Whirlpool's core/first motion

[Federica]

From here the challenge is then to change the direction of exploration, from horizontal to vertical. To discover the new underwater world that remains veiled to the swimmer. Or the plant that magically grows out of the seed. Is there anything that I can say about that process? When diving, it's as if we are not dense anymore, density seems to flow out of the body. It’s like our dense body is now all spread out before our eyes on the shelves of the sea bottom and we are left empty and light inside, turned inside-out like a glove, in a sense. All our heaviness comes out there on display. That’s why it’s a silent display. Underwater, the outside has no sound anymore. As density flows out, sound flows into the resonant, empty inner space. It’s the sound of our breath. It’s like the outer side - the fish, the rocks, the plants - tend to match, to contour, or to illustrate, the inner side turned inside-out.


So maybe taking death-steps starts with a similar kind of inversion? Turning our inner life inside-out and matching it with the landscape? Putting on display the secret agreements we once made with ourselves and soon forgot, taking inventory of all the odd scaffolding we once put up and never dismantled. The old arrangements, the consoling beliefs, and how all these originated as landscape adjustments. All this could be viable sacrificial material to fuel the death and resurrection process. Maybe we realize a matching feature, it clicks, and the ego-chunk burns down to fuel a new death-step into a new sublayer… and maybe that’s how we become familiar with the landscape, to the point that we can take some active steps in designing our spiritual trajectory.

Clearly there is nothing of substance, not even any practical how-to findings in all this. It’s just an attempt to take a little more active standpoint than waiting for the next ideas to understand, by reformulating what's written. I will see if it's useful exercise or not. Thanks for the inspiration!

Federica,

I imagine Cleric is getting around to a response on this soon, so I wanted to make a brief comment on something which most likely he is not already writing or planning to write, although maybe I'm wrong about that. It's something that flashed into my mind when reading your post. I was following your metaphorical restatement about the situation and approaching the inversion horizon, or the vertical dive below, and wondered, "what is she doing with her activity in the process of making these connections and wrestling with them?", which are very insightful and accurate connections from my perspective.  

"Even in the womb, Jacob struggled with his brother; when he became a man,he even fought with God. Yes, he wrestled with the angel and won."

We have mentioned the Christ impulse to Self-consciousness a few times recently. It's incredible how powerful this spiritual tool can be even from a strictly conceptual reasoning perspective. Let's take the force of gravity you reference. We have Newtonian mechanics, where mostly we are concerned with how one physical body can influence another upon some direct interaction. Then we discovered more about magnetism and electricity, in which direct physical contact is mostly missing, but we can picture some material exchange going on over relatively short distances to make these force interactions possible. Then we come to gravity, where large masses act on each other at a distance and there is really no material medium to picture whatsoever. We only speak of it in terms of abstract influences or 'curvatures' of spacetime. We even refer to invisible objects, "black holes", which are critical to the functioning of the visible Cosmos.

So there is a process of natural scientists spiritualizing the material interactions going on, but it remains mostly subconscious. We are not only discovering or changing abstract laws which pre-exist our activity 'out there', but actively imbuing natural appearances with spirit through our activity. Then we even come to QM and 'spooky action at a distance', where the interaction seems to defy previously assumed material constraints, like the speed of light, and it became even more explicit our own involvement in the entire process. How many of the scientists stop to reflect on what they are doing with their thought-activity in this way, how they are coming back to laws of spirit, which encompass that very same activity, from apearances and laws of nature? How much more progress towards living knowledge would have been made if they put as much thinking energy into such reflection as they did into toying around with abstract models and applied material pursuits? These are all acts of wrestling with the God of Nature to give birth to the Spirit of Nature, but only if they are fueled by the power of self-consciousness.

Now there are two possible ways of describing a being which is at the same time Spirit and Nature. The one is: I exhibit the laws of nature which are active in Reality. Or, I show how the spirit acts in order to come to these natural laws. One and the same thing guides me in both cases. The one shows me conformity to law as it is active in nature; the other shows me what the spirit does in order to represent to itself this same conformity to law. In the one case I pursue natural science, in the other spiritual science. How these two are connected, Schelling describes in an interesting way. He says: ‘The necessary tendency of all natural science is to ascend from nature to intelligence. This and nothing else underlies the endeavour to bring theory into natural phenomena. The highest perfection of natural science would be the complete spiritualisation of all natural laws into laws of observation and thought. Phenomena (the material) must completely vanish, and laws alone (the formal )remain. Hence it happens that the more conformity to law is brought into nature herself the more the veils vanish, phenomena themselves become more spiritual and finally disappear altogether.

Well the natural scientists aren't the only ones who fail to find their vertical thrust into space, or dive into deep sea, for lack of self-consciousness. I know it still takes effort for me to remember this is the most useful tool when I am contemplating things. There are not only natural phenomena, but cultural and individual soul phenomena. What is the deeper lawful character by which these phenomena transform? What sort of supersensible activities must be responsible for such transformations? What are the dynamics by which these operate? When and how did they come into manifestation? In what places do they manifest? What is my role in their manifestation. We can gain significant vertical thrust simply through these sorts of deeper who, what, when, where, and how. The 'why' questions deal more with the inward meditative path to higher planes of consciousness, yet we can certainly attain to deeper layers of 'why' even with our conceptual activity.

It is very important that we never feel we need to abandon natural science or the spirit of its method. We don't simply want to discover a world of spiritual entities and say, "here are the beings responsible for everything around us and within us", but to scientifically discover how they are responsible, which necessarily involves a holistic survey of human spiritual evolution. We want to self-consciously continue the process of spiritualizing the natural world and its principles in a precise and disciplined way. A critical inversion is when we realize how we have only arrived at the beginning of a genuine science of physics, biology, physiology, anatomy, nutrition, agriculture, education, etc. Instead of looking for a "theory of everything", we are experiencing the fact that we have the reality of almost nothing, yet.  It is not an easy path to pursue, because, while people will tolerate all sorts of talk about higher worlds and spiritual beings, they are not at all tolerant when mainstream scientific consensus and practical methods of dealing with outer phenomena, especially things like medical issues for ex., are questioned. 

We can also apply this shift into a novel direction for aesthetics. I briefly shared Steiner's new method of painting on the other thread. He also developed new methods of dance and architecture. You have probably heard of the Waldorf schools, which impart new methods of teaching based on spiritual understanding of the human being and its modern course of development. He outlines a 'threefold social order' for modern socioeconomic and political systems. There is so much unexplored territory in outer nature and culture, which deepens in proportion with our own spiritual consciousness. Steiner makes clear this isn't something monopolized by his own research, but something which should be expanded upon greatly by future spiritual researchers. So these are all more outward, logical, scientific ways to deepen the dive and reach a certain 'lightness of being'. It is essential we not only delve inwards for the spiritual, but also couple that with contemplation of Nature, Culture, and how spiritual understanding can improve and transfigure our individual and collective interaction with them. 

