Anthroposophy for Dummies

[Federica]

In my humble subjective opinion, Anthroposophy is for dummies.

I agree with you, Jonathan-Österman-Seung-hyun!

Anthroposophy is for those dummies who are gracious enough to realize their condition, and that they need to work hard to let their Self be born out of their dumbness, and evolve into adult human beings
Everyone else who believes they are super spiritual and smart as they are, can go on caressing their brain waves with psychedelics, and tell each other to death (literally) the best soul-soothing bedtime stories they can come up with!

[LukeJTM]

I suppose it would help to make sure I develop those feelings towards my own inner self first? Like how I've noticed when I develop compassion towards my self for a fault or a personal issue, the compassion flows easily towards my fellow-man who have the same issue in themselves. So that same 'law' I'm sure would apply for the respect and reverence.

I am trying my best to keep working on my personal process (self-development) because I feel that is very important for connecting consciously with Spirit. Plus, Steiner was stressing that over and over, so that is another reason I am taking it seriously.

If anyone has advice or suggestions for this please let me know.

Luke,

On the question above, I think a healthy degree of 'self-love' is important. But we only need to be clear that 'love' is not indulgence of lower qualities. Unfortunately, that is very often how modern people express what they imagine to be 'love' - they endlessly indulge the lower qualities of other people and themselves, saying, "it's OK to have these faults, that's just who we are and we should love ourselves as we are". It is much more healthy if we love our inner self as a mother loves her child, or a great teacher loves her student, wanting only to see their highest potential be reached in a relatively harmonious way. We desire that our imaginative, inspired, and intuitive children be reborn within us so we reach our higher potential in complete freedom. I say "reborn" because these higher forces are actually what made us stand upright, start speaking, and start thinking in our early childhood, but of course that happened without our conscious participation, in unfreedom. Now we can rediscover those forces within us and bring them forth in freedom, for the benefit of not only ourselves but also the Whole.

It is very helpful to pray that our faults be forgiven because we also forgive the faults of others. In other words, our asking for forgiveness and love is justified because we also show forgiveness and love to our fellow beings (of course we don't just say this, but also put it into practice). We recognize that if we remain stuck in past feelings of shame, regret, frustration, disappointment, etc. towards our inner being, we will never have the opportunity to bring forth our inner children and thereby work for the higher potential of all humanity. As long as our self-love is rooted in our concrete insights of spiritual evolution and our high ideals for humanity, then it should be quite helpful to move forward.

Thank you Ashvin, that makes sense. That's actually poetic or beautiful.

[LukeJTM]

Hi Luke,

Take the following as simply the impressions of another one on the path of spiritual development. By the way, when I was reading How to Know the Higher Worlds, I jotted down a sort of colorful summary, for orientation among the many steps and exercises. You are currently at the orange steps. When you get there, I especially recomment you have a look at the summary of the last part of the book, that I left out from my summary and Cleric covered, here.

I agree with you that gratitude is a fundamental feeling to cultivate, it's part of the 'pre-requisites' mentioned by Steiner at the beginning of the book. In my experience, gratitude is the natural foundation of every moment of introspection/meditation, and to some extent an ever-present background of conscious experience in general. I work at making this ever-present feeling of gratitude more solidly present in every moment of the day. I am also reminded of a quote I recently read from Meister Eckhart: "If the only prayer you ever say is ‘Thank You’, that is enough". I thought I read that in a post by Ashvin, but I'm not finding it here.

For my part (but I hope others will comment on this point too) I am hesitant about the idea of developing feelings of reverence for human dignity starting from compassion for one's own faults, then extending that compassion to others who suffer from similar faults or situations. Because the perception of oneself is a particularly critical aspect that needs to change quite radically through development, I doubt it can be the primary source to tap into for developing that sense of integrity and respect. I would say it's more through the gratitude for the access to development that is continually made possible for us despite our faults that one can make contact with that heart-understanding. Then it can be deepened by actually taking the responsibility-opportunity to make something out of this chance, actively and continuously, getting one's head out of a day-by-day experience of life, that mainy "goes with the flow". It's like a door is continually kept open for us, and we can deepen our heart-understanding by recognizing the incredible chance, as consciously and constantly as possible, and then by actually stepping across that passage. So I would say, in my experience, that feeling of reverence and respect comes as a consequence, or reverberation, of the humble attempts of progression along the path, rather than through self-compassion, or through a direct attempt to sharpen that particular feeling.

Thanks, Federica. That summary looks great! Has anyone on here done a similar summary for Philosophy of Freedom/Spiritual Activity?

