Essay: Man, Know Thyself

[Cleric K]

In some manner that is beyond me, your posts keep getting better and more insightful, Cleric. And now you have tables too! Thank you and keep up the great work.

When I was writing this I was in somewhat serious mood. But now your comment made me see the humorous side of it
Actually Humor is very interesting Cosmic Being. I would say quite mysterious one One can't really find its place within the hierarchy of Being. Maybe that's what Humor is - a Being that does not belong anywhere in particular but finds its essence in being able to step aside and smile

Thanks for the +feedback! It's not about whose personality does what. What's important is to always keep the little spring flowing. The more we allow it to flow, the more it wants to flow. That's how souls find the Spirit - the Spring that never runs dry.

Suppose you have two glasses of water before you; one empty, the other half full. Now suppose we pour water out of the half-full glass into the empty one, and imagine that the half-full glass becomes fuller and fuller be cause of what we are doing. The materialist would consider this kind of thing foolish; but, my dear friends, with a concept suitable for meditation it is not a question of its reality but of whether it is one which will form ideas in the soul. Just because it relates to nothing real, it can direct our senses away from reality. It may be a symbol especially for that soul-process which we describe as the mystery of love. The process of love is something like that half-full glass from which man pours into the empty one, and which thereby becomes fuller and fuller. The soul does not become more empty, it becomes fuller in the same measure in which it gives; and in this way that symbol may have great significance.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 150 – Macrocosm and Microcosm – Paris, May 5, 1913

[Cleric K]

The problem is that Homo sapiens have not performed this sacred purpose. The message of that failure is now arriving to us from the Elder Brothers to Science Journalism. If you are arguing that we need a new way of being human (a hybrid or even a replacement), then I agree, but if you are placing humanity as presently known at the pinnacle of embodied possibility, I surely disagree.

I agree with you, Lou. Actually the "I" that modern humans experience is not yet where it should be. This "I" is hijacked by beings disguised as passions and desires. If people knew what their "I" is, they would also know what the Christ is. So we have a long way to go. What's important is to know in what direction that long way should go. Because it is perfectly possible to go in the opposite one.

[Lou Gold]

If people knew what their "I" is, they would also know what the Christ is.

This is where we I agree(!) even though we may embrace different models. In the lingo of philosophy, you seem (to me) as a dual-aspect-single-direction monist and I seem as a multi-aspect-multi-direction monist. Yes, there are spirits of use/abuse resonating everywhere and all are within the One. I'm not thinking it's something to contend about. It would just help one understand why we might hold different dreams and imagery.

[Lou Gold]

Higher consciousness undresses the lower consciousness and experiences reality from a vantage point where we can see how our ordinary ego consciousness is being formed.

Or, "Gone, Gone to the other side, Naked, Nothing to defend, Awake, So be it."

And then we get dressed again

[Lou Gold]

Here is some multidirectional imagery:

[Lou Gold]

Here is a good TED Talks presentation on dolphins vs. humans, it's in Russian but you can turn on English subtitles

Eugene,

Thank you so much for this video. I had known of the Russian "Biotic Pump" theories only in context of the Amazon Forest, which is sustained by virtue of a "river in the sky" that carries moisture westward across the continent in excess of all the water that is drained eastward into the Atlantic from the entire Amazon Basin. The co-creative interbeing of the ocean and forest is a miraculous Mitakuye Oyasin.

Interestingly, the spiritual path I follow in Brazil's western amazonia uses a swordfish as its symbol.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric,

I don't care much for puppy love interspecies storylines but the Whale storyline offered by Eugene is quite another "Cosmic Egg" quite to my liking.

You say, comparing animals and humans:

This is actually a useful analogy: think of the Spirit as a virtuoso pianist. Different physical forms are pianos at different stage of attunements. We would agree that even the greatest virtuoso can't do anything with a piano out of tune. It is similar in evolution. We have spread before us different evolutionary forms of the spirit, that can reflect its consciousness in different degree.

If man feels superior because of this, it only shows that he doesn't understand anything about reality. All these forms had to stay behind, in certain sense the beings accepted to make a sacrifice and support physical forms that are not the perfect reflecting apparatuses for self-consciousness but on the other hand man would not be able to exist if these kingdoms didn't stay behind so that man can step on their shoulders.

I truly believe that you are not intending to promote "some homo sapiens supremacist agenda." However, I'm sorry, but I can't grok whales staying behind "so that man can step on their shoulders" in any other than anthropocentric terms. My understanding of the vision offered by the Russians is that cetacean consciousness stayed around because it more perfectly reflects love.

[AshvinP]

Cleric,

I don't care much for puppy love interspecies storylines but the Whale storyline offered by Eugene is quite another "Cosmic Egg" quite to my liking.