Ashvin,

I’m following your reasoning well. I see that you want to help me, but I’m not seeing in which different ways the descriptions should have been provided, in order to escape your warning. It’s not coming together. Yes, I was unsatisfied with the supposed usefulness of my post, and with it altogether, still I felt I had to submit it, because that was the reality of how I was able, or unable, to address the question, and I had to, or wanted to account for that. Yes, wrestling is an accurate description of what I was doing. Another one is fumbling in the dark. And yes, these metaphors are considered from the third-person vantage point. This is all accurate. I have failed to give any account of my inner activity in the process of exploring the question of death before death. In hindsight, I feel I have been giving so much account of personal struggles and exposed my inner activity to such an extent in these discussions, that if it sometimes happens that I dabble in wrestling with concepts, it should be admissible? Probably it even gives people a break. Don’t get me wrong please, I do think it’s been to a good extent necessary for me to play by these rules, for the double reason that this philosophy is about abandoning the intellectual third-person perspective, and that I am in this respect the last one, the ignorant one. And I do feel a deep gratitude for the unreal chance to have these real conversations that I had been missing for so long without knowing it. I know deep inside that the value I am accessing in this context is so worth the effort I am paying. With all this being said, how did you mean I could have done it?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I’m following your reasoning well. I see that you want to help me, but I’m not seeing in which different ways the descriptions should have been provided, in order to escape your warning. It’s not coming together. Yes, I was unsatisfied with the supposed usefulness of my post, and with it altogether, still I felt I had to submit it, because that was the reality of how I was able, or unable, to address the question, and I had to, or wanted to account for that. Yes, wrestling is an accurate description of what I was doing. Another one is fumbling in the dark. And yes, these metaphors are considered from the third-person vantage point. This is all accurate. I have failed to give any account of my inner activity in the process of exploring the question of death before death. In hindsight, I feel I have been giving so much account of personal struggles and exposed my inner activity to such an extent in these discussions, that if it sometimes happens that I dabble in wrestling with concepts, it should be admissible? Probably it even gives people a break. Don’t get me wrong please, I do think it’s been to a good extent necessary for me to play by these rules, for the double reason that this philosophy is about abandoning the intellectual third-person perspective, and that I am in this respect the last one, the ignorant one. And I do feel a deep gratitude for the unreal chance to have these real conversations that I had been missing for so long without knowing it. I know deep inside that the value I am accessing in this context is so worth the effort I am paying. With all this being said, how did you mean I could have done it?

Federica,

Sorry, there must be a miscommunication. My post wasn't a corrective to anything you are doing to approach these issues so far. In fact, you are approaching them how I wish I would have approached them to begin with. You are taking a much more living, non-intellectualized approach than I did. It took me much longer to ease into that than you seem to have already. I was rarely trying to restate what I read from Steiner or Cleric in my own thoughts, metaphors, etc., and certainly not offering what I felt would be better ways of characterizing them (which I think is a healthy thing to do). I am still often too willing to simply absorb other peoples' spiritual ideas and too hesitant to make them my own, as you already are doing, so I wouldn't say anything other than to continue following your intuitions! 

My prior response should only be taken in the most general sense of things we can pay attention to as we move forward, and as mention I wanted to try and avoid what I thought Cleric might already be writing about. My comments often say "we shouldn't" or "we need to", etc., because I really do mean "we". Often I am commenting on something I have had difficulty with recently or something that is well known to be an obstacle for those on the path. As you can imagine, there are spiritual scientific reasons why these obstacles exist. One such obstacle on the intuitive thinking path could be called our increasing sensitivity to the "tyranny of the senses", which includes our physical body. We will at first feel increasingly assaulted by the perceptual world and its constraints on our spiritual activity. I developed much more sensitivity to various vulnerabilities with my bony system, for example, which felt like a constant annoyance.

A natural reaction is a sort of escapism - we may want to spend 100% of our free time meditating. There is definitely a relief from the tyranny which comes from that and persistent meditation is very important. But as Cleric mentioned in the latest epic illustrative post, we shouldn't expect to escape the sensory spectrum any time soon. It's more about using our inner development to learn how to more wisely navigate that spectrum. One such method I have found helpful is to simply seek the Spirit within everything my senses confront, in a precise and increasingly scientific and aesthetic way. This is practically the spiritual scientific approach that Steiner details at length. We can make our approach to the sensory spectrum more plastic, surveying the same phenomena from various different ideal angles.

Steiner highlights a Zodiac of modern world-outlooks which can be utilized to evaluate phenomena, which I am trying to incorporate more lately. We can get into the details of what these mean if you want. I'm sure some of the names ring a bell or at least give a hint. If you decide to look into the spiritual scientific material more, it will be very helpful to keep these various angles in mind. 





These are mostly things to bookmark for later. From my considerations of where you are, I don't think it would very helpful for you to try and absorb all this stuff I am pointing to right away. I'm sure you have realized this already. But again, if you continue you will eventually come across the spiritual science, especially if you need a healthy direction on where to point your attention in the sensory spectrum, and then it will be very helpful. Something of great significance can be learned from all of these angles above. None are more "true" than the others, just like the Sun moving through one constellation or another doesn't make that constellation more true than the other ones. Our soul can move through these ideal constellations of modern outlooks. It is only when we stop moving and make them intellectual idols that they manifest their shadow qualities in the world.

[AshvinP]

...

Interestingly enough, a new lecture and synopsis was just posted on the Steiner archive website which is very relevant to what all three of us have been discussing recently. I am pasting the full synopsis below.

A Shift From Materialism to Spiritual Perception

On May 1, 1915, Steiner discussed the beginning of a new age in which humanity must shift from materialistic thinking to perception of the spiritual impulses and forces behind material sense phenomena. He says,

"[J]ust as a pendulum that has swung to one side has then to swing in the opposite direction, we are now faced by an age when the human soul must once more come to the perception that in everything having to do with the senses, in everything material, spiritual impulses, spiritual forces, are experience of the spiritual forces behind material sense phenomena — spiritual forces to which for centuries mankind has been able to give but little attention and but little interest." See MEDITATION AND CONCENTRATION: THREE KINDS OF CLAIRVOYANCE, GA 161, Lecture II

He asserts we can come to know those spiritual forces through science.

"Science will lead to the perception of something like what spiritual science assumes, namely, that in the physical body there lives a spiritual man. It is the nature of this spiritual man’s consciousness to which our attention is directed by spiritual science." Ibid.

But a study of the spiritual and imaginative consciousness is difficult. Clear vision or “clairvoyance” requires the development of nonphysical organs of perception.