I'll admit I hadn't finished the book entirely on my first read-through for some reason. But anyway, on my current re-read I am on the chapter called Effects of Initiation. I was definitely hesitant about my analogy with compassion for faults, which is why I brought it up. I'm glad you commented on it.

[Jonathan Österman]

Anthroposophy is for those, who are gracious enough to realize their condition, and that they need to work hard to let their Self be born out of their dumbness, and evolve into adult human beings.

Dear Federica, the above sounds exactly like Buddhism to me!

Buddhism is all about evolving a self into an Enlightened Self.

Speaking of the "self" (ego), I asked a question about it, and perhaps you would like to share your Anthroposophic Wisdom in relation to my question, which would help us all to understand deeper what the spiritual nature of the self is : viewtopic.php?t=961

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I don’t get your simple gradient. For me “something like GPT” is essentially different from pen and paper, from a word processor, from a forum theme, and even from a physical or digital index. I don’t see how they could be put on the same gradient, let alone a simple gradient.

In the case of GPT - the way it is generally intended, as in your suggested applications - the purpose is generative. That is, the bot is supposed to extract the 'wisdom' out of PoF (probabilities of certain linguistic patterns, as Cleric says) and then restitute that ‘wisdom’ in form of PoF-compatible answers to any personal questions one may want to ask. This for me is a very bad idea. Whoever indulges in such a use of the linguistic mimicking functionality of the bot, is letting it predate the willed activity indispensable for successful work with PoF, for example. The necessary, effortful thinking gestures are curtailed by the bot output. Thinking is inhibited. You may be able to invert it, but is it realistic to hope that any newcomer would also be able to?

I also feel that arguments such as “since it’s here, it’s useless to complain about it”, “since it’s here, let’s make peace with it” are problematic. If I look carefully, in these attitudes I see caricatures, in fact. Looking carefully, the message they convey is: “we don’t want to look like the rigid, complaining, old retrograd who can’t adapt to any new thing”. Even here:

Are we getting spoiled by using the index instead of reading page by page and looking for what we need? Are we getting spoiled by classic search engines? Would we be better off crawling the internet ourselves and look for what we need?

what I see is a subtle caricature of whomever bluntly rejects 'reasonable convenience' and decides to bluntly read through the whole thing (yes I know, someone could say that if I see it like that it’s because this is my problem, but the comment could be sent back in the same way….)

Complaining is surely useless, but I don't agree that “trying to prevent that won't get us anywhere”. At that rate, we could say the same about anything evil: “Since war is spreading everywhere, trying to oppose it is hopeless, it won’t get us anywhere. let’s try to do it the intelligent way”. So I don’t see “since it’s here…” as a valid line of reasoning.

For me, searching the forum with keywords, or even with descriptions, in order to get a list of old posts, is not on a smooth gradient with asking the forum-bot a personal question, like for example: “what are the pros and cons of ayahuasca for spiritual development?” and getting AI-generated thought-looking language sequences. So I say yes to search engines, but no to generative-AI for spiritual development. Because I dont' see them on a real gradient.

By the way, regarding the idea that GPT is not harmful if used as a refined search engine / a language interface to a database, it would be useful if a concrete example of the search engine functionality could be given, so as to really understand how the generative function is not used. The way I see it, either GPT is used as an advanced search engine, in which case it’s not used as generative AI, or it’s used as everyone wants to use it, that is, for its generative functionality, in which case it becomes a thinking inhibitor, very difficult to invert. In the following example:

In that sense, the hypothetical example Ashvin gave, about a bot that answers questions in the forum, I think could be useful, once again, only in the sense of a more advanced search engine which points to posts that already explore the topics.

I agree that it would be useful, but I also wonder if it’s not entirely unrealistic. Cleric would use it to point to existing posts, but virtually everyone else would use it generatively, to obtain custom answers to personal questions. And if a PoF-GPT was established, it would quickly become the normal way to ‘apprehend’ PoF.

