will be spiritualized and redeemed over many iterations.

And these developments won't necessarily take millions or hundreds of thousands of years. For ex. Steiner mentions how the current mode of bisexual reproduction will end and the Moon will reunite with the Earth around 8,000 AD. We can imagine how different our relationship to the sensory spectrum must be for something like this to unfold harmoniously. How could souls continue to incarnate onto Earth if they are still destroying the remaining bodies through their spiritual activity? These are events humanity should begin to hold as concrete ideals even now to prepare for them in the best possible way.

[Federica]

Sure, everything unfolds on a gradient over many iterations. We can say for sure that Steiner's physical body was not as exhausted as it would have been had he not developed his higher spiritual consciousness (assuming all else is equal, whereas things are rarely that neat - for ex. initiates begin to take responsibility for broader spheres of humanity, such as various groups, the nation, the species, which could then deplete their life forces more than if they were only responsible for their own soul life).

It's true that we can speak of the average 'nature of humanity' at our current time as that which has polar opposition between spiritual activity and the physical-organic nature. Yet, as we know, there are many streams of evolution currently superimposed on each other within incarnate existence. So we can't really speak of a single 'constitution of man', because those on a path of higher development have already started transmuting that nature to some lesser or greater extent. In fact, our current stage of evolution and its unfoldment only makes sense in light of the fact that it is facilitated by human beings who have advanced to much higher stages.

So it's important not to take the indications provided by Steiner as inflexible rules that apply to Earthly life no matter what the circumstance, rather they are simply the condition for the average person which helps us get our initial bearings. The sensory spectrum will remain in its decohered state so long as most of humanity has not integrated the cognitive etheric nature, but eventually it will become more 'imaginatively pliable' and incarnate existence will be quite different, not necessarily with the strict polar opposition between spiritual activity and physical coherence. The polar dynamic will become more pure, so to speak, so that spiritual activity works with the sensory spectrum for its further development more than against it. We can already intimate concrete signs of this inversion in the initial stages of inner development.

...

When our thinking simply tries to model the sensory spectrum and produce thoughts about some theoretical entities that should explain that spectrum, then we can truly speak about thinking working against the spectrum - it incrementally benefits from the effort, but at the same time it gets lost in a maze of horizontal content and keeps the spectrum as something independent of its activity, something it has disclaimed responsibility for. Yet when our thoughts about the spectrum become a testimony for the deeper intuitive flow, we are already starting to work with it more. We are using it more as a sounding board for our intuitive activity so the latter can perfect its inner configuration in accordance with Cosmic intents. This is the very process by which the spectrum will be spiritualized and redeemed over many iterations.

And these developments won't necessarily take millions or hundreds of thousands of years. For ex. Steiner mentions how the current mode of bisexual reproduction will end and the Moon will reunite with the Earth around 8,000 AD. We can imagine how different our relationship to the sensory spectrum must be for something like this to unfold harmoniously. How could souls continue to incarnate onto Earth if they are still destroying the remaining bodies through their spiritual activity? These are events humanity should begin to hold as concrete ideals even now to prepare for them in the best possible way.

Yes. Well, the context here was precisely that of getting our initial bearings. We were discussing just yesterday how Steiner recommends not to even engage in development of higher capacities, strictly so called, before the narrative contained in the book is discovered and comprehended.

But to follow your focus on foresight, I admit that I see the referred physical exhaustion opposite to spiritual activity as built in the very fabric of the sensory spectrum as experienced by the Earth proper, let's say, to symbolize the average experience of our humanity, in the context of the rest of reality, in earthly epochs. Yes, that's probably too rigid.

