The birth of the Self amidst archetypal polarities in the evolution of consciousness

[AshvinP]

A friend of mine, Max Leyf, wrote an excellent essay regarding the evolution of consciousness and the awakening of the Self (which Cleric referenced here in terms of the fractal amplifier). It is more oriented towards Western philosophy, science, and aesthetics, particularly Raphael's School of Athens painting, a few other paintings, some epic poetry, and Goethe's color theory, along with the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Steiner, which all converges in Christian spirituality, i.e. the evolution of the Ego-Consciousness who can attain to Earthly and Cosmic Freedom and Love. I think people here could get great value from contemplating it, as I did.

Raphael presents this preeminent pair in School of Athens as straddling two eras: the inherited spiritual tradition of the past and the new mode of rational and proto-scientific analysis of the future. In this way, with the two masters descending from the Academy, Raphael offers a picture of an axial moment in the history of ideas. Plato, representing the waning participation mystique of the past, before humanity’s expulsion from the womb of Nature, wears red to symbolize the fading, or darkened light.



...
As Johann von Goethe demonstrated in his work on colour theory,4 light darkened deepens from yellow to red in proportion to the degree of attenuation. So in this way, with the intellectualization of Greek philosophy, the Edenic brilliance of the anterior cosmic unity was sinking into the distance of prior epochs like a setting sun, increasingly dimmed by a fine rationalistic dust that was beginning to accumulate in suspension in the noösphere ever since the advent of sophistry and dialectic. The colour of Aristotle’s toga, conversely, represents the future of western consciousness. As Goethe showed, blue is the phenomenon of dark lightened, as light radiating into unfathomed spaces. Thus, the figurehead of the future, which, from the standpoint of the fourth century B.C., remained a mystery, wears the colour of the unknown.
...
Aristotle himself characterizes color as a particular condition of transparency once actualized by light.9 This is to say that space is in potentia what visible color is as the final cause and light as the efficient one.10 Taken in the context of Goethe’s colour theory together with the further line from the Gospel of John— “I am the Light of the World”11—this view of light provide for an even deeper appreciation for Raphael’s intuitive genius in his choice of blue for the colour of Aristotle’s robe. Recall that blue is the colour of lightened dark, or “light shining into the darkness.” For Raphael, as for individuals of today, the march of history has illuminated what to Aristotle remained in potential but still unconsummated: namely, the incarnation of Christ. “In him,” wrote the Evangelist, “was life; and the life was the light of men.”12

So before the event that the esoteric polymath Rudolf Steiner called “the essence and meaning of the whole evolution of the Earth,”13 the human being had yet to inwardize the source of this light, which we may call “the individual solar ego.”14 Instead, in pre-Christian times, this spiritual principle “shined [from without] in the darkness,” and thus disappeared into the blue distance of Aristotle’s toga. With the sacrifice of Christ, the solar principle entered the individual human soul and thus began to radiate from within. In other words, the experience of selfhood, which we assume as a matter of course today, was not present from the outset of cosmic evolution, nor was it a stochastic accident of genetic mutations. Instead, the experience of selfhood represents a sort of telos towards which the arc of cosmic history has been bending.

My comment/question:

This was an excellent and epic read, thank you! The interweaving of Western philosophy, science (Goethe's color theory) and aesthetics with Christian spirituality - the evolution of the Self - was deft. Can we also say that this is an ongoing archetypal development, in the sense that human ego-consciousness can (and will to some extent) continue to light up and awaken to itself at ever-higher, more expanded levels through the impulse of Christ? To bear its "Self-I", through the force of knowing Love, higher and higher into the Cosmic expanses, attaining to the 'philosopher's stone'?

"Here we have the prototype of something which will actually be accomplished in a future humanity, when work is the highest principle. It is only through the impulse of the spirit that one gains the faculty of transferring oneself into the community of the bees.