The problem is, the GPT puts together an output that looks like the perceivable image of human thinking activity - like an artificial plant, if carefully manufactured, looks like a real plant. But the trickiest part is that this mimicking of word sequences is materially new, it’s ‘freshly’ and instantly generated, on personal demand. It looks like a real human has freshly thought it out in interaction with the one who asks - and it’s not so - but at the same time it’s sneakingly customized to the personal question. It is very different when one is pointed to, say, TCT and has to grapple with the unitary perspective expressed in those thoughts. In the AI-generated answer, there is no perspective at its origin, no human intent is present, to resist the apprehension of the ideas by the reader. There’s nothing to grapple with. However, the image uses the perceptual symbols through which human intents are commonly acquired, and so one is tricked, one is instantly sucked into the fake picture with hardly any chance to critically relate to it in time. This is the problem, I think. When you read it, the absence of perspective inhibits thinking and sucks the focus of attention against that black-hole picture. So the inversion you speak of is very difficult, and by not opposing the application of these methods to the areas where we could, like the forum for example, I believe we would practically expose every newcomer to the snares that I have tried to describe.

Federica,

Yes, the dangers of using GPT for generative purposes are clear to me as well, so I agree it is important to pay close attention to those dangers. I don't think newcomers should be directed toward GPT as a substitute for PoF or any other spiritual text. 

The point for me has always been remaining in a stance of openness to the redemptive possibilities. I can't be sure of where exactly technology is heading, how exactly people will use it, all the infinite circumstances under which it could present itself for use, etc., but the one thing I can be certain of without question is that every manifest phenomenon that has been imploded through our spiritual activity into the karmic organism will also be redeemed through that spiritual activity as it is continually being enlivened and ennobled. In that sense, I don't want my spiritual activity to miss the opportunities for those possibilities to manifest because I have shuffled some manifest phenomena off the redemptive gradient altogether. (btw, I think Cleric's recent post on the deeper 'coefficients' of our thinking patterns is quite illustrative here). There is nothing that has slid off the gradient.

Let's say that GPT was tested out for some generative purpose on this forum. It's not like the GPT would grow sentient, take over the forum, and spiral out of my control. If I am paying attention to how it is functioning and being utilized, I can easily shut it down or never launch it in the first place after the initial testing. This is the core point - we need more trust in our living and creative spiritual activity to deal with things on a case-by-case basis. We don't need to remain afraid that our thought-creations are going to spiral out of our control when we are centered in the higher Self, with the proper moral intentions. If we resort to universal maxims and rules, like 'GPT for generative purposes is always a bad idea', then we are stifling and hardening our own thinking patterns, which is exactly what we intended to avoid with our concerns about GPT. 

In the same sense, it would indeed be quite senseless to oppose the realities of war on the grounds of any universal moral maxims. These aspects of culture will only transform through an ever-more conscious and creative dialogue between the spiritual worlds, which fashion the 'coefficients' of Earthly destiny, and the creative agents within the economic, political, scientific, technological, religious, etc., domains who seek to harmonize their ideas with the broader curvatures of progressive intents along a musical gradient. We can't be sure exactly what our dialogue partners will be communicating to us or when. We can be sure, though, that the dialogue flows most freely when we loosen our personal coefficients and let our thinking resonate with more and more 'shapes' of the intuitive potential that we seek to incarnate. Then we can evaluate whether those shapes contribute to the musical gradient or not on a case-by-case basis.

[Federica]

Hi Luke,

Take the following as simply the impressions of another one on the path of spiritual development. By the way, when I was reading How to Know the Higher Worlds, I jotted down a sort of colorful summary, for orientation among the many steps and exercises. You are currently at the orange steps. When you get there, I especially recomment you have a look at the summary of the last part of the book, that I left out from my summary and Cleric covered, here.

I agree with you that gratitude is a fundamental feeling to cultivate, it's part of the 'pre-requisites' mentioned by Steiner at the beginning of the book. In my experience, gratitude is the natural foundation of every moment of introspection/meditation, and to some extent an ever-present background of conscious experience in general. I work at making this ever-present feeling of gratitude more solidly present in every moment of the day. I am also reminded of a quote I recently read from Meister Eckhart: "If the only prayer you ever say is ‘Thank You’, that is enough". I thought I read that in a post by Ashvin, but I'm not finding it here.

For my part (but I hope others will comment on this point too) I am hesitant about the idea of developing feelings of reverence for human dignity starting from compassion for one's own faults, then extending that compassion to others who suffer from similar faults or situations. Because the perception of oneself is a particularly critical aspect that needs to change quite radically through development, I doubt it can be the primary source to tap into for developing that sense of integrity and respect. I would say it's more through the gratitude for the access to development that is continually made possible for us despite our faults that one can make contact with that heart-understanding. Then it can be deepened by actually taking the responsibility-opportunity to make something out of this chance, actively and continuously, getting one's head out of a day-by-day experience of life, that mainy "goes with the flow". It's like a door is continually kept open for us, and we can deepen our heart-understanding by recognizing the incredible chance, as consciously and constantly as possible, and then by actually stepping across that passage. So I would say, in my experience, that feeling of reverence and respect comes as a consequence, or reverberation, of the humble attempts of progression along the path, rather than through self-compassion, or through a direct attempt to sharpen that particular feeling.

