Federica wrote: ↑Tue Jul 12, 2022 12:50 pm
Again, I got ahead of myself. Instead of just wisely waiting, I couldn't help but ask. But the question lies two steps ahead, or above, or rather the answer does it, and then I can’t contain the overflow of your answer, Ashvin.
The spirits of darkness highjack the intellect. Only use intellect in gracious service of Divine Ideas. Instincts are Divine Ideas moving us unconsciously. Which is the really helpful inversion. The candle was blue and yellow and not red. It has a soothing effect, even after it’s blown out. The picture has no effect. I should breathe into the picture any effects I aim to create, but I can’t employ the picture. I can’t impart anything whatsoever to it. Lacking imagination.
Federica,
Please don't take what I am writing as a list of things to do, as they are not intended that way at all. Let's be clear that what I am writing is not actually living knowledge of the underlying dynamics of spiritual evolution. It's not even very solid conceptual knowledge, just the most broad resolution outlines in somewhat philosophical and religious terms. If anything, you can think of them as loose connections to keep in mind if/when you delve deeper into Steiner's philosophy and spiritual science. No doubt you will need to keep most of this stuff as references to return to later in that situation - that is mostly what I did for many of Cleric's posts here, in order to gain a more holistic appreciation of what he was writing. I still can't say that I have taken the necessary steps to actually experience the inner reality of many things. Still, our logical appreciation of what is written goes a long way towards forming the conceptual foundation which will prove critical later. Based on what you have written so far, including this last comment, it's clear you definitely appreciate the logical contours. In fact you have summarized what I wrote quite well in those few brief sentences.
(re: breathing new life into the pictures detached from nature - this is exactly what we are doing with Imaginative meditation, such as the vowel exercise. If you become conscious of any inward changes that give greater understanding of
what you are doing with your activity from such an exercise, then you are already resurrecting the pictures into living images.)
It should be said here, that many people deep into Theosophy, Anthroposophy, spiritual science, and similar spiritual paths are not well-versed in the philosophical underpinnings we are discussing here. They are not too familiar with Goethean Science, Riddles of Philosophy, PoSA, etc. or consider them of secondary importance, even though Steiner said PoSA was the most important foundation of all his subsequent work. So what we discuss here is somewhat unique in that regard. I have not come across any similar Anthroposophical forum or writings from people today, such as those from Cleric which illustrate the foundations with scientific/technological associations which simply weren't around at Steiner's time, some not until the very end of 20th century and beginning of 21st century (all those related to digital technology for ex.). They may be around, but are probably few and far between. I try to add some philosophical angles as well, which are more common but still not emphasized much elsewhere.
We must always keep in mind, this spiritual path is about becoming more conscious of what most people are
already doing with their spiritual activity. Your spirit is already weaving through the meaning of the higher worlds throughout the day and even more so during dreams and sleep, yet you lack the perceptual faculties for most of this to reflect into self-consciousness (as do I to a great degree). That is what many spiritualists, mediums, clairvoyants, visionaries, etc. fail to grasp - the physical body (and higher bodies) with their reflective perceptual organs are absolutely necessary for our "I" to become self-conscious of the true significance of what it is experiencing in higher imaginative states. This only comes through spiritual training. Philosophy (and science/math) is like a proto-tool of spiritual training, a forerunner to the higher cognitive faculties which come through prayer, meditation, various other spiritual exercises and ways of living. Artistic thinking and creation is even closer to that threshold. As long as we are
self-conscious of this fact, these will prove invaluable.
Here is an interesting dynamic to consider. What we call now the sensible physical world is the crystallized remnants of the supersensible worlds from which our Spirit descended. So we only perceive a tiny portion of those worlds with the waking conscious intellect and in a crystallized form. Yet the higher worlds are ever-present in our experience. Every moment we exist is an image of the entire drama of spiritual evolution from Alpha to Omega - all the supersensible forces of bygone ages and future ages are 'interfering' within us at every moment to constitute our current perspective, based on our particular context and stage of development. We don't really need to understand this deeply, but just as a basic preface to ask the question - where can we outwardly detect any remnants of these supersensible forces from bygone ages of evolution? That is, with philosophical or scientific tools? Steiner refers to three fundamental stages of evolution - which reflect conditions of human consciousness - before our Earth stage, as Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon. These names have deeper significance for why they are used, but that doesn't matter now, only that they reflect these past stages of human evolution still embedded within our modern psyche.