In order to progress further, let us now come to a true concept of alchemy. As late as the 18th century one could read in the German paper ‘Reichsanzeiger’ articles on alchemy. Kortum, the poet who wrote ‘Jobsiade’ 19 was one of the most significant alchemists of the 18th century. At that time a number of articles dealt with the so-called ‘Urmaterie’ (primal matter), bringing this into connection with the Philosopher's stone. Kortum, who was deeply immersed in these things, said at that time: To search for the Philosopher's stone is very difficult, but it is everywhere, you meet it every day, are well acquainted with it, you make use of it constantly, but do not know that it is the Philosopher's Stone. This is an apt description."
(Steiner, The Foundations of Esotericism)

[Federica]

A friend of mine, Max Leyf, wrote an excellent essay regarding the evolution of consciousness and the awakening of the Self (which Cleric referenced here in terms of the fractal amplifier). It is more oriented towards Western philosophy, science, and aesthetics, particularly Raphael's School of Athens painting, a few other paintings, some epic poetry, and Goethe's color theory, along with the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Steiner, which all converges in Christian spirituality, i.e. the evolution of the Ego-Consciousness who can attain to Earthly and Cosmic Freedom and Love. I think people here could get great value from contemplating it, as I did.

Raphael presents this preeminent pair in School of Athens as straddling two eras: the inherited spiritual tradition of the past and the new mode of rational and proto-scientific analysis of the future. In this way, with the two masters descending from the Academy, Raphael offers a picture of an axial moment in the history of ideas. Plato, representing the waning participation mystique of the past, before humanity’s expulsion from the womb of Nature, wears red to symbolize the fading, or darkened light.



...
As Johann von Goethe demonstrated in his work on colour theory,4 light darkened deepens from yellow to red in proportion to the degree of attenuation. So in this way, with the intellectualization of Greek philosophy, the Edenic brilliance of the anterior cosmic unity was sinking into the distance of prior epochs like a setting sun, increasingly dimmed by a fine rationalistic dust that was beginning to accumulate in suspension in the noösphere ever since the advent of sophistry and dialectic. The colour of Aristotle’s toga, conversely, represents the future of western consciousness. As Goethe showed, blue is the phenomenon of dark lightened, as light radiating into unfathomed spaces. Thus, the figurehead of the future, which, from the standpoint of the fourth century B.C., remained a mystery, wears the colour of the unknown.
...
Aristotle himself characterizes color as a particular condition of transparency once actualized by light.9 This is to say that space is in potentia what visible color is as the final cause and light as the efficient one.10 Taken in the context of Goethe’s colour theory together with the further line from the Gospel of John— “I am the Light of the World”11—this view of light provide for an even deeper appreciation for Raphael’s intuitive genius in his choice of blue for the colour of Aristotle’s robe. Recall that blue is the colour of lightened dark, or “light shining into the darkness.” For Raphael, as for individuals of today, the march of history has illuminated what to Aristotle remained in potential but still unconsummated: namely, the incarnation of Christ. “In him,” wrote the Evangelist, “was life; and the life was the light of men.”12

So before the event that the esoteric polymath Rudolf Steiner called “the essence and meaning of the whole evolution of the Earth,”13 the human being had yet to inwardize the source of this light, which we may call “the individual solar ego.”14 Instead, in pre-Christian times, this spiritual principle “shined [from without] in the darkness,” and thus disappeared into the blue distance of Aristotle’s toga. With the sacrifice of Christ, the solar principle entered the individual human soul and thus began to radiate from within. In other words, the experience of selfhood, which we assume as a matter of course today, was not present from the outset of cosmic evolution, nor was it a stochastic accident of genetic mutations. Instead, the experience of selfhood represents a sort of telos towards which the arc of cosmic history has been bending.

My comment/question:

This was an excellent and epic read, thank you! The interweaving of Western philosophy, science (Goethe's color theory) and aesthetics with Christian spirituality - the evolution of the Self - was deft. Can we also say that this is an ongoing archetypal development, in the sense that human ego-consciousness can (and will to some extent) continue to light up and awaken to itself at ever-higher, more expanded levels through the impulse of Christ? To bear its "Self-I", through the force of knowing Love, higher and higher into the Cosmic expanses, attaining to the 'philosopher's stone'?

"Here we have the prototype of something which will actually be accomplished in a future humanity, when work is the highest principle. It is only through the impulse of the spirit that one gains the faculty of transferring oneself into the community of the bees.