You say, comparing animals and humans:

This is actually a useful analogy: think of the Spirit as a virtuoso pianist. Different physical forms are pianos at different stage of attunements. We would agree that even the greatest virtuoso can't do anything with a piano out of tune. It is similar in evolution. We have spread before us different evolutionary forms of the spirit, that can reflect its consciousness in different degree.

If man feels superior because of this, it only shows that he doesn't understand anything about reality. All these forms had to stay behind, in certain sense the beings accepted to make a sacrifice and support physical forms that are not the perfect reflecting apparatuses for self-consciousness but on the other hand man would not be able to exist if these kingdoms didn't stay behind so that man can step on their shoulders.

I truly believe that you are not intending to promote "some homo sapiens supremacist agenda." However, I'm sorry, but I can't grok whales staying behind "so that man can step on their shoulders" in any other than anthropocentric terms. My understanding of the vision offered by the Russians is that cetacean consciousness stayed around because it more perfectly reflects love.

If you believe whales and dolphins can or do more perfectly reflect love (than humans I presume), then shouldn't you be campaigning day and night to stop any sort of whaling? And, as a corollary, where do you believe the line should be drawn in the non-human animal and plant kingdoms between organisms which do not reflect love 'well enough' to really matter?

[Lou Gold]

If you believe whales and dolphins can or do more perfectly reflect love (than humans I presume), then shouldn't you be campaigning day and night to stop any sort of whaling? And, as a corollary, where do you believe the line should be drawn in the non-human animal and plant kingdoms between organisms which do not reflect love 'well enough' to really matter?

Well, actually-factually, I have devoted a great deal of my life to being an environmental campaigner but now that I've entered what my peers laughingly call our "falling apart" zone my surfing is pretty much limited to the internet.

However, I do think that I should qualify in my dialog with Cleric to explain that I don't feel he is privileging Homo sapiens so much as privileging a dominant colonizing category of Homo sapiens whose so-called march of progress basically shunted aside or destroyed the wisdom traditions of the more animist aboriginal and shamanic cultures that treated the animal and plant beings with much more respect. Indeed, to use a currently fashionable phrase, colonizing conquesting civilization may have been the most globally effective "cancel culture".

About drawing some sort of line, I believe that the variations of cultural storylines and dreams within the great diversity of humanity should be accorded greater respect and accorded more co-equal status.

[Cleric K]

Lou, I'm in perfect agreement that man has been carried away in his strivings and became the bully on the playground. And it's pretty obvious that more and more people are becoming aware of that. The question is how to proceed from here on.

About the 'centrism'. Every being feels itself to be at the center. The whale group soul does not say to itself 'Yeah, I'm just a side chain in the evolution of humans", just as man does not say to himself that he's just a side chain in the evolution of the angelic beings. What is true as relativity in physics holds for the spiritual as well. From every point of view of the Spirit, things look as if the whole Universe was created with the single purpose that this point of view can be realized.

I believe that what I said about 'stepping on shoulders' was understood in quite Darwinian spirit. I wasn't at all envisioning some food chain and top predator paradigms. This stepping on shoulders is of spiritual character. I don't eat animals to survive. So it's clear that man is not dependent on animals in food-chain sense.
What I had in mind was that man reaches self-knowledge when he's able to recognize the kingdoms of nature within himself. The physical corpse belongs to the mineral kingdom. A man in deep sleep or vegetative state is one with the plant kingdom - he has the corpse and life but lacks consciousness. A man that experiences pain and pleasure, who seeks pleasure and avoids pain, is one with the animal kingdom. Finally man becomes man in the true sense of the word, when he realizes himself as Spirit working within these three kingdoms.

Man has the animals within his inner nature - aggressiveness, cunningness, timidity, brutality, etc. The Spirit reigns when it manages to tame these wild animals. I agree that whales and dolphins exhibit a culture that we can learn from. Yet the TED man said it very well at the very end. The dolphin species represents something that preserves while man has something creative in himself. In certain sense, the cetaceans represent very refined life form that embodies the highest possible animal development. But still, this is a life form that is 'capped' so to speak (at least at the present epoch). It stands there in the oceans like a masterful piece of art and the creative spirits behind this say "There, that is the best we can do with the materials at hand".

It's one thing to embody love, playfulness, affection, etc. as natural expression of instinctive life. It's quite different to perceive the possibilities for love or hate and be able to creatively realize one or the other. We already spoke about this in relation to the tribes. One rises higher when he discovers in himself the human universal. Then he can see the same Spirit expressing in every folk, although in different manner. It is somewhat similar with the animals. Man stands in his spirit higher than the animal kingdom not when he is able to exploit their external forms for his own egoistic purposes but only when he's able to discover the animals within himself and tame them. Only in this sense man has the right to say that he stands higher. There's nothing heroic in being able to subdue a lion at the circus. One becomes a hero when he subdues the lion, the bear, the wolf, the snake in himself. And this is not just a figure of speech. From the appropriate stage of consciousness one can perceive the same animal spirits that manifest in the external animal forms, also intermingling within the astral bodies of men.