Thanks, Federica. That summary looks great! Has anyone on here done a similar summary for Philosophy of Freedom/Spiritual Activity?

I'll admit I hadn't finished the book entirely on my first read-through for some reason. But anyway, on my current re-read I am on the chapter called Effects of Initiation. I was definitely hesitant about my analogy with compassion for faults, which is why I brought it up. I'm glad you commented on it.

Yes! Scott is working on a concise summary of PoF. It's linked in this post.

[Federica]

Anthroposophy is for those, who are gracious enough to realize their condition, and that they need to work hard to let their Self be born out of their dumbness, and evolve into adult human beings.

Dear Federica, the above sounds exactly like Buddhism to me!

Buddhism is all about evolving a self into an Enlightened Self.

Speaking of the "self" (ego), I asked a question about it, and perhaps you would like to share your Anthroposophic Wisdom in relation to my question, which would help us all to understand deeper what the spiritual nature of the self is : viewtopic.php?t=961

JÖ,

Though I lack Anthroposophical wisdom, I will attempt to write something in response to your question. But I won't be able this weekend unfortunately.

[Jonathan Österman]

Though I lack Anthroposophical wisdom, I will attempt to write something in response to your question. But I won't be able this weekend unfortunately.

Looking forward to it, Federica.

Please, make your post in reply to this particular post with the question: viewtopic.php?t=963&start=15

Have a great weekend, Federica!

[Federica]

Ashvin,

I don’t get your simple gradient. For me “something like GPT” is essentially different from pen and paper, from a word processor, from a forum theme, and even from a physical or digital index. I don’t see how they could be put on the same gradient, let alone a simple gradient.

In the case of GPT - the way it is generally intended, as in your suggested applications - the purpose is generative. That is, the bot is supposed to extract the 'wisdom' out of PoF (probabilities of certain linguistic patterns, as Cleric says) and then restitute that ‘wisdom’ in form of PoF-compatible answers to any personal questions one may want to ask. This for me is a very bad idea. Whoever indulges in such a use of the linguistic mimicking functionality of the bot, is letting it predate the willed activity indispensable for successful work with PoF, for example. The necessary, effortful thinking gestures are curtailed by the bot output. Thinking is inhibited. You may be able to invert it, but is it realistic to hope that any newcomer would also be able to?

I also feel that arguments such as “since it’s here, it’s useless to complain about it”, “since it’s here, let’s make peace with it” are problematic. If I look carefully, in these attitudes I see caricatures, in fact. Looking carefully, the message they convey is: “we don’t want to look like the rigid, complaining, old retrograd who can’t adapt to any new thing”. Even here:

Are we getting spoiled by using the index instead of reading page by page and looking for what we need? Are we getting spoiled by classic search engines? Would we be better off crawling the internet ourselves and look for what we need?

what I see is a subtle caricature of whomever bluntly rejects 'reasonable convenience' and decides to bluntly read through the whole thing (yes I know, someone could say that if I see it like that it’s because this is my problem, but the comment could be sent back in the same way….)

Complaining is surely useless, but I don't agree that “trying to prevent that won't get us anywhere”. At that rate, we could say the same about anything evil: “Since war is spreading everywhere, trying to oppose it is hopeless, it won’t get us anywhere. let’s try to do it the intelligent way”. So I don’t see “since it’s here…” as a valid line of reasoning.

For me, searching the forum with keywords, or even with descriptions, in order to get a list of old posts, is not on a smooth gradient with asking the forum-bot a personal question, like for example: “what are the pros and cons of ayahuasca for spiritual development?” and getting AI-generated thought-looking language sequences. So I say yes to search engines, but no to generative-AI for spiritual development. Because I dont' see them on a real gradient.

By the way, regarding the idea that GPT is not harmful if used as a refined search engine / a language interface to a database, it would be useful if a concrete example of the search engine functionality could be given, so as to really understand how the generative function is not used. The way I see it, either GPT is used as an advanced search engine, in which case it’s not used as generative AI, or it’s used as everyone wants to use it, that is, for its generative functionality, in which case it becomes a thinking inhibitor, very difficult to invert. In the following example:

In that sense, the hypothetical example Ashvin gave, about a bot that answers questions in the forum, I think could be useful, once again, only in the sense of a more advanced search engine which points to posts that already explore the topics.