Probably one reason is (and these are only arbitrary thoughts) that I imagine the upcoming phase of human evolution more abrupt and violent rather than harmonious. I don't imagine any harmonious Moon crash into Earth (not speaking only physically). But that the growing differentiation of streams in current humanity will put more and more pressure on the cognitive layers, until they'll separate for humanity, rather than smoothly making the collective experience of the senses more pliable. That's how I imagine it, which includes external turmoils and catastrophes, until a clear split takes place within humanity. Regarding non sexual reproduction as an argument for expecting more and more persisting and less and less exhausted physical bodies: I thought reproduction of new bodies would continue, only not in the current sexual form. I do have difficulty to conceive the physical Earth deprived of death, or asymptotically deprived of death. That would mean, it would be deprived of life too. In parallel, if the physical body does not respond to exhaustion anymore, the life body as it is today would have to disappear too.

[AshvinP]

Sure, everything unfolds on a gradient over many iterations. We can say for sure that Steiner's physical body was not as exhausted as it would have been had he not developed his higher spiritual consciousness (assuming all else is equal, whereas things are rarely that neat - for ex. initiates begin to take responsibility for broader spheres of humanity, such as various groups, the nation, the species, which could then deplete their life forces more than if they were only responsible for their own soul life).

It's true that we can speak of the average 'nature of humanity' at our current time as that which has polar opposition between spiritual activity and the physical-organic nature. Yet, as we know, there are many streams of evolution currently superimposed on each other within incarnate existence. So we can't really speak of a single 'constitution of man', because those on a path of higher development have already started transmuting that nature to some lesser or greater extent. In fact, our current stage of evolution and its unfoldment only makes sense in light of the fact that it is facilitated by human beings who have advanced to much higher stages.

So it's important not to take the indications provided by Steiner as inflexible rules that apply to Earthly life no matter what the circumstance, rather they are simply the condition for the average person which helps us get our initial bearings. The sensory spectrum will remain in its decohered state so long as most of humanity has not integrated the cognitive etheric nature, but eventually it will become more 'imaginatively pliable' and incarnate existence will be quite different, not necessarily with the strict polar opposition between spiritual activity and physical coherence. The polar dynamic will become more pure, so to speak, so that spiritual activity works with the sensory spectrum for its further development more than against it. We can already intimate concrete signs of this inversion in the initial stages of inner development.

...

When our thinking simply tries to model the sensory spectrum and produce thoughts about some theoretical entities that should explain that spectrum, then we can truly speak about thinking working against the spectrum - it incrementally benefits from the effort, but at the same time it gets lost in a maze of horizontal content and keeps the spectrum as something independent of its activity, something it has disclaimed responsibility for. Yet when our thoughts about the spectrum become a testimony for the deeper intuitive flow, we are already starting to work with it more. We are using it more as a sounding board for our intuitive activity so the latter can perfect its inner configuration in accordance with Cosmic intents. This is the very process by which the spectrum will be spiritualized and redeemed over many iterations.

And these developments won't necessarily take millions or hundreds of thousands of years. For ex. Steiner mentions how the current mode of bisexual reproduction will end and the Moon will reunite with the Earth around 8,000 AD. We can imagine how different our relationship to the sensory spectrum must be for something like this to unfold harmoniously. How could souls continue to incarnate onto Earth if they are still destroying the remaining bodies through their spiritual activity? These are events humanity should begin to hold as concrete ideals even now to prepare for them in the best possible way.

Yes. Well, the context here was precisely that of getting our initial bearings. We were discussing just yesterday how Steiner recommends not to even engage in development of higher capacities, strictly so called, before the narrative contained in the book is discovered and comprehended.

But to follow your focus on foresight, I admit that I see the referred physical exhaustion opposite to spiritual activity as built in the very fabric of the sensory spectrum as experienced by the Earth proper, let's say, to symbolize the average experience of our humanity, in the context of the rest of reality, in earthly epochs. Yes, that's probably too rigid.

Probably one reason is (and these are only arbitrary thoughts) that I imagine the upcoming phase of human evolution more abrupt and violent rather than harmonious. I don't imagine any harmonious Moon crash into Earth (not speaking only physically). But that the growing differentiation of streams in current humanity will put more and more pressure on the cognitive layers, until they'll separate for humanity, rather than smoothly making the collective experience of the senses more pliable. That's how I imagine it, which includes external turmoils and catastrophes, until a clear split takes place within humanity. Regarding non sexual reproduction as an argument for expecting more and more persisting and less and less exhausted physical bodies: I thought reproduction of new bodies would continue, only not in the current sexual form. I do have difficulty to conceive the physical Earth deprived of death, or asymptotically deprived of death. That would mean, it would be deprived of life too. In parallel, if the physical body does not respond to exhaustion anymore, the life body as it is today would have to disappear too.

We should certainly get our initial bearings through the narrative, but with the phenomenological or study-meditate approach, we don't want to extrapolate from the text too many firm conclusions or 'rules' about the way spiritual reality and evolution works. These become molds in which our thinking is forced to flow as we continue reading and can easily influence how we understand the supersensible research being communicated. Rather the point is what Cleric expressed in his post here - to expand the horizons of our imaginative activity, extending the thinking feelers into unfamiliar domains of the intuitive context, and get a holistic sense for the ideal relations that constellate the depth of our being. In this way, our thinking enlivens, becomes more fluid and imaginative, learns to orient itself within the ever-morphing relations of spiritual reality (the same relations which the incarnate sensory perspective is a flattened and temporally decohered angle on).  Eventually through our concentration practice this will also become the basis for our spirit to reflect its existence not only through the sensory spectrum but also within the 'imaginative substance'.

I think we can simply ask, why even form these conclusion to begin with? Certainly it makes things seem easier to grasp, to encompass with the intellect, but again it's adding another level of indirection to our phenomenological understanding of the spiritual evolutionary process. The conclusions may be quite misaligned with the intuitive movements we are making when exploring the ideal territory symbolized by the text. The details of this evolutionary process are expressed from the most varied directions in Steiner's books/lectures, and most of all they will only take on life as they are discovered from within. They need to be lived through, in that sense. Not necessarily that we need to be engaged in clairvoyant research, but as we delaminate the inner life, certain patterns and relations of evolving thinking consciousness will naturally feel more intimate and make more sense. 

The best approach is to resist building any firm intellectual models of the process (or be willing to tear them down at a moment's notice) because this simply makes it more difficult for our intuitive orientation to gain a foothold and for our thoughts to be experienced as testimonies to inner evolving relations. We all start out this way and will invariably go through the intellectual modeling phase out of habit. I am not immune from this tendency and it probably reflects in some of my comments here as well. It certainly serves a purpose if we don't get mired in the content of our models. But that's why we are also having these discussions - through iterations of comments, we can help each other triangulate the more intuitive and effective ways of approaching esoteric science. 

Regarding non sexual reproduction as an argument for expecting more and more persisting and less and less exhausted physical bodies: I thought reproduction of new bodies would continue, only not in the current sexual form. I do have difficulty to conceive the physical Earth deprived of death, or asymptotically deprived of death. That would mean, it would be deprived of life too. In parallel, if the physical body does not respond to exhaustion anymore, the life body as it is today would have to disappear too.

I don't really know the answer to this, exactly what it will look like. I was just throwing out a question as a way of saying, 'these relations are evolving relatively quickly and therefore we shouldn't become too attached to any rules about the relations'. The reason why spiritual activity cannot continue to work against the organic processes is rooted in a much more principled foundation as discussed before, and the question of nonsexual reproduction is simply something that could be relevant to that foundation (and most likely is), although I'm not exactly sure how. In general, I think we can say the dense body is in the process of being absorbed or reintegrated into the life body, spiritualized one stage higher. It is a process of retracing the path through which the dense body originally precipitated from the life body, as the latter's 'movements' became more fixed in objective spatial consciousness. Yet now we bring the fruits of sensory experience back to the imaginative spectrum and experience the original relations in lucid consciousness. This will be outlined in the later chapters of the book. 

[Federica]

We should certainly get our initial bearings through the narrative, but with the phenomenological or study-meditate approach, we don't want to extrapolate from the text too many firm conclusions or 'rules' about the way spiritual reality and evolution works. These become molds in which our thinking is forced to flow as we continue reading and can easily influence how we understand the supersensible research being communicated. Rather the point is what Cleric expressed in his post here - to expand the horizons of our imaginative activity, extending the thinking feelers into unfamiliar domains of the intuitive context, and get a holistic sense for the ideal relations that constellate the depth of our being. In this way, our thinking enlivens, becomes more fluid and imaginative, learns to orient itself within the ever-morphing relations of spiritual reality (the same relations which the incarnate sensory perspective is a flattened and temporally decohered angle on).  Eventually through our concentration practice this will also become the basis for our spirit to reflect its existence not only through the sensory spectrum but also within the 'imaginative substance'.

I think we can simply ask, why even form these conclusion to begin with? Certainly it makes things seem easier to grasp, to encompass with the intellect, but again it's adding another level of indirection to our phenomenological understanding of the spiritual evolutionary process. The conclusions may be quite misaligned with the intuitive movements we are making when exploring the ideal territory symbolized by the text. The details of this evolutionary process are expressed from the most varied directions in Steiner's books/lectures, and most of all they will only take on life as they are discovered from within. They need to be lived through, in that sense. Not necessarily that we need to be engaged in clairvoyant research, but as we delaminate the inner life, certain patterns and relations of evolving thinking consciousness will naturally feel more intimate and make more sense. 

The best approach is to resist building any firm intellectual models of the process (or be willing to tear them down at a moment's notice) because this simply makes it more difficult for our intuitive orientation to gain a foothold and for our thoughts to be experienced as testimonies to inner evolving relations. We all start out this way and will invariably go through the intellectual modeling phase out of habit. I am not immune from this tendency and it probably reflects in some of my comments here as well. It certainly serves a purpose if we don't get mired in the content of our models. But that's why we are also having these discussions - through iterations of comments, we can help each other triangulate the more intuitive and effective ways of approaching esoteric science. 

Regarding non sexual reproduction as an argument for expecting more and more persisting and less and less exhausted physical bodies: I thought reproduction of new bodies would continue, only not in the current sexual form. I do have difficulty to conceive the physical Earth deprived of death, or asymptotically deprived of death. That would mean, it would be deprived of life too. In parallel, if the physical body does not respond to exhaustion anymore, the life body as it is today would have to disappear too.

I don't really know the answer to this, exactly what it will look like. I was just throwing out a question as a way of saying, 'these relations are evolving relatively quickly and therefore we shouldn't become too attached to any rules about the relations'. The reason why spiritual activity cannot continue to work against the organic processes is rooted in a much more principled foundation as discussed before, and the question of nonsexual reproduction is simply something that could be relevant to that foundation (and most likely is), although I'm not exactly sure how. In general, I think we can say the dense body is in the process of being absorbed or reintegrated into the life body, spiritualized one stage higher. It is a process of retracing the path through which the dense body originally precipitated from the life body, as the latter's 'movements' became more fixed in objective spatial consciousness. Yet now we bring the fruits of sensory experience back to the imaginative spectrum and experience the original relations in lucid consciousness. This will be outlined in the later chapters of the book. 

Ashvin,

Thanks, I follow your heads up. I have written a few sentences to comment, but on second thought, it all sounds like trivial reasoning about reasoning so I'll spare you that for the moment. I guess, after a few iterations, the remaining questions must be held in solitude, so to say, with an attitude of eager patience, or patient eagerness.. I'm not sure

[Cleric K]

It might be of use to have some intuitive orientation about where this work Secret Science in Outline stands in the historical development of man. Here are few quotes from The Inner Realities of Evolution:

If you now turn to the accounts given, for instance, in my Occult Science about Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution, to that of the Earth, you will admit that nothing but a sketch could be given (indeed even if it were much more amplified it would still be no more), nothing but a sketch from one side, from one point of view. For just as the Earth-existence comprises an infinite wealth of detail, it is quite obvious that the former embodiments are equally detailed, and that it would never be possible to give more than a merely rough charcoal drawing, just an outline of these.

...

In Occult Science, in order not to shock people outside unduly, I have begun by describing the more external condition of ancient Saturn. They are quite shocked enough by this, and people who can only think in accordance with modern science look upon the book as pure nonsense.

...

From the study of the book Occult Science which must in certain respects still be veiled in Maya, we learn that the evolution of ancient Moon followed that of ancient Sun, that at the close of the Sun-age all the existing conditions were immersed in a kind of twilight, in a sort of cosmic chaos, and emerged again as “Moon.”

To understand why this book had to appear in a somewhat veiled form, we should consider the general understanding of man at the turn of the 20th century. If today we were not so engrossed in our completely outer affairs, it would have been difficult not to be awestruck by the bizarre picture that the physics of the 20th century has drawn. As we have said before - humanity hasn't yet internalized what it has discovered through its experiments.

Things were vastly different at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. For the general scientific consciousness of the time, all that existed was matter and electromagnetic waves. The human mind was far more materialistic at that time, it was much more rigidified in the grooves shaped by pictures of matter. Even though physicists don't internalize it fully, the mere fact of thinking about a particle being non-locally spread out (as QM invites us to), already breaks some of that rigidity, even though not that far that the spirit is freed from the chains of abstract thought.

The task of Steiner has been extraordinarily difficult. In this book he had to disclose some of the secrets of Initiatic science to the general consciousness of the time, which could hardly conceive of anything other than substances and forces. We can only imagine how painful it must have felt to try and squeeze the higher intuitions of reality into such a materialistic framework. Yet it was a step that was necessary in the historical development of humanity. Something like that just had to appear on the World's stage.

Now by saying this I don't want to give the impression that this book is outdated. I couldn't find the exact quote but at some point RS said that even though it was written in more external language, everything could still be experienced Imaginatively. And this is what I wanted to point out - that when we study this important book, we should not hold to the images too rigidly. We need to remember that it is a kind of transition between thinking which can only think in sensory-like images, toward the more intimate experience of the metamorphosing inner space.

[Federica]

The task of Steiner has been extraordinarily difficult. In this book he had to disclose some of the secrets of Initiatic science to the general consciousness of the time, which could hardly conceive of anything other than substances and forces. We can only imagine how painful it must have felt to try and squeeze the higher intuitions of reality into such a materialistic framework. Yet it was a step that was necessary in the historical development of humanity. Something like that just had to appear on the World's stage.

Now by saying this I don't want to give the impression that this book is outdated. I couldn't find the exact quote but at some point RS said that even though it was written in more external language, everything could still be experienced Imaginatively. And this is what I wanted to point out - that when we study this important book, we should not hold to the images too rigidly. We need to remember that it is a kind of transition between thinking which can only think in sensory-like images, toward the more intimate experience of the metamorphosing inner space.

Thanks, Cleric. The tension generated by the need to address an adverse public is perceptible in what I have read so far. I take note of the context you describe, and that language and images were chosen under particular constraints. For sure, I have a tendency to hold images and concepts too rigidly, I've recently stumbled upon a lecture about memory and love that mentions the risks of building upon a child's memory too early - surely my case. So I will pay attention to the particular character of language and images employed in the book. I wonder if Theosophy represented a smaller but similar challenge, or maybe it was a more confidential book, at a time when Steiner was also less known. In any case, I couldn't read much during these last couple of days, but I'm excited to progress this weekend. Is anyone else also reading along?