In that connection, consider the following passage.
Steiner wrote:I should like to give you an example of something where you can still recognise the Sun-part that is active, although attention can only be directed to it in a veiled way. Those of you who have acquainted yourselves with the new edition of my book, Riddles of Philosophy in Outline will have found that four periods in the development of Philosophy are distinguished. I have called the first period “The World-conceptions of the Greek Thinkers”. This lasted from 800 B.C. — in round numbers — or 600 B.C. to the birth of Christ, i.e. into the age of the origin of Christianity. A second period lasted from the rise of Christianity to about 800 – 900 A.D. up to the time of John Scotus Erigena. Then came a third period which I have called “the World-conception of the Middle Ages”, and which lasted from 800, 900 A.D. to 1600 A.D. And then there is the forth period up to our own time; we are just in this period. Eight-hundred year periods have been assigned to the history of philosophy, presented in such a way as was possible in a book meant for a public still quite unacquainted with Spiritual Science.
The intention was to give everything that could stimulate the mind and let the spiritual structure of these periods work upon one. The characteristic of the first period consists in the fact that a transition is found from a very remarkable ancient thinking to what one can call the life of thought in ancient Greece. Our age has not made much progress in the understanding of such differences, the difference, for instance, between the thought life of our own time and that of ancient Greece. Our clumsy thinking believes that thought lived in an ancient Greek head just as it lives today in the head of modern man. Thought lived in Socrates, Plato, even in Aristotle quite differently from how it lives in present-day mankind; this present thought-life first awoke in the 7th, 6th century B.C. Before that there was no actual life of thought. As my book sets out, one can speak of a beginning, of a birth of thought-life in this age of ancient Greece.
...
If you follow this scheme it is actually the part that I could not show in my book for the public, though it lies in it. And if you read the descriptions given of the separate epochs you will, if you are proper Anthroposophists, very clearly connect them with what I have written here... Beings are evolving and they make use of human forces in the sentient soul, in the intellectual soul etc. Through man and his works pass other beings with other laws than those of human development.
You see — these are activities of the Sun-laws!
Here we need not ascend to such super-sensible regions as when we investigate human destiny. It is in the philosophical development of mankind that we have an example of what remains from the Sun-laws... And while men believe that they themselves philosophise, Sun-laws work in them — inasmuch as men bear within them what the Sun-evolution laid down in their physical and etheric bodies. And the laws of the Sun-existence, working from epoch to epoch, cause philosophy to become precisely what it is...
You see how everything is linked together. But inasmuch as the Christ, the Sun-Being, enters in, he comes into connection with an evolution which is not the human evolution, not man's earthly evolution, but actually Sun-evolution within Earth existence.
Sun-evolution within Earth existence! Just think what we have actually reached in these reflections. We are considering the course of philosophical development, philosophical thought since the time of ancient Greece, and when we consider how this has evolved from philosopher to philosopher we say to ourselves: there are active within not earthly laws, but Sun laws!
Again, we shouldn't expect to deeply understand the above yet, but only enough to see that the very act of studying philosophy is also the act of studying the supersensible forces and their higher laws which manifest through our systematic inner thought-life. We don't need to accept this as true right now, but only to see how, in this spiritual understanding of the Cosmos, there is no duality between what we have been doing as human beings with our spiritual activity through cultural history, the history of inner thought, what we are still doing now, and the loftiest forces of spiritual beings in the higher worlds. In fact, this connection is the one critical for us to become conscious of in our time, especially at the beginning of our higher development. If we are not aware of the connection, then we are still passively flowing along with this evolution through our activity, but entirely unconsciously. When we become conscious of it, in a living way (not as mere concepts), then suddenly everything we have been doing and continue to do every day of our lives takes on new, higher, enriched meaning, and puts us back in living participatory connection with lofty spiritual beings who are raising humanity back up to its Origin, as we remain fully conscious for the ascent. We are then given, in the first time of all human evolutionary history, the
freedom to choose whether and how we participate in this Cosmic process with our thought-life, and to a lesser extent our life of feelings and actions.