I agree that it would be useful, but I also wonder if it’s not entirely unrealistic. Cleric would use it to point to existing posts, but virtually everyone else would use it generatively, to obtain custom answers to personal questions. And if a PoF-GPT was established, it would quickly become the normal way to ‘apprehend’ PoF.

The problem is, the GPT puts together an output that looks like the perceivable image of human thinking activity - like an artificial plant, if carefully manufactured, looks like a real plant. But the trickiest part is that this mimicking of word sequences is materially new, it’s ‘freshly’ and instantly generated, on personal demand. It looks like a real human has freshly thought it out in interaction with the one who asks - and it’s not so - but at the same time it’s sneakingly customized to the personal question. It is very different when one is pointed to, say, TCT and has to grapple with the unitary perspective expressed in those thoughts. In the AI-generated answer, there is no perspective at its origin, no human intent is present, to resist the apprehension of the ideas by the reader. There’s nothing to grapple with. However, the image uses the perceptual symbols through which human intents are commonly acquired, and so one is tricked, one is instantly sucked into the fake picture with hardly any chance to critically relate to it in time. This is the problem, I think. When you read it, the absence of perspective inhibits thinking and sucks the focus of attention against that black-hole picture. So the inversion you speak of is very difficult, and by not opposing the application of these methods to the areas where we could, like the forum for example, I believe we would practically expose every newcomer to the snares that I have tried to describe.

Federica,

Yes, the dangers of using GPT for generative purposes are clear to me as well, so I agree it is important to pay close attention to those dangers. I don't think newcomers should be directed toward GPT as a substitute for PoF or any other spiritual text. 

The point for me has always been remaining in a stance of openness to the redemptive possibilities. I can't be sure of where exactly technology is heading, how exactly people will use it, all the infinite circumstances under which it could present itself for use, etc., but the one thing I can be certain of without question is that every manifest phenomenon that has been imploded through our spiritual activity into the karmic organism will also be redeemed through that spiritual activity as it is continually being enlivened and ennobled. In that sense, I don't want my spiritual activity to miss the opportunities for those possibilities to manifest because I have shuffled some manifest phenomena off the redemptive gradient altogether. (btw, I think Cleric's recent post on the deeper 'coefficients' of our thinking patterns is quite illustrative here). There is nothing that has slid off the gradient.

Let's say that GPT was tested out for some generative purpose on this forum. It's not like the GPT would grow sentient, take over the forum, and spiral out of my control. If I am paying attention to how it is functioning and being utilized, I can easily shut it down or never launch it in the first place after the initial testing. This is the core point - we need more trust in our living and creative spiritual activity to deal with things on a case-by-case basis. We don't need to remain afraid that our thought-creations are going to spiral out of our control when we are centered in the higher Self, with the proper moral intentions. If we resort to universal maxims and rules, like 'GPT for generative purposes is always a bad idea', then we are stifling and hardening our own thinking patterns, which is exactly what we intended to avoid with our concerns about GPT. 

In the same sense, it would indeed be quite senseless to oppose the realities of war on the grounds of any universal moral maxims. These aspects of culture will only transform through an ever-more conscious and creative dialogue between the spiritual worlds, which fashion the 'coefficients' of Earthly destiny, and the creative agents within the economic, political, scientific, technological, religious, etc., domains who seek to harmonize their ideas with the broader curvatures of progressive intents along a musical gradient. We can't be sure exactly what our dialogue partners will be communicating to us or when. We can be sure, though, that the dialogue flows most freely when we loosen our personal coefficients and let our thinking resonate with more and more 'shapes' of the intuitive potential that we seek to incarnate. Then we can evaluate whether those shapes contribute to the musical gradient or not on a case-by-case basis.

Ashvin,

I recognize that you are right in the main principle expressed here. I understand that one can only proceed case-by-case and rigid, in-bulk rejection of experiences should be avoided. But there’s one question I want to highlight. It has to do with “our” versus “my” in:

every manifest phenomenon that has been imploded through our spiritual activity into the karmic organism will also be redeemed through that spiritual activity as it is continually being enlivened and ennobled. In that sense, I don't want my spiritual activity to miss the opportunities for those possibilities to manifest because I have shuffled some manifest phenomena off the redemptive gradient altogether.

