Lysander wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:09 am
I understand there are percepts (or any other word will do) which refer to the free-thinking mind-contents, such as thoughts and memories. And there are percepts from the sense-organs which are outside my control. As well as that I can will my attention to zoom back and forth. The bolded part isn't clear to me. I understand the disclaimer that it's full reality lies "
beyond the threshold of our waking intellectual cognition." But I am not clear how to understand
higher order spiritual reality, except as a tradition-specific cosmology. Are you and Ashvin defending an Anthroposophic view or putting forth some metaphysical scaffolding that describes
all (Idealist, spiritual)
traditions, in other words, a Truth?
It really depends on what you imply by 'Athroposophic view'. If that implies just another variant of 'tradition-specific cosmology' then no, I don't defend that. We can have right approach to anthroposophy only if we realize that it's a path of direct experience. Practically, it discloses the path of Initiation, which for the longest time has been kept in deepest secrecy in the mystery centers. The reason for this is that humanity reaches today a stage of development where it becomes a question of vital importance that man should find his right bearings within reality. And this entails proper penetration and understanding of the spiritual foundations of existence.
In other words, what has survived today as pictorial and tradition-specific cosmologies, man of today is in position to experience in its reality. The trouble is that contemporary man is not at all inclined to deepen his own spiritual life in such a direction. It's obvious for the scientifically minded but religiously-spiritual people don't fare any better. The latter usually are content to have a set of beliefs and all the rest is expected to be taken care of in the afterlife. The idea that the afterlife is also here and now, and it's a matter of transformation of consciousness to access it, is usually even more repulsive to religious people, that it is to scientists. For scientists it's all the same because it sounds just as any other spiritual mumbo-jumbo. But for some spiritual/religious people this is much more offending because it puts into question their position, by demanding that there's more to spiritual life than having beliefs.
You say "I am not clear how to understand
higher order spiritual reality". This is completely natural in our age, since there's practically nothing in our outer civilization today which even hints at that. Even the contrary - any talks about these things are mocked and fiercely resisted. So it's not surprising that you lack that clarity. The question is do you want to understand anything more about it? And it's not an easy question. Just as "do you want to go to the dentist" is not an easy question. It's only because we're fairly aware that if we don't go to the dentist, things will turn much worse in the long run, that gives us the motivation to go, even though we would be happy if 'that cup could pass from us'. Humanity is in a similar situation today in regards to the spiritual world. You know how when a person is prepared for surgery the body is covered with a sheet and only the place to be operated is exposed. Strange as it may sound, in relation to our spiritual organism we're in a similar position. Each one of us has his or her own sheet that exposes only the experiences of the sense organs and the will, feelings and thoughts related to them. We're not at all interested into lifting that sheet and revealing the general spiritual organism that pulsates and lives in every thought and feeling and that is responsible even for the physical forms. The view could be disturbing, to say the least. Yet modern man must gradually come to awareness that this sheet must be lifted sooner or later. As with the dentist - the more we delay, the more painful it will become in the long run.
Our
point of contact with that spiritual organism which constitutes our true being is much, much closer that most would like to admit. It's actually the most intimate part of ourselves - the thinking of our ego. This is already disturbing enough. It's much more convenient to sport thinking about neurons, energies, dimensions, gods, heaven, etc. - all these things are kept 'at safe distance' from the reality of the ego, they are just thoughts that we may believe point to something true. But when we turn to the very thinking process which brings these thoughts into existence, we're truly dealing with spiritual reality. There we feel naked, vulnerable. Thanks to others who have already trodden this path, we have a wealth of knowledge that can prepare us on our personal Initiatic journey.
I guess that none of the above brought any more clarity to the question. And that's OK. Higher order spiritual reality can only be approached very gradually, patiently and with nothing but humility and mood of prayer. One analogy which I find useful, I mentioned
here yesterday. It's the standing wave analogy. This is a metaphor which if we experience deeply, gives us some indication about in what relation we, in our ordinary thinking, are positioned in regards to the higher worlds. So the higher worlds are not separate places where we somehow travel with our soul, but are the ever present living processes on the waves of which we experience our ordinary consciousness. We may say that higher order spiritual processes lie in our subconsciousness. If we take another extremely simplified analogy, we can say that our spiritual being is fluid and only parts of it crystalize into ice. Let the ice represent the intellectual thoughts. Through the appropriate meditative and concentrative exercises we can lift to consciousness not only the ice crystals but also the fluid currents they are embedded in. The greatest difficulty in understanding this is that these higher order currents are not something that simply appears as an additional perceptual layer before the eyes of our ego but is what animates the ego itself. In other words we need to open up towards forces that are higher, in the most sacred sense, than our waking self. It's not about reducing the higher self to mere intellectual thoughts and perception but about experiencing
how the higher self thinks us.
Lysander wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:09 am
In either case, I would ask for clarity about: (1) World Thoughts, (2) other higher order spiritual beings - is this related to possible trans-corporeal dissociated alters which I asked Soul of Shu about in the other thread? (3) Ashvin wrote, "where the noumenal meaning and phenomenal perceptual content is united, reveals this truth of our involvement in the co-creation of the phenomenal world (or I should say serves as the basic starting point for revealing that truth)." I have a childlike question about this: When one thinks, are these thoughts influencing via participation some shared thought-realm, such as implicated in the type of reasoning such as stated by J. Krishnamurti that one person's elevation in consciousness affects the whole? Or, the more anti-metaphysical view, do thoughts only have influence when they are expressed in words or actions in the sensory-realm? This is how I am interpreting what you mean when you speak of trans-personal shared meanings. Not only shared symbolism of the sensory-realm but also a shared thought-space of some form. Maybe my visualization is still a bit crude.
I hope what I wrote above already throws some light on this question. Yes, our thoughts and feelings are part of a shared world, just as our bodies are part of the shared physical world. In reality, they are not separate worlds but only 'frequency bands' of the One world, if we may use that expression. It's just that the more we move towards the spiritual, the more universal and non-local the influences become. This quote might be of interest:
Rudolf Steiner wrote:A further point of importance is what spiritual science calls orientation in the higher worlds. This is attained when the student is permeated, through and through, with the conscious realization that feelings and thoughts are just as much veritable realities as are tables and chairs in the world of the physical senses. In the soul and thought world, feelings and thoughts react upon each other just as do physical objects in the physical world.
As long as the student is not vividly permeated with this consciousness, he will not believe that a wrong thought in his mind may have as devastating an effect upon other thoughts that spread life in the thought world as the effect wrought by a bullet fired at random upon the physical objects it hits.
He will perhaps never allow himself to perform a physically visible action which he considers to be wrong, though he will not shrink from harboring wrong thoughts and feelings, for these appear harmless to the rest of the world. There can be no progress, however, on the path to higher knowledge unless we guard our thoughts and feelings in just the same way we guard our steps in the physical world.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 10 – Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment – II: The Stages of Initiation