Federica wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 8:56 am
AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 9:35 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:06 pm
It doesn't...
Thanks. Just in case, I want to offer a tiny concrete example. I hesitate, because, as the theme of my last few posts suggest, I am not confident such things can be understood without the proper experiential (including conceptual) foundation. But I will try this once, anyway. I am so new to this path that all I have are "tiny" examples, but I hope it's clear they are quite significant from the normal waking perspective.
We hear a lot about the "unconscious" or "subconscious". We hear how sensory impressions can sink down into the subconscious, even when we weren't aware of experiencing them. Then they might resurface in dream imagery. All of this is really abstract discussion within academic circles. Remember what follows is a phenomenal first-person perspective experience, and I'm not talking about what any of this represents in its essence.
Let's say I light a candle and focus on the flame a bit. Through this path of developing imaginative thinking, I can then close my eyes and see the after-image of the flame in very vivid outlines and colors. This image floats around awhile and then sinks down the field of inner vision until it disappears. For many minutes afterwards (I haven't tested exactly how long), I can recall the same image as vividly as before and watch the same process inwardly. Even if my eyes are open in a somewhat dark area, I can project this image onto the wall of my room in a very definite form. So I can actually see the process of an impression sinking down into my subconscious to become an accessible memory DoF.
I have no idea what the full significance of this unsuspected DoF is, but it is certainly a significant experience. It really doesn't mean too much in isolation, but only in a broader holistic context of how the human individual is membered, how we came to evolve these members, how these members relate to our inner activity and our desires, feelings, thoughts/memories, etc. Imagine reading about all these things developed through the spiritual scientific research of others, and then finding the exact inner experience which corresponds with those concepts. The process of forming memories specifically involves a subtle (etheric) body which is the counter-pole to the physical body. The physical body is used as an instrument of will to perceive through its senses and the etheric body stores the memories of sensory impressions and accesses them in thinking. All memories until at least the beginning of our current incarnation are embedded there.
Again, this is just one tiny example and may not mean much to those reading. But the point is, none of these things we point to should be taken as abstract theories about how the body-soul-spirit interweaves each other. They are inner experiential facts which can be investigated by each human individual, who is a microcosm of the Macrocosm. All Cosmic processes which have evolved over many aeons of the current human worldline, in their
inner meaningful dimension (not physical or spatial, although there can be certain resemblances), are to be found within the individual human organism. By deeply investigating our inner experience and holistically contextualizing our outer experience with what we learn there in a rhythmic and harmonious way, we evolve to increasingly become who we are and, hopefully, lift other humans, living organisms, and lower Nature herself up in the process.
Thank you Ashvin for providing this example. It does seem quite significant to me. I understand you want to motivate me to pursue experiential inquiry, as opposed to theorizing, which I’m already drawn to, but your experiment certainly intrigues me.
It reminds me of the vowel exercise, but with an image rather than a sound. I would have two questions:
1. When the image sinks into the field of accessible memories, why do you say that it sinks in your subconscious, if it stays available?
2. When I tried the vowel exercise out loud first, I realized that the subsequent silent version completely relied on the fresh memory of the sound, which was a disturbance. So I never tried the vocal version again, but only the silent version directly. It makes me wonder whether you tried to visualize the candle from scratch. I imagine it’s way more difficult than the vowel sound gesture, which I find in itself difficult enough, but just asking.
Then of course at some point I would want to open this Pandora box of the etheric body, how you know about it, and how it’s a complete repository of all memories of sensory perceptions...
Federica,
1. I guess it depends on how we are defining the term. The general point is that our thinking expands to supersensible activity that is always taking place within us, but we are normally unaware of. This sinking down of the after-image occurs for everyone, but normally we simply haven't developed the perceptual organs to become aware of it. Really the goal is to make more and more of the subconscious, conscious, so that we become more spiritually free. As Jung said, "
until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." So I suppose it would have been more accurate to say, with the flame example, I could see taking place some limited portion of what would normally have been subconscious. Like the UV spectrum of Light, these inner ideal processes are always influencing us in lawful ways, but in quite harmful ways if they remain entirely subconscious. Another quote I really like along this same line is from Gebser.
Gebser wrote:"...we are all subject to the temptations of our vital experience, of our visions, of our views; without these forms of realization we could not survive even for a day, since the structures on which they are based along with these forms of realization make up our integral constitution. It is the degree of our insight into and encompassing perception of them—or, more exactly, the degree that they become transparent for us—that transforms them into our instrument and prevents us from being their plaything."
- Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin
2. Generally, imaginative exercises such as these are about developing 'sense-free' thinking. We want to find an image that cannot be found exactly in the sense-world, but is also very simple to visualize or speak. Usually it comes in the form of combinations of images we won't find anywhere. The vowel exercise is great because it's so simple to remember - we only have to start inwardly thinking vowel sounds - but it's also something most people would have never tried, so it develops more resonant conceptual slops and DoF. The vowels also have archetypal significance, like sevenfold colors and tones. Half the battle, so to speak, is following the reasoning of why we are doing the exercise and building up the image through our spirit (thinking) in connection with our soul, i.e. the life of willing and feeling. This is why Cleric includes not only the exercise, but the goal we are seeking with it, i.e. how it can spiral together what we are doing with our will, what we are doing with our thinking, and what we perceive inwardly. The reason why we don't feel creative involvement with the outer perceptual world is because these activities are so out-of-phase. What we are willing, thinking, and perceiving at any given time simply doesn't align. The images can include mantras, verses, and in this case simply a string of vowels. If we can imbue the exercises with reverent feeling, this will greatly enhance the spiraling together of willing and thinking-perceiving.
So the flame thing I mentioned isn't an imaginative exercise at all, only a tiny example of what new faculties, i.e. supersensible cognition, can result from such exercises. With imaginative meditation, we can eventually form basic geometric shapes with our active thinking that are inwardly visualized, but I certainly cannot form images of sense-impressions at will. And this isn't really helpful, because it would only be our own activity which we are visualizing. We want to get beyond that local activity to the transpersonal activity of higher worlds. At a certain point, we must endeavor to freely extinguish our own thinking so that our soul opens up to
how we are being thought by the higher worlds, which is first presented to us in the form of images with great significance (not in isolation, but within a holistic context). This is something which I have difficulty with because of my inner verbal chatter going on, which raises up and confronts us even more strongly when we are differentiating and freeing ourselves from it, but of course this will vary with each individual. It may be helpful to consider this quote from Steiner - anyone can work with these things even without meditation (it is somewhat lengthy but the logic should be relatively easy to follow).
Steiner wrote:The man of to-day lives almost entirely under the influence of the saying: ‘Thoughts pay no toll.’ That is, one may allow almost anything to flash at will through the mind. Just consider that speech is a reflection of our thought life; and realise what thought-life is allowed free course by the speech of most people, as they chatter and wander from subject to subject, allowing thoughts to flash up at will. This means a dissipation of the force with which our thinking is endowed! We continually indulge in prodigality, we are wholly dissipated in our thought-life. We allow our thoughts to take their own course. We desire something which occurs to us, and we drop that as something else occurs; in short, we are disinclined in some respects to keep our thought under control. How annoying it is, sometimes, for instance, when someone begins to talk; we listen to him for a minute or two, then he turns to quite a different subject, while we feel it necessary to continue the subject he began. It may be important. We must then fix our attention and ask ourselves, ‘Of what did we begin to talk?’ Such things occur every day, when subjects of real earnestness are to be brought into discussion, we have continually to keep in mind the subject begun. This prodigality, this dissipation of thought-force, hinders thoughts which, coming from the depths of our soul-being, are not our own, but which we have in common with the universal ruling spirit. This impulse to fly at will from thought to thought does not allow us to wait in the waking condition for thoughts to come from the depths of our soul-life; it does not allow us to wait for ‘inspirations,’ if we may so express it. That, however should be so cultivated — especially in our time, for the reasons given — that we actually form in our souls the disposition to wait watchfully until thoughts arise, in a sense, from the subsoil, which distinctly proclaim themselves as ‘given,’ not formed by ourselves.
We must not suppose that the formation of such a mood is able to appear on swift wings — it cannot do so. It has to be cultivated; but when it is cultivated, when we really take the trouble to be awake and, having driven out the arbitrary thoughts, wait for what can be received in the mind, this mood gradually develops. Then it becomes possible to receive thoughts from the depths of the soul, from a world wider than our ego-hood. If we really develop this, we shall soon perceive that in the world there is not only what we see, hear and perceive with our outer senses, and combine with our intellect, but there is also an objective thought-texture. Only few possess this to-day as their own innate knowledge. This experience of a universal thought-tissue, in which the soul actually exists, is not some kind of special occult experience; it is something that any man can have if he develops the aforementioned mood. From this experience he can say: In my every-day life I stand in the world which I perceive with my senses and have put together with the intellect; I now find myself in a position in which I am as though standing on the shore, I plunge into the sea and swim in the surging water; so can I, standing on the brink of sense-existence, thus plunge into the surging sea of thought. I am really as though in a surging sea. We can have the feeling of a life — or, at least, we have an inkling of a life, stronger and more intense than the mere dream-life, yet having just such a boundary between it and outer sense-reality as that between dream-life and sense-reality. We can, if we desire, speak of such experience as ‘dreams,’ but they are no dreams! For the world into which we plunge, this world of surging thoughts which are not our own, but those in which we are submerged, is the world out of which our physical sense-world arises, out of which it arises in a condensed form, as it were. Our physical world of sense is like blocks of ice floating in water: the water is there, the ice congeals and floats in it. As the ice consists of the same substance as the water, only raised to a different physical condition, so our physical world of sense arises from this surging, undulating sea of thought.
It is one of those things which are multilayered and have something for everyone. It's like Star Wars