Because the consequences of our activity in the world are always collective to some extent, how do you ponder the chasing of redemption opportunities for your spiritual activity with the effects on others who are less developed, when it comes to making decisions in the areas you have control over? In the example of this forum, my understanding is that for some, the chances they will start walking on a path leading to the truth of reality are very low anyway, but for others - I consider myself part of this second group - the possibility to use the remainder of this incarnation to bring about some improvements is at hand. Don’t you think there could be a risk of harsh divide, when certain challenges can lift the spiritual activity of a very small few and at the same time make the way ahead more impervious, or inaccessble, for those who are motivated, but not quite stabilized in their progression yet?

In other words, if we take your example of GPT test, it’s not that I fear that it would become sentient and take over the forum. It’s not that. Rather, I feel there is right now a small open window to allow for some level of ‘scale up’ in spiritual development, so that it can touch slightly more people. Progression has now become possible for a little larger group of motivated seekers, since Cosmic conditions on one side, and our increasing thirst for rediscovering the spiritual on the other side are operating positively, opening up some breaches into the thick veil of materialistic mindset. This is evident nowadays in science, in philosophy, and in society at large. Concomitantly, though, the adversarial forces are also scaling up their offensive, by deploying means such as generative AI, for instance, with the evident goal to close up that window by impairing thinking activity, the only ‘vehicle’ through which we have a chance to extend consciousness through the real fabric of our shared becoming. This push will rapidly increase in magnitude and extension, of course.

So the window is rapidly closing under the presure of those forces, because the general longing and opening towards the spiritual world is a much slower and more diffused process. It's a much bigger and slower gear. For these reasons, my feeling is that it’s crucial to do everything in our power right now to get as many of us through this small window now, when it’s still open, even if it means a temporary sacrifice, and some temporarily missed possibilities of redemption, for those very few who have enough sight to trust their redemptive abilities completely.

What you recently said regarding the general way Cleric’s posts are received, will only become worse under the ongoing attacks against free thinking. We can be sure it will. You said:

This is practically how everyone feels when encountering the posts here, especially Cleric's. They know there is something of immense value embedded within the posts, that the metaphors and so forth speak to something essential to our living experience, and do so in surprisingly imaginative ways, but we also sense the effort to progressively uncover that value will stretch our familiar and comfortable beliefs and habits too far from 'neutral' position.

In comparison, generative AI will look even more appealing than it already does. In this exact moment, there's still hope since we can still benefit from the impulse towards freedom developed through the scientific era, whilst we are also moved by a longing for the rediscovery of our true self, our full fledged, spiritual self. So we are living through a lucky moment, in which some of us are able to pursue the latter impulse by redirecting with some focus the forces of the former, that still have some strength to them. But our freedom is being jeopardized by adversarial forces from multiple directions. As Cleric wrote today, spiritual freedom is being dangerously understood as ‘easy freedom’ as “license to pursue and experience anything that passes like a storm of desires through the soul”:

The human “I” wants to be free. It wants to undress all taboos, all norms, and experience unrestrained freedom. What philosophy could be better suited for this, than the idea that at its core, our self is something completely undetermined, we’re an absolutely free spirit, who can live its fantasies in the senso-spiritual matrix?

This attack against our freedom that leverages our soul nature, adds up to the direct attack against free thinking. Thinking should be easy and seamless, with the help of AI, and that's how the open passage towards higher development with be soon closed. In this sense, I understand and agree when you say that “we need more trust in our living and creative spiritual activity to deal with things on a case-by-case basis”, but I also think that too many of us have not yet reached the sort of break-even point where enough visibility has been gained to generate and support that trust. So maybe the urgent priority is to try and keep that passage towards higher development open a little longer, by sacrificing part of the gradient, so that a few more can make it to the beginning of the right path before the window is shut on humanity, to cut off an immeasurable majority of it. What do you think?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I recognize that you are right in the main principle expressed here. I understand that one can only proceed case-by-case and rigid, in-bulk rejection of experiences should be avoided. But there’s one question I want to highlight. It has to do with “our” versus “my” in:

every manifest phenomenon that has been imploded through our spiritual activity into the karmic organism will also be redeemed through that spiritual activity as it is continually being enlivened and ennobled. In that sense, I don't want my spiritual activity to miss the opportunities for those possibilities to manifest because I have shuffled some manifest phenomena off the redemptive gradient altogether.

Because the consequences of our activity in the world are always collective to some extent, how do you ponder the chasing of redemption opportunities for your spiritual activity with the effects on others who are less developed, when it comes to making decisions in the areas you have control over? In the example of this forum, my understanding is that for some, the chances they will start walking on a path leading to the truth of reality are very low anyway, but for others - I consider myself part of this second group - the possibility to use the remainder of this incarnation to bring about some improvements is at hand. Don’t you think there could be a risk of harsh divide, when certain challenges can lift the spiritual activity of a very small few and at the same time make the way ahead more impervious, or inaccessble, for those who are motivated, but not quite stabilized in their progression yet?

In other words, if we take your example of GPT test, it’s not that I fear that it would become sentient and take over the forum. It’s not that. Rather, I feel there is right now a small open window to allow for some level of ‘scale up’ in spiritual development, so that it can touch slightly more people. Progression has now become possible for a little larger group of motivated seekers, since Cosmic conditions on one side, and our increasing thirst for rediscovering the spiritual on the other side are operating positively, opening up some breaches into the thick veil of materialistic mindset. This is evident nowadays in science, in philosophy, and in society at large. Concomitantly, though, the adversarial forces are also scaling up their offensive, by deploying means such as generative AI, for instance, with the evident goal to close up that window by impairing thinking activity, the only ‘vehicle’ through which we have a chance to extend consciousness through the real fabric of our shared becoming. This push will rapidly increase in magnitude and extension, of course.

So the window is rapidly closing under the presure of those forces, because the general longing and opening towards the spiritual world is a much slower and more diffused process. It's a much bigger and slower gear. For these reasons, my feeling is that it’s crucial to do everything in our power right now to get as many of us through this small window now, when it’s still open, even if it means a temporary sacrifice, and some temporarily missed possibilities of redemption, for those very few who have enough sight to trust their redemptive abilities completely.

What you recently said regarding the general way Cleric’s posts are received, will only become worse under the ongoing attacks against free thinking. We can be sure it will. You said:

This is practically how everyone feels when encountering the posts here, especially Cleric's. They know there is something of immense value embedded within the posts, that the metaphors and so forth speak to something essential to our living experience, and do so in surprisingly imaginative ways, but we also sense the effort to progressively uncover that value will stretch our familiar and comfortable beliefs and habits too far from 'neutral' position.

In comparison, generative AI will look even more appealing than it already does. In this exact moment, there's still hope since we can still benefit from the impulse towards freedom developed through the scientific era, whilst we are also moved by a longing for the rediscovery of our true self, our full fledged, spiritual self. So we are living through a lucky moment, in which some of us are able to pursue the latter impulse by redirecting with some focus the forces of the former, that still have some strength to them. But our freedom is being jeopardized by adversarial forces from multiple directions. As Cleric wrote today, spiritual freedom is being dangerously understood as ‘easy freedom’ as “license to pursue and experience anything that passes like a storm of desires through the soul”:

The human “I” wants to be free. It wants to undress all taboos, all norms, and experience unrestrained freedom. What philosophy could be better suited for this, than the idea that at its core, our self is something completely undetermined, we’re an absolutely free spirit, who can live its fantasies in the senso-spiritual matrix?

This attack against our freedom that leverages our soul nature, adds up to the direct attack against free thinking. Thinking should be easy and seamless, with the help of AI, and that's how the open passage towards higher development with be soon closed. In this sense, I understand and agree when you say that “we need more trust in our living and creative spiritual activity to deal with things on a case-by-case basis”, but I also think that too many of us have not yet reached the sort of break-even point where enough visibility has been gained to generate and support that trust. So maybe the urgent priority is to try and keep that passage towards higher development open a little longer, by sacrificing part of the gradient, so that a few more can make it to the beginning of the right path before the window is shut on humanity, to cut off an immeasurable majority of it. What do you think?

Federica,

Right, these are good questions to contemplate. We should be clear that we are wading into the mysterious depths of karmic flows and there is no rational calculation we can do to figure out the best course of action. That is more true of spiritual experience more broadly, but especially when we speak of the divergent streams of ascending and descending spiritual evolution. 

Through the mysterious workings of destiny, it is safe to say that the descending stream will be lifted back up precisely through the future spiritual activity of the 'select few' who manage to continue raising their heads above the flows. These things are hard to comprehend from our myopic perspective, which is why we need the humility to know what we don't know and a certain amount of faith in the wise workings of the Cosmos. We can only control what is within the proximate sphere of our own spiritual activity, including how that activity relates to and influences our fellow beings. We surely can and should inform that activity with a more general picture of World evolution and the forces at play. But I would again caution against making this the exclusive factor by which we evaluate our case-by-case decisions toward the high ideals. 

The broader karmic flows are simply beyond our control and purview. Unfortunately, it is safe to say significant portions of the population will succumb to the forces that seek to externalize spiritual activity. These are ticking time bombs whose fuses were lit long ago and cannot be easily snuffed out, if at all. That doesn't mean we should give up trying to help people, but we probably need to approach it in more subtle ways than we are normally used to. We simply can't wage a war against the adversarial forces on all fronts, neither in our personal life nor our collective life. Yet, at the same time, we can have trust that, when we focus on our inner work, the opportunities for broader redemptive transformation will become ripe. I saw a movie some time ago with a great imaginative rendering of the Christ impulse. 

The plot is basically that some people go searching for the 'fountain of youth' in a cave, yet when they descend into the cave something interesting happens. They look back through the opening at the surface and see the sky is alternating very rapidly between light and dark. Not only that, but they see the Sun appears to be moving in one direction, from east to west let's say, and then back in the same direction from west to east. So they eventually conclude that every second they spend down there, entire days, months, seasons, years, and decades are going by at the surface. As they make their way further into the cave, the Time-decoherence becomes even greater, more frictious and sluggish. They encounter various historical segments of humanity along the way, eventually encountering the most primitive men. All of that is of course an image for the spiritual involution into the Time-decohered sensory spectrum. It is also interesting how, in this way, all the historical segments of humanity can be imaged 'side by side' in space, which also reflects the reality of our situation - many streams of evolution exist side by side within us and across the World as a whole.  

Then something very mysterious happens:





There are many interesting spiritual ideas presented here. Most clearly, the Time-ladder is the Christ impulse that bridged the higher and lower worlds and continues to progressively unfold from various perspectives. Because of the differentiated Time-flow, the surface progressed so far that humanity (perhaps in connection with alien intelligences) developed new technology that could serve the purpose of the ultimate rescue mission for those still stuck in the decohered temporal depths of the cave. We could say Cosmic Ideas and Earthly perceptions were brought completely in-phase, which then instantiates the Time-ladder of cognition through which humanity climbs up and Cosmic intelligence reaches down to meet us. I would remind here of Cleric's post on the 'stroboscopic' flashes of intuition that we experience in our ideas. As we climb the ladder, these flashes become more lively, more consistent, and more encompassing.  This also reminds me of the saying, "the night is darkest before the dawn", which points to a real intuition of how the lowest is bridged with the highest.

Everyone is going through this evolutionary process, yet how conscious we are of the true nature of the higher world and our connection with it determines how we experience it unfolding. At first, the woman experiences it as a very frightening experience, with alien hands grabbing at her. Eventually, those hands put the oxygen mask on her and she realizes they were only interested in her well-being the whole time. The adversarial forces can't stop the Time-ladder that has already been won through the Christ impulse, so they try to obscure our consciousness of what's actually happening. There are also people climbing up and through the portal one at a time, so each person who ascends then continues to work in the higher world to support the rescue mission of their friends who remained below.  This is an image of the great rescue mission we are all involved in, and I would say this is the superordinate principle of World evolution that should be kept as the foundation stone of our intuitive context when evaluating decisions to be made on the physical plane.

It is a rhythmic process by which we continually bring the light of these overarching principles to bear on particular circumstances - neither pole of the Time-ladder should take undue priority in our stream of experience. We can't presume to know how exactly the Time-ladder is manifesting in future circumstances or what role we will play. For me, the GPT question we are discussing here simply stands in for the whole inner landscape we need to cultivate in order to work more harmoniously with the mysterious higher worlds, both during life (waking life and perhaps sleeping life too) and after death. We don't need to make any broad rational calculations about how to rescue the most people in the shortest amount of time, because those things are already being worked out through higher-order logic by departed souls and angelic intelligences. As we do the inner work and resonate more and more with these intelligences, our flashes of intuition will convey their messages to us, but for that we need to remain completely and humbly open to the fact we don't already know what the messages are.

The other thing to briefly mention and contemplate - what does it mean to "sacrifice part of the gradient"? If we are naturally inclined to delve into mechanical technologies and use them to relieve our thinking effort, i.e. most people prior to entering the initiatory path, then yes it could be called a sacrifice to take a hard line and avoid that tendency. Yet once we are on the intuitive thinking path, and we have committed to developing our thinking forces in freedom, I think we should reflect on whether it is more of a sacrifice to take the hard line or to remain fluid and open to the redemptive possibilities inherent in all new circumstances? The former gives us a ready-at-hand rule to impose on such circumstances, relieving us of any further thinking effort, while the latter requires us to be continuously attentive and creative in our thinking. It is no easy or convenient thing to work out redemptive uses for rapidly developing mechanical technologies.