In order to progress further, let us now come to a true concept of alchemy. As late as the 18th century one could read in the German paper ‘Reichsanzeiger’ articles on alchemy. Kortum, the poet who wrote ‘Jobsiade’ 19 was one of the most significant alchemists of the 18th century. At that time a number of articles dealt with the so-called ‘Urmaterie’ (primal matter), bringing this into connection with the Philosopher's stone. Kortum, who was deeply immersed in these things, said at that time: To search for the Philosopher's stone is very difficult, but it is everywhere, you meet it every day, are well acquainted with it, you make use of it constantly, but do not know that it is the Philosopher's Stone. This is an apt description."
(Steiner, The Foundations of Esotericism)

Thanks Ashvin, I have really appreciated and enjoyed this reading in all its - as you say - epic unfolding.


As for the contemplation of the School of Athens, this isn’t an act I am familiar with in any way. I have to admit, I have encountered some resistance to contemplating in particular such a big, crowded overview type of gigantic Renaissance fresco. I tend to perceive these as impenetrable to me, or as fanciful interior decor, meant to extravagantly please the pope in office who ordered them to his palace. They are usually populated with an outpouring of filler-characters that, according to the painter’s mood, take this or that resemblance. In this one for instance, Plato has the semblance of Leonardo for some reason, and the traits of the painter himself, and his colleague’s, are also lent to some of the characters. Just to say that I am naturally not drawn to painted scenes like this one.


However, having read the background interpretation, I have taken the time to look at the scene and I have been surprised to notice how the architectural perspective stands out as a meaningful agent, bringing life to the action at the center. To me the perspective has stood out as the real enabler of the crucial scene. Through this savvy spatial organization, the conversation between the two philosophers seems to grow in presence and to reverberate through the dimensions, until it extends out. It might very well be the first time I have found some relevance, and not boredom, in considering artwork of that sort!


About the value of the essay in itself, it’s stunning to realize how common but hopeless it is to expect to understand the ancient philosophers and poets without the least idea of how their worldview embedded in cosmic unity is worlds apart from today’s individuated ego. I already had a vague sense of that gap - not that I learned that in school unfortunately - but this reading really offers a deep and deft perspective on the inner workings of this divide and its interrelated unfolding in art, philosophy and evolution.


I have found the tale of this human journey, from the warmth of the spiritual sun to the responsibilities of the sun-from-within, beautifully accounted for and paced, with the times of disenchantment, or expulsion from the womb of nature, and later the emergence of selfhood. It’s particularly interesting - requiring further reflection - that the birth of modern man - I read expulsion from nature’s womb as birth - is set in coincidence not with the sacrifice of Christ, putting the solar principle within the individual, but with the definitive lost of cosmic unity with nature, symbolized in the fresco by the passage from Plato to Aristotle, or from red spiritual sunset to the blue darkness of the unknown.


So modern humanity is said to be born with the intellectualizing philosophy of Aristotle. Then with the Christ it moved from infancy to adulthood, with the emergence of the ‘individual solar ego’. Before today I had never heard about this blindness to the color blue, and that it matches the literature! This parallel between the ancient Greeks’s experience of color and the yet-to-come experience of selfhood, in relation to color theory, is amazing. There is one point that remains unclear to me in that respect. It’s that in the experience of blue and cold colors the light ‘recedes from the viewer’. How can light ever recede from the viewer? I am missing this link, however the idea that, until Plato, Greeks couldn’t see blue from their embedded position in nature, lacking as they were all personal agency independent from it and its deities, makes real sense.


The next interesting turn in the journey is that 400-year period between Plato and Christ, the infancy - or darkness? - of modern humanity, when the world of spirit had already faded away from human perception, while the ‘ontological sanctuary’ of Plato’s ideal forms had been built up. The spiritual sun was gone, the cord of mystical participation was cut, but the sun of individuation was not there yet.
With his concepts that precede things, Plato had forced humanity out of merger with nature. Then with Aristotle, humanity volplaned down into immanence of concepts in things. Fitting them back in things as instances of nature, Aristotle set the premises to scientific reasoning, and the fragmentalizing energies of intellect were released. Concepts were constrained in the tight chest of immanence, got petrified, and crushed into ‘fine rationalistic dust’. This connects with what you and Cleric often refer to as the crystallized intellectual thoughts of our times. It’s interesting to consider the historical-philosophical perspective of how this came about.


Apparently what’s suggested is that these universal concepts were all humanity could cling to during that meantime. So those universalia have been the one force that, first with Plato, has pulled humans out of cosmic unity, originating modern times.Then with Aristotle, those concepts have dragged us down into the immanence of things, bringing about the premises of a long era of rationalism. From there, we have traveled all the way down to complete abstraction and today’s ‘pluriverse’ of particularisms.


The conclusion resonates with my current reflections on sacrifice and death. Midway along the trajectory to our present time’s afflictions, Christ has gifted humanity with the sun of Love that radiates from within, the seed of unity with creation again, though in an new sense, and since that sacrifice was made, there is no way back to passive reliance in salvation coming from above. My last takeaway, and core of many discussions here, has been that salvation only comes ‘according to one's own initiative’. (I have given up on alchemy and honeybees for now).
For the reader, even the unsophisticated one who might miss a number of subtleties, it’s an insightful, stunning tale of the adventurous emergence of modern humans. Thank you!



PS. A trivial note on pronouns. Great intention of acting against common practice with pronouns, although, in this one application, the result sounds odd to my ear, like in “the world enjoins the human being to awaken from her slumber that she may fulfill her role…” Anyway I am only noticing this because, in fact, the one pronoun that should have been feminine is the one in reference to the author of that painting of Virgin Mary clothed in golden yellow. That the painter is a woman is just the kind of minor detail I personally would have liked to be made aware of, and maybe your friend would too.

[AshvinP]

Thanks Ashvin, I have really appreciated and enjoyed this reading in all its - as you say - epic unfolding.


As for the contemplation of the School of Athens, this isn’t an act I am familiar with in any way. I have to admit, I have encountered some resistance to contemplating in particular such a big, crowded overview type of gigantic Renaissance fresco. I tend to perceive these as impenetrable to me, or as fanciful interior decor, meant to extravagantly please the pope in office who ordered them to his palace. They are usually populated with an outpouring of filler-characters that, according to the painter’s mood, take this or that resemblance. In this one for instance, Plato has the semblance of Leonardo for some reason, and the traits of the painter himself, and his colleague’s, are also lent to some of the characters. Just to say that I am naturally not drawn to painted scenes like this one.


However, having read the background interpretation, I have taken the time to look at the scene and I have been surprised to notice how the architectural perspective stands out as a meaningful agent, bringing life to the action at the center. To me the perspective has stood out as the real enabler of the crucial scene. Through this savvy spatial organization, the conversation between the two philosophers seems to grow in presence and to reverberate through the dimensions, until it extends out. It might very well be the first time I have found some relevance, and not boredom, in considering artwork of that sort!


About the value of the essay in itself, it’s stunning to realize how common but hopeless it is to expect to understand the ancient philosophers and poets without the least idea of how their worldview embedded in cosmic unity is worlds apart from today’s individuated ego. I already had a vague sense of that gap - not that I learned that in school unfortunately - but this reading really offers a deep and deft perspective on the inner workings of this divide and its interrelated unfolding in art, philosophy and evolution.


I have found the tale of this human journey, from the warmth of the spiritual sun to the responsibilities of the sun-from-within, beautifully accounted for and paced, with the times of disenchantment, or expulsion from the womb of nature, and later the emergence of selfhood. It’s particularly interesting - requiring further reflection - that the birth of modern man - I read expulsion from nature’s womb as birth - is set in coincidence not with the sacrifice of Christ, putting the solar principle within the individual, but with the definitive lost of cosmic unity with nature, symbolized in the fresco by the passage from Plato to Aristotle, or from red spiritual sunset to the blue darkness of the unknown.


So modern humanity is said to be born with the intellectualizing philosophy of Aristotle. Then with the Christ it moved from infancