Re: GA 13 - Rudolf Steiner's "Secret Science in Outline"
Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2024 1:58 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 8:35 pm Ok, I understand in broad outlines. From your initial post I had received the impression that this work was achievable here and now (the Kingdom is at hand). But In the context of the whole solar evolution, it's less difficult to picture this progressive work. I am still not clear what the physical and etheric human body would have been like without the Fall, and what is left of ideal life once cycles and polarities are progressively streamlined (since the whole universe seems to be founded on the workings of cycles and polarities). But as I said, I am following the broad lines. It's probably enough for now. Thank you.
Yes, but we should be clear that it's not a binary situation - either we are immortalized in the next instant or at the end of Solar evolution. The reason I mention this is to emphasize how it's a continual gradient and how even the first stages of inner transformation can be experienced as momentous developments. For example, we can gain inner certainty of our immortality, our eternal soul-spiritual essence. If we then compare that to the default state of our lives where such a thing, if we thought about it at all, was a matter of abstract speculation, of endless doubts and questioning and theories, mostly for the sake of entertainment because we all secretly 'knew' that no one actually had the answer, we can sense how monumental of a shift that is. Now imagine if all incarnate souls suddenly gained this inner certainty in the next instant (of course this wouldn't happen) - how different would humanity's incarnate existence start to look after a few years? It's not just knowing that our souls are eternal, but that we can actively participate in realizing its immortal essence in the stages of manifest existence. So much mental energy that is directed toward entirely materialistic pursuits would be redirected towards exploring the inner life and helping others. This would lead to a real and effective 'transvaluation of all values', as Nietzsche put it. So that is key - once our spirit begins knowing itself a few degrees vertical of the perpendicular intellectual plane, the whole sense of reality and our role in it begins to transform in the most unsuspected ways.
The rhythms/polarities never go away, but simply unfold at more and more integrated levels of the existential flow. The angels, archangels, etc. still experience rhythms of spiritual activity and manifestation. At the level of an Angel, for ex., we could say their manifest activity is what we experience within ourselves as the imaginative thought life (which is normally very dimmed down by the verbal intellect). At the core of these rhythms is what we dimly know as 'loving sacrifice'. Once we reach the fulfillment of our Solar evolution, we will be in the condition of the Thrones at the dawn of ancient Saturn. Then our rhythm consists in conducting our activity to sacrifice the very substance of our "I" to manifest the planetary environment for new waves of relative perspectives to undergo their solar evolution. We then maintain the 'standing wave' of potential in which the whole new solar evolution unfolds from beginning to end. In a certain sense, we already undergo this sacrificial rhythm between death and rebirth when we reach the 'midnight hour of existence' and then choose whether to return to incarnate existence so we can pursue the fully human ideal. Even during incarnate existence, we undergo this rhythm at a dim level whenever we stop thinking about intoxicating spiritual ideas (or reaching higher stages in meditation) and plunge back into sensory affairs to complete our tasks in the light of our insights and ideals. So we can already start to get a sense, although dim and nebulous, of how the polar cycles in our experience will be scaled up to the Macrocosm.
re: physical-etheric bodies without the Fall - this post by Cleric was very illuminating for me.