"All that I have just been describing as the normal path to clairvoyance consists in man lifting out from his physical body, his etheric body and also the higher members of his organization, and providing himself with a heart outside the limits of his physical body." Ibid.

He contrasts “brain-thinking” and clairvoyance as follows:

"Here (1 in diagram) is the outer world, here the physical body (when brain thinking is in question). Here (2 in diagram) for clairvoyance, is the outer world, what we work upon with our astral body; we let the etheric body throw this back and we altogether exclude the physical body."

"The moment we exclude the physical body and let our thoughts be rayed back from the etheric body we live in what we carry through the gate of death. As long as we let the physical body ray back the thoughts, we are living in all that is between birth and death; when we will, our will belongs entirely to our physical body. Our physical body is there to promote activity. Whereas our thinking stands at the very gate of eternity, our willing is organized for the physical body." Ibid.

The next day, on May 2, 1915, he reiterated how our thoughts are active in the etheric body and are merely reflected in the physical body. We think outside of the physical realm.

"Just as when we stand in front of a mirror it is not our face that enters our consciousness out of the mirror but the image of our face, so in everyday life it is not the thinking but its reflection that as thought-content is rayed back into consciousness from the mirror of the physical body." See MEDITATION AND CONCENTRATION: THREE KINDS OF CLAIRVOYANCE, GA 161, Lecture III

He reminds us that our thinking is always outside the physical body. Our willing, on the other hand, penetrates the physical body.

"Between birth and death we are therefore permeated by will-forces; whereas the thoughts do not go on within our organism but outside it. From this you may conclude that everything to do with the will is intimately connected with what a man is between birth and death by reason of his bodily organization." Ibid.

Steiner then discusses how we can apply Spiritual Science to arrive at this understanding and concludes:

"We can therefore say: It is just into these facts of life which, when we think about life at all, confront us so enigmatically, that light is thrown by all we gain through spiritual science. Ever more fully can spiritual science enlighten men about what happens in everyday life, because everything that happens has supersensible causes. The most mundane events are dependent on the supersensible, and are comprehensible only when these supersensible causes are open to our view." Ibid.

In a fascinating discussion, he goes on to discuss the forces of thinking and willing in relation to death and the work of an initiate. He discusses these concepts in relation to space and time. He instructs us on the requirements and level of inquiry necessary to develop the soul and how we can strengthen our capabilities through meditation and concentration and delves into a philosophical discussion of these topics.

Knowledge of the Christ—The Crown of Spiritual Science

Finally, he addresses the ultimate need for Spiritual Science which leads to its highest purpose—knowledge of the Christ.

"Christ-knowledge is that to which — as the purest, highest and most holy — we are led by all that we receive through spiritual science. . . . n this present time of heavy trial and great suffering many people have their religious feeling aroused in the abstract form of the idea of God. Of a similar deepening of men's perception of the Christ we can hardly speak at all." Ibid.

To come to know the Christ, we must “rise to a conception of mankind as one great whole.”

"Then there gradually arises in the soul an urgent need to learn how there exists in man a deepening and then an ascending evolution. In the evolution of Time we must feel one with all mankind; we must look back to how the earth came originally into being, focus our gaze on this ascending and descending evolution, in the centre point of which the Mystery of Golgotha stands; we must feel ourselves bound up with the whole of humanity, feel ourselves bound up with the Mystery of Golgotha. Today the souls of men are nearer the cosmos spatially than they are temporally, that is, to what has been unfolded in the successive evolutionary stages. We shall be led to this, however, when with the aid of spiritual science we feel ourselves part of man's whole course of evolution. For then we cannot do other than recognize that there was a point of time when something entered the evolution of mankind which had nothing to do with human force. It entered man's evolution because into it an impulse made its way from the spiritual world through a human body — an impulse present in the beginning of the Christian era. It was a meeting of heaven with the earth.

Spiritual science must gradually build up for us the stages leading to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha — an understanding never again to be lost. This Mystery of Golgotha is the very meaning of the earth. To understand what this meaning of the earth is, must constitute the noblest endeavor of anyone finding his way step by step into spiritual science." Ibid.

[Federica]

This page looks tantalizing! Before I read it I want to reply on the threads. But this too I have to delay I have run out of stamina for today.

[Federica]

...

Ashvin,

From where I am and for what it’s worth, I would like to do my best to appease the mood of tension that is hovering here. My motive is not to tritely praise a bland dialogue. As I see it, tension in the wording of the various threads is a sparse emergence of a more consistent undercurrent, and I have more specific motives. One is that it seems an appropriate way to honor the value of the guidance you continually offer, which deserves to shine free from this interference. The other one is that the buildup of tension seems to be about to reach some form of tipping point, and I am not really sure with what consequences, therefore I want to make sure I cease to feed it completely. We all have some role to play in the circumstance, and maybe I do in more than one respect, so I would like to contribute my best effort to it. In other words, I am reviewing the plumbing, checking that the lifeline of this mood of tension does not get fueled. In previous drafts of this post I was instead trying to counteract it, using pieces of available evidence to build a case against it, warn against it, if you will. But this would only have given yet another unhelpful impulse to the whole system, intellectually viable as it were, but, as I have since realized, morally wrong. I still wonder if this is enough correction to set this post upright, and make it a positive contribution. I hope it is. Also please don’t attach too specific a sense to my vocabulary, which is often a translation of thoughts that have come up in other languages first.


I have referred to ‘plumbing’ because feelings and their awareness are, I believe, the variable at stake here. Because in the background of the understanding of the discourse and its argumentations, feelings play out, on the same landscape, and have the potential to inject the germ of misunderstanding - of self and of others - in any dialogue, hence to amplify or distort reactions, to bring them out of sync, and to make us over- or under-correct, over- or under-repent, over- or under-credit, over- or under-claim, and so on and so forth. It’s almost inevitable, to a greater or lesser extent, to be sensitive to credit, recognition, belonging, solidarity, or whatever other feeling it might be, humility, self-esteem, frustration, disappointment, gratitude, sympathy, antipathy, determination, self-righteousness, superiority, deference, communion, regret, the list goes on. It’s near to impossible (I am speaking for myself) to isolate these completely within the discourse landscape and prevent them from generating unseen bias, but what should be possible, is to be keenly vigilant on how they operate and, by bringing them under the spot of self-perception, deflate them when necessary, which is often. It’s about bringing them into awareness. And sometimes the recognition of their polarized character is how they can be brought into awareness and neutralized, if harmful, so as to stabilize those dimensions back to center, subtracting away energy from the flights forward or the deep dives.


All this reminds me of this bewitching Geyser land, in Island. The spots where the geysers periodically erupt are marked with a small signal rope. Even the smallest hot ponds can hurt the distracted walker when the sulfuric steam suddenly bubbles up. Thanks to the ropes, visitors stay safe and don’t get burned when the geysers unexpectedly blow up. So I want to state my intention of working harder at mapping out the geyser land, defusing tension by putting signal ropes for myself to notice, so that the boiling areas are identified, neutralized if needed, and less in the way of landscape navigation. Maybe they can even be made into its facilitators.


You might wonder at this point if this is a poorly disguised criticism I am sending in your direction. No it isn’t. But I would be untruthful if I said that I think you are exempt from these feeling dynamics. Also, I notice a radical take in your approach that is not forced by the path, nor by the argumentations and from where I am - limited viewpoint and zero experience of spiritual science - it seems at risk of becoming detrimental to you. In summary, all this lengthy introduction was to first state my goal to become more vigilant and intentional with feelings and their interference with everything else, and second, it was to suggest (and nothing more) that - because you can go further than that with feelings, and do way more than take stock and set signal ropes - maybe you look into that, in case you have been focusing primarily on thinking and willing. “As a rule, man of today takes the feeling as a finished fact, just as we take the dreamscape as finished fact in the dream. We accept it for what it is, we say "I'm so angry with that person". And we may even have quite convincing intellectual story about why exactly we're angry. Yet when we step into the Imaginative realm we become awake on a higher level, from which our ordinary state seems just as dimmed down, as when we look from our ordinary state upon our dream self…” Cleric wrote.


All this being now said, I can finally and gladly come to the content of your post. I have to tell you I lack the intuitions you are crediting me with, regarding the spiritual scientific reasons for certain obstacles on the spiritual path, such as an increased tyranny of senses. Thank you for making this clear with personal examples. I cannot directly relate to this obstacle for now, as my experience of perception that includes the body is actually improving, it’s becoming more coherent, richer, and I am not in any sense experiencing being assaulted by sense perceptions. On the contrary I am gaining a more joyful, multifaceted look into reality, especially plants but also animals, and the space in general. Sometimes space seems to become more dimensional, a more suitable place than before for my body to evolve in. Sometimes the is-ness of everything - Spirits of the forum, please hide this line for Cleric : ) - is more present and active, rather than rigid and inert. And for now, I cannot make up my mind to be saddened by the fact that escaping the sensory spectrum is not going to happen anytime soon. I realize all this is not immediately promising, but I don’t worry. Also I am not really meditating, I need to read and think a little further first, because I am noticing slight changes in my normal thinking activity. It’s becoming softer and more smiling, if it makes any sense.


Coming to the drawing of the twelve worldviews, I have recently seen this same illustration, but handwritten and with a zodiac overlap. I can’t remember in which context, if it was in the Steiner archive or here, and in which thread. The drawing has made me curious to learn more about these views, so I’m happy you are bringing it up here and surely would like to get into the details of what these angles mean, with their reciprocal connections. Even if it might be too early (which I actually haven’t realized but I trust you) I still would like to do it, especially in connection to how they are related to, or can support, imaginative thinking versus being an evolutionary illustration.

.

[AshvinP]

...

Ashvin,

From where I am and for what it’s worth, I would like to do my best to appease the mood of tension that is hovering here. My motive is not to tritely praise a bland dialogue. As I see it, tension in the wording of the various threads is a sparse emergence of a more consistent undercurrent, and I have more specific motives. One is that it seems an appropriate way to honor the value of the guidance you continually offer, which deserves to shine free from this interference. The other one is that the buildup of tension seems to be about to reach some form of tipping point, and I am not really sure with what consequences, therefore I want to make sure I cease to feed it completely. We all have some role to play in the circumstance, and maybe I do in more than one respect, so I would like to contribute my best effort to it. In other words, I am reviewing the plumbing, checking that the lifeline of this mood of tension does not get fueled. In previous drafts of this post I was instead trying to counteract it, using pieces of available evidence to build a case against it, warn against it, if you will. But this would only have given yet another unhelpful impulse to the whole system, intellectually viable as it were, but, as I have since realized, morally wrong. I still wonder if this is enough correction to set this post upright, and make it a positive contribution. I hope it is. Also please don’t attach too specific a sense to my vocabulary, which is often a translation of thoughts that have come up in other languages first.


I have referred to ‘plumbing’ because feelings and their awareness are, I believe, the variable at stake here. Because in the background of the understanding of the discourse and its argumentations, feelings play out, on the same landscape, and have the potential to inject the germ of misunderstanding - of self and of others - in any dialogue, hence to amplify or distort reactions, to bring them out of sync, and to make us over- or under-correct, over- or under-repent, over- or under-credit, over- or under-claim, and so on and so forth. It’s almost inevitable, to a greater or lesser extent, to be sensitive to credit, recognition, belonging, solidarity, or whatever other feeling it might be, humility, self-esteem, frustration, disappointment, gratitude, sympathy, antipathy, determination, self-righteousness, superiority, deference, communion, regret, the list goes on. It’s near to impossible (I am speaking for myself) to isolate these completely within the discourse landscape and prevent them from generating unseen bias, but what should be possible, is to be keenly vigilant on how they operate and, by bringing them under the spot of self-perception, deflate them when necessary, which is often. It’s about bringing them into awareness. And sometimes the recognition of their polarized character is how they can be brought into awareness and neutralized, if harmful, so as to stabilize those dimensions back to center, subtracting away energy from the flights forward or the deep dives.


All this reminds me of this bewitching Geyser land, in Island. The spots where the geysers periodically erupt are marked with a small signal rope. Even the smallest hot ponds can hurt the distracted walker when the sulfuric steam suddenly bubbles up. Thanks to the ropes, visitors stay safe and don’t get burned when the geysers unexpectedly blow up. So I want to state my intention of working harder at mapping out the geyser land, defusing tension by putting signal ropes for myself to notice, so that the boiling areas are identified, neutralized if needed, and less in the way of landscape navigation. Maybe they can even be made into its facilitators.


You might wonder at this point if this is a poorly disguised criticism I am sending in your direction. No it isn’t. But I would be untruthful if I said that I think you are exempt from these feeling dynamics. Also, I notice a radical take in your approach that is not forced by the path, nor by the argumentations and from where I am - limited viewpoint and zero experience of spiritual science - it seems at risk of becoming detrimental to you. In summary, all this lengthy introduction was to first state my goal to become more vigilant and intentional with feelings and their interference with everything else, and second, it was to suggest (and nothing more) that - because you can go further than that with feelings, and do way more than take stock and set signal ropes - maybe you look into that, in case you have been focusing primarily on thinking and willing. “As a rule, man of today takes the feeling as a finished fact, just as we take the dreamscape as finished fact in the dream. We accept it for what it is, we say "I'm so angry with that person". And we may even have quite convincing intellectual story about why exactly we're angry. Yet when we step into the Imaginative realm we become awake on a higher level, from which our ordinary state seems just as dimmed down, as when we look from our ordinary state upon our dream self…” Cleric wrote.


All this being now said, I can finally and gladly come to the content of your post. I have to tell you I lack the intuitions you are crediting me with, regarding the spiritual scientific reasons for certain obstacles on the spiritual path, such as an increased tyranny of senses. Thank you for making this clear with personal examples. I cannot directly relate to this obstacle for now, as my experience of perception that includes the body is actually improving, it’s becoming more coherent, richer, and I am not in any sense experiencing being assaulted by sense perceptions. On the contrary I am gaining a more joyful, multifaceted look into reality, especially plants but also animals, and the space in general. Sometimes space seems to become more dimensional, a more suitable place than before for my body to evolve in. Sometimes the is-ness of everything - Spirits of the forum, please hide this line for Cleric : ) - is more present and active, rather than rigid and inert. And for now, I cannot make up my mind to be saddened by the fact that escaping the sensory spectrum is not going to happen anytime soon. I realize all this is not immediately promising, but I don’t worry. Also I am not really meditating, I need to read and think a little further first, because I am noticing slight changes in my normal thinking activity. It’s becoming softer and more smiling, if it makes any sense.


Coming to the drawing of the twelve worldviews, I have recently seen this same illustration, but handwritten and with a zodiac overlap. I can’t remember in which context, if it was in the Steiner archive or here, and in which thread. The drawing has made me curious to learn more about these views, so I’m happy you are bringing it up here and surely would like to get into the details of what these angles mean, with their reciprocal connections. Even if it might be too early (which I actually haven’t realized but I trust you) I still would like to do it, especially in connection to how they are related to, or can support, imaginative thinking versus being an evolutionary illustration.

.

Federica,

I must admit that I have become largely 'color blind' or 'tone deaf' to this 'tension' you are referring to. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you are referring to the somewhat antagonistic dialogue I had with Jim and Lou recently, or perhaps some of the comments I wrote to you as well. These are areas where I do tend to fall short, perhaps responding too quickly and curtly to various comments. On the other hand, I never want to give the impression that I am 'on the same page' with someone when I am, in fact, on a completely different page. So it's a fine balancing act and I am positive that my balancing skills are in need of improvement. I am sure it is sometimes better not to respond at all. And I appreciate you bringing up these things in a very thoughtful and constructive way,  first of all focusing on yourself. We could make great progress as a society if we all had this same tendency of first taking the beam out of our own eye before criticizing the speck of dust in our brother's eye. 

The deeper issue for me is one of stakes. I think modern man has lost all sense of stakes in these matters. When we are dealing with the outer world and make an error in judgment, like we put our hand too close to a flame, life itself will instruct us not to do this again or suffer the consequences. With our inner activity, though, there seem to be little to no consequences for what we do - telling a lie, ignoring uncomfortable facts, resting comfortably with incomplete ideas, indulging in various egoistic pleasures, etc. - we do these things so casually and effortlessly because there is no lucid, holistic sense of how they will 'burn' our inner being. We can't livingly discern how they will feedback into all that manifests outwardly as anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, pain, illness, tragedy, etc. When we approach the inversion horizon through meditation, however, these things begin to change. 

Inner shadowy forces will rise up and confront us in ways we couldn't imagine before, as we try to liberate the higher members from the physical body, and we will see just how much we are inwardly complicit in our downfall, and that of humanity as a whole. Of course I'm not intending this to scare you or make it sound like we should avoid it altogether, because when we are centered through the Christ impulse this really becomes like a noble knight's quest to slay the dragons within. At least in my experience, I have never lacked for inner motivation, courage, and enthusiasm to continue. Nevertheless, it is always helpful to anticipate a few steps ahead of where we are at any given time. The 'tyranny of the senses' will happen after some time with imaginative meditation, although it could, and probably will, manifest in a different form for you than for me (I really haven't taken care of my physical body nearly as well as I should have been). 

Another example is music - when I listen to anything but early classical or certain spiritual devotional music, the songs tend to get stuck in my head, running in the background, looping around incessantly whenever I try to concentrate. I mentioned my commenting on the forums before - many times I will get distracted thinking about such comments, which is really a form of egoism where I am making the logical argumentation process personal to me. This is more 'tyranny of the intellect' which is deeply tied into our physical sensory organism. I suppose it is possible some people, due to their Karma and/or their consciously exercised willpower, will bypass most of this 'tyranny', but I find it unlikely. Either way, anticipating it should give us more opportunities to be prepared and mitigate its effects. The mere fact that we have become more consciously sensitive to these things means we are making great progress in our spiritual evolution, as we differentiate the lower from the higher Self. 

The overall point is that I perhaps lack the perspective to properly calibrate the 'tension' you are speaking of, because of these many great inner obstacles we will face on the path. There is a book called 'Ordinary Men' which recounted how adult police officers who were working when the Nazis came to power, not indoctrinated like the youth, gradually descended into the most horrific atrocities against the populations of occupied countries (in this case Poland, I believe). On this path, we should be able to discern the shadow tendencies within us which would make us capable of the same exact thing in similar circumstances. I am also reminded of the early Christians who were fed to lions for sport, the medieval esoteric Christians who were tortured and executed for 'heresy', and the many faithful people today who are persecuted around the world. I'm not saying this will become widespread practice again in the West, necessarily, but we should also remember these things to put in perspective the seeming obstacles we face today.

Anyway, I wanted to address the 'tension' and my own role in it, as well as my own perspective (or lack of perspective) on it, before continuing on to the Zodiac, which I will do in a separate post (it's quite possible I posted it to you before... ordinary memory does really suffer a diminishment on this path for a while). I have no illusion that my current self-understanding, even after developing some basic Imagination on this path, is not my true awakened Self - that I am still identifying with much of my perceptual and conceptual Maya and giving in to many lower desires, feelings, thoughts. You are absolutely correct that we need to always remain vigilant - no one is safe from this and, the moment we feel ourselves to be safe from it, is the moment we also become most vulnerable to it. 

[Federica]

Federica,

I must admit that I have become largely 'color blind' or 'tone deaf' to this 'tension' you are referring to. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you are referring to the somewhat antagonistic dialogue I had with Jim and Lou recently, or perhaps some of the comments I wrote to you as well. These are areas where I do tend to fall short, perhaps responding too quickly and curtly to various comments. On the other hand, I never want to give the impression that I am 'on the same page' with someone when I am, in fact, on a completely different page. So it's a fine balancing act and I am positive that my balancing skills are in need of improvement. I am sure it is sometimes better not to respond at all. And I appreciate you bringing up these things in a very thoughtful and constructive way,  first of all focusing on yourself. We could make great progress as a society if we all had this same tendency of first taking the beam out of our own eye before criticizing the speck of dust in our brother's eye. 

The deeper issue for me is one of stakes. I think modern man has lost all sense of stakes in these matters. When we are dealing with the outer world and make an error in judgment, like we put our hand too close to a flame, life itself will instruct us not to do this again or suffer the consequences. With our inner activity, though, there seem to be little to no consequences for what we do - telling a lie, ignoring uncomfortable facts, resting comfortably with incomplete ideas, indulging in various egoistic pleasures, etc. - we do these things so casually and effortlessly because there is no lucid, holistic sense of how they will 'burn' our inner being. We can't livingly discern how they will feedback into all that manifests outwardly as anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, pain, illness, tragedy, etc. When we approach the inversion horizon through meditation, however, these things begin to change. 

Inner shadowy forces will rise up and confront us in ways we couldn't imagine before, as we try to liberate the higher members from the physical body, and we will see just how much we are inwardly complicit in our downfall, and that of humanity as a whole. Of course I'm not intending this to scare you or make it sound like we should avoid it altogether, because when we are centered through the Christ impulse this really becomes like a noble knight's quest to slay the dragons within. At least in my experience, I have never lacked for inner motivation, courage, and enthusiasm to continue. Nevertheless, it is always helpful to anticipate a few steps ahead of where we are at any given time. The 'tyranny of the senses' will happen after some time with imaginative meditation, although it could, and probably will, manifest in a different form for you than for me (I really haven't taken care of my physical body nearly as well as I should have been). 

Another example is music - when I listen to anything but early classical or certain spiritual devotional music, the songs tend to get stuck in my head, running in the background, looping around incessantly whenever I try to concentrate. I mentioned my commenting on the forums before - many times I will get distracted thinking about such comments, which is really a form of egoism where I am making the logical argumentation process personal to me. This is more 'tyranny of the intellect' which is deeply tied into our physical sensory organism. I suppose it is possible some people, due to their Karma and/or their consciously exercised willpower, will bypass most of this 'tyranny', but I find it unlikely. Either way, anticipating it should give us more opportunities to be prepared and mitigate its effects. The mere fact that we have become more consciously sensitive to these things means we are making great progress in our spiritual evolution, as we differentiate the lower from the higher Self. 

The overall point is that I perhaps lack the perspective to properly calibrate the 'tension' you are speaking of, because of these many great inner obstacles we will face on the path. There is a book called 'Ordinary Men' which recounted how adult police officers who were working when the Nazis came to power, not indoctrinated like the youth, gradually descended into the most horrific atrocities against the populations of occupied countries (in this case Poland, I believe). On this path, we should be able to discern the shadow tendencies within us which would make us capable of the same exact thing in similar circumstances. I am also reminded of the early Christians who were fed to lions for sport, the medieval esoteric Christians who were tortured and executed for 'heresy', and the many faithful people today who are persecuted around the world. I'm not saying this will become widespread practice again in the West, necessarily, but we should also remember these things to put in perspective the seeming obstacles we face today.

Anyway, I wanted to address the 'tension' and my own role in it, as well as my own perspective (or lack of perspective) on it, before continuing on to the Zodiac, which I will do in a separate post (it's quite possible I posted it to you before... ordinary memory does really suffer a diminishment on this path for a while). I have no illusion that my current self-understanding, even after developing some basic Imagination on this path, is not my true awakened Self - that I am still identifying with much of my perceptual and conceptual Maya and giving in to many lower desires, feelings, thoughts. You are absolutely correct that we need to always remain vigilant - no one is safe from this and, the moment we feel ourselves to be safe from it, is the moment we also become most vulnerable to it. 

Ashvin, I intended to make the post about feelings. Although I have not referred to any particular feelings of anyone, that’s the subject. It is not my message at all to point at your dialogues here and tell you how you should conduct them. I clearly wouldn’t have any legitimacy doing so and that was never my point. I was not suggesting at all that you should do any fine balancing act or improve your balancing skills. Nor do I think you lack the perspective to properly calibrate ‘tension’. I was convinced I had made at least that part unequivocally clear, but your response assures me I actually haven’t. May I restate that I was not calling for a pacified dialogue. As I also said, these somewhat antagonistic dialogues are in my opinion only a sparse emergence of an underlying tension. I said that it's an underlying current, not that you cause the tension. It’s a shared landscape for sure much bigger than these dialogues.

If what you conclude from my post is that you should put more strain on yourself for the things that you should have done that you have not done, well then I have to acknowledge that I have failed to make my post a positive contribution, from my perspective. I will try to summarize it in a few words, for the part that refers to you. After a number of observations, I sense a pattern of tension buildup - not your creation. As I look at it in relation to myself and to feelings (as described in the post) it occurs to me that this context could possibly be an annoyance for someone like you who has, as I described it, a 'radical take' (probably what you call never lacking for inner motivation, courage, and enthusiasm to continue). The annoyance could be that it could push you even more furiously (please understand this word in a positive way) ahead and in this run, I intuit that maybe feelings could slip out, remain behind somewhat unattended, hence pull you back. So I made this suggestion, and nothing more. I thought there could be a chance that you resonate with that in some way (please don't think that I expect or want to induce further elaboration on that, it's absolutely not so). If that's not the case, it was just a phantasy on my part to be dropped immediately.

Regarding the rest of your writing, I completely understand and agree with your paragraph on stakes, to the extent I can from where I am. You restate that in another form in the paragraph about “Ordinary men” and I understand that too. Then you go on discussing further the tyranny of senses, I trust you on that. As mentioned I don’t have any direct understanding here, so I can’t comment further.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, I intended to make the post about feelings. Although I have not referred to any particular feelings of anyone, that’s the subject. It is not my message at all to point at your dialogues here and tell you how you should conduct them. I clearly wouldn’t have any legitimacy doing so and that was never my point. I was not suggesting at all that you should do any fine balancing act or improve your balancing skills. Nor do I think you lack the perspective to properly calibrate ‘tension’. I was convinced I had made at least that part unequivocally clear, but your response assures me I actually haven’t. May I restate that I was not calling for a pacified dialogue. As I also said, these somewhat antagonistic dialogues are in my opinion only a sparse emergence of an underlying tension. I said that it's an underlying current, not that you cause the tension. It’s a shared landscape for sure much bigger than these dialogues.

If what you conclude from my post is that you should put more strain on yourself for the things that you should have done that you have not done, well then I have to acknowledge that I have failed to make my post a positive contribution, from my perspective. I will try to summarize it in a few words, for the part that refers to you. After a number of observations, I sense a pattern of tension buildup - not your creation. As I look at it in relation to myself and to feelings (as described in the post) it occurs to me that this context could possibly be an annoyance for someone like you who has, as I described it, a 'radical take' (probably what you call never lacking for inner motivation, courage, and enthusiasm to continue). The annoyance could be that it could push you even more furiously (please understand this word in a positive way) ahead and in this run, I intuit that maybe feelings could slip out, remain behind somewhat unattended, hence pull you back. So I made this suggestion, and nothing more. I thought there could be a chance that you resonate with that in some way (please don't think that I expect or want to induce further elaboration on that, it's absolutely not so). If that's not the case, it was just a phantasy on my part to be dropped immediately.

Federica,

Alright my mistake. I have revisited your previous post and have a better sense of what you are pointing to.

Also, I notice a radical take in your approach that is not forced by the path, nor by the argumentations and from where I am - limited viewpoint and zero experience of spiritual science - it seems at risk of becoming detrimental to you. In summary, all this lengthy introduction was to first state my goal to become more vigilant and intentional with feelings and their interference with everything else, and second, it was to suggest (and nothing more) that - because you can go further than that with feelings, and do way more than take stock and set signal ropes - maybe you look into that, in case you have been focusing primarily on thinking and willing.

Point taken. What you are speaking is of vital importance. From my own assessment, I actually find willing to be my weakest point now. This is normal because our instincts, impulses, desires related to the lower body have been conditioned for a long time now. Although some people could naturally have better discipline of will while struggling with feeling or thinking. My life of feeling is still quite enigmatic and opaque, but I do find the devotional approach, which becomes ever-more necessary to make progress on this path, naturally diffuses the various 'geysers' by bringing a more steady and consistent stream of healthy feelings into our awareness. It can also make us aware of unhealthy feelings which are blocking up our plumbing. One can hardly contemplate scripture, for ex., without also implicating the life of feeling in very deep ways.

Even more importantly, we simply won't make any meditative progress without working on the life of feeling. There are many times I have struggled in my meditative sessions to embrace the devotional feeling while sacrificing the intellectual thinking about spiritual ideas, i.e. to engage the blue-shifting and move out with the Light instead of consuming it, and this is quite necessary to make imaginative progress, but I am well aware that this is happening because there's really no way to miss it. That brings me to the next point - the normal self-work we can do on our thinking and feeling is very important, but there's only so much that can be done that way. When we deepen self-knowledge through meditation and spiritual exercises, whole new vistas of our soul life begin to unveil as we are given living feedback in a variety of ways. Here I will quote Cleric from TCT thread:


viewtopic.php?p=14929#p14929

To lift the veil is not to remain the same while simply setting sight on some spoilers of the secrets of existence, which we arrogantly believe that our intellect is fully capable of grasping in the way we have it now. It's about gaining consciousness of the strata of meaningful reality beneath the face mask and the intellect itself. This is the leeway. This is when we see ourselves as objectified percept (this is actually a glimpse at what is called in esoteric terms The Guardian at the Threshold). Yet we're not independent of these layers. Even in higher cognition we're never completely outside of them. We become fully submerged in them once again when we're carried away on the waves of sensory life. The fact that we have glimpsed the interior of the costume doesn't mean that we have overcome it. Actually this glimpse should only act as a stimulus to realize how real these things really are and how great our responsibility is to work upon them. Our Earthly persona is weaved of this costume. The way we think, the way we feel, the way we move - all of these are part of the living elemental nature of the costume. I repeat that this costume is not only the crude physical but also the body of life processes and the body of desires.

I think it's easy for those just starting out to assume this is all mostly symbolic and metaphorical in some way, but really it's very literal. We may end up happening upon an actual being who looks somewhat as follows, as is happened in my case:


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19240222a01.html

Behold the third beast, with cloven muzzle,
Its eye is glassy, posture slouching,
Dirty-red its form appears to you;
Your doubts in the power of spiritual light
Begat this ghost within your thinking;
Your creative knowledge must make it yield.

Similarly there are guardians related to the life of feeling and willing, whom I have not encountered yet, but I hope that I will some day! It's easy to consider these descriptions and feel we are talking about some devilish being who we need to fight or run away from, but really we are dealing with a great gift from the higher worlds. It reveals to us our actual being as viewed from the perspective of those higher worlds, with all our inner warts turned outwards for us to see objectively. It gives us the opportunity to morally develop ourselves instead of entering the higher worlds impure and, therefore, entirely unprepared. So, you can see, there are many unsuspected ways in which the geysers will be brought to our attention on the spiritual path and they will be very hard to miss. I realize this is what you were also pointing to when saying, "because you can go further than that with feelings, and do way more than take stock and set signal ropes". So your intuition was once again correct, but I'm not sure you realized how difficult it becomes to ignore the life of feeling on the path.

That being said, I do really value your feedback on these things and I hope you don't hesitate to continue providing it. When it is motivated by genuine interest in bringing to greater light our inner being and what we can do to confront it in a living way, it hardly matters if it's "correct". It's really the Spirit of the gestures that matter and this can always reveal things to us which we may otherwise miss.

[AshvinP]

Coming to the drawing of the twelve worldviews, I have recently seen this same illustration, but handwritten and with a zodiac overlap. I can’t remember in which context, if it was in the Steiner archive or here, and in which thread. The drawing has made me curious to learn more about these views, so I’m happy you are bringing it up here and surely would like to get into the details of what these angles mean, with their reciprocal connections. Even if it might be too early (which I actually haven’t realized but I trust you) I still would like to do it, especially in connection to how they are related to, or can support, imaginative thinking versus being an evolutionary illustration.
.

I will simply direct you to Steiner's lectures from which the image was sourced. It's a great lecture series, pretty easy to follow in my view, and one can hardly improve on how he builds the connections between these world outlooks. Here is an excerpt from Lecture 2, which begins developing those connections.


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA151/En ... index.html

Again, there may be other persons who speak as follows. Around us are matter and the world of material phenomena. But this world of material phenomena is in itself devoid of meaning. It has no real meaning unless there is within it a progressive tendency; unless from this external world something can emerge towards which the human soul can direct itself, independently of the world. According to this outlook, there must be a realm of ideas and ideals within the world-process. Such people are not Realists, although they pay external life its due; their view is that life has meaning only if ideas work through it and give it purpose. It was under the influence of such a mood as this that Fichte once said: Our world is the sensualised material of our duty. [ Note 2 ] The adherents of such a world-outlook as this, which takes everything as a vehicle for the ideas that permeate the world-process, may be called Idealists and their outlook: Idealism. Beautiful and grand and glorious things have been brought forward on behalf of this Idealism. And in this realm that I have just described — where the point is to show that the world would be purposeless and meaningless if ideas were only human inventions and were not rooted in the world-process — in this realm Idealism is fully justified. But by means of it one cannot, for example, explain external reality. Hence one can distinguish this Idealism from other world-outlooks:

We now have side by side four justifiable world-outlooks, each with significance for its particular domain. Between Materialism and Idealism there is a certain transition. The crudest kind of materialism — one can observe it specially well in our day, although it is already on the wane — will consist in this, that people carry to an extreme the saying of Kant — Kant did not do this himself! — that in the individual sciences there is only so much real science as there is mathematics. This means that from being a materialist one can become a ready-reckoner of the universe, taking nothing as valid except a world composed of material atoms. They collide and gyrate, and then one calculates how they inter-gyrate. By this means one obtains very fine results, which show that this way of looking at things is fully justified. Thus you can get the vibration-rates for blue, red, etc.; you take the whole world as a kind of mechanical apparatus, and can reckon it up accurately. But one can become rather confused in this field. One can say to oneself: “Yes, but however complicated the machine may be, one can never get out of it anything like the perception of blue, red, etc. Thus if the brain is only a complicated machine, it can never give rise to what we know as soul-experiences.” But then one can say, as du Bois-Reymond once said: If we want to explain the world in strictly mathematical terms, we shall not be able to explain the simplest perception, but if we go outside a mathematical explanation, we shall be unscientific. The most uncompromising materialist would say, “No, I do not even calculate, for that would presuppose a superstition — it would imply that I assume that things are ordered by measure and number.” And anyone who raises himself above this crude materialism will become a mathematical thinker, and will recognize as valid only whatever can be treated mathematically. From this results a conception of the universe that really admits nothing beyond mathematical formulae. This may be called Mathematism.

Someone, however, might think this over, and after becoming a Mathematist he might say to himself: “It cannot be a superstition that the colour blue has so and so many vibrations. The world is ordered mathematically. If mathematical ideas are found to be real in the world, why should not other ideas have equal reality?” Such a person accepts this — that ideas are active in the world. But he grants validity only to those ideas that he discovers outside himself — not to any ideas that he might grasp from his inner self by some sort of intuition or inspiration, but only to those he reads from external things that are real to the senses. Such a person becomes a Rationalist, and his outlook on the world is that of Rationalism. If, in addition to the ideas that are found in this way, someone grants validity also to those gained from the moral and the intellectual realms, then he is already an Idealist. Thus a path leads from crude Materialism, by way of Mathematism and Rationalism, to Idealism.

But now Idealism can be enhanced. In our age there are some men who are trying to do this. They find ideas at work in the world, and this implies that there must also be in the world some sort of beings in whom the ideas can live. Ideas cannot live just as they are in any external object, nor can they hang as it were in the air. In the nineteenth century the belief existed that ideas rule history. But this was a confusion, for ideas as such have no power to work. Hence one cannot speak of ideas in history. Anyone who understands that ideas, if they are there are all, are bound up with some being capable of having ideas, will no longer be a mere Idealist; he will move on to the supposition that ideas are connected with beings. He becomes a Psychist and his world-outlook is that Psychism. The Psychist, who in his turn can uphold his outlook with an immense amount of ingenuity, reaches it only through a kind of one-sidedness, of which he can eventually become aware.

[Federica]

...

Thank you for the credit, Ashvin! You are right, I have not realized how difficult it becomes to ignore the life of feelings on the path. I certainly haven’t. All I have realized is my personal work on feelings up to this point and, to some lesser extent, what I am reading about feeling. What’s stated in the lecture you shared - I have read it carefully - I certainly haven’t realized, for the most part. For now I am simply reading:

We must be able to include feeling in the development of knowledge. Through constant review of our own being, we must be able to know what kind of persons we are as feeling human beings. This is not easy. With thinking it is relatively easy to achieve clarity about ourselves. [...] But with feeling we never really get to the point of observing ourselves in our souls. We are always convinced that the direction of our feeling is the correct one. We must delve most intimately into our souls if we wish to know ourselves as feeling human beings.

Here I’m surprised that feelings are said to be more difficult to see through than thinking, but for now I simply take notice, and hope I’ll be able to make better sense of that later (not a question I am asking).


There actually are a few things in this lecture that I can relate to directly:

When people think clearly they are citizens of the world, for they well know that thinking makes you human, even when it is dead in the present age. But people are separated by their feeling into nations, and especially today they let this unconscious feeling dominate in the worst possible way. Because people feel themselves as only belonging to a certain group, all kinds of conflicts arise.

I was so glad to read this. I was trying to express something along these lines in some of the first posts of this thread, about people trying to get themselves an identity by declaring allegiance to flags and then playing for others and for themselves that role, whatever conflicts it takes, as a hopeless, nonsensical way of feeling that they have ‘meaning’ as humans. Another feeling referenced as necessary to cultivate, that I have felt, is the immersive feeling of being lost in the cosmic void without clues about our own being. I can feel this feeling even without waiting for the night sky. The blue sky of the day is enough. And the ‘earnestness’ it's referred to as another feeling to cultivate, I understand too, I call it urgency.


Again from the lecture, there’s this image that I find so brilliant, of the humans of today, going around living life until death, as kind of zombies, dead corpses. We are right now, as alive as we are, the dead form of the human figure, ”the visible corpses of our animating invisible soul. And so it is for thinking. Our ordinary thoughts are dead thoughts in a corpse figure.” What a helpful image, it makes the idea that our concepts are dead precipitations much more apprehensible. It really is a powerful metaphor, not an ordinary one, but a metaphor that one can try on oneself instead of looking at it. What I don’t get in that passage is “It’s perhaps depressing to realize that it’s a corpse”. Why should it be depressing… It's such a brilliant insight!


I also read the link to the TCT thread and the great metaphor of the toy-concepts assigned by the council of children to the TV news. A robust one whose explanatory value extends in quite a few directions. It’s interesting how solid understanding is gained. I have heard some ideas multiple times by now, however every new metaphor that revisits these same ideas is not superfluous. There is a way in which depth in meaning is added every time. The tissues of understanding are densified every time by the images. It doesn’t seem to work the same way for abstract concepts without analogical correlates, where there is no real gradient of understanding, it’s a zero-one switch. Flipping the switch may require some enterprise, but once it’s done the extra example won’t add much meaning. Anyhow, following the links in there, I even stumbled upon a joke that you made!? I couldn’t believe my eyes : ) (I just mean: nice to see that you allow yourself to joke sometimes.)


Lastly, a serious thought about feelings. Your reference to the feeling of devotion makes me notice that in my long list of feelings, I omitted devotion, and the mood of prayer. Are they the same thing? If they are, I would prefer for myself the latter expression, which I can understand and find.
I can’t really find devotion, I can’t see myself as a devotee. These words have colors of abandonment to blind belief in my ear. I do think devotion is one possible approach to ease one’s way towards spiritual life, for those who are inclined to find and cultivate the feeling in their heart, as it was in the Vedanta tradition with Bhakti Yoga as well, but it’s not my way. And I noticed another word that I perceive with a similar semantic color as devotion. It’s “impure”. You use it in reference to not entering the higher worlds impure. The word is not used in the lecture and I wonder if there's a particular meaning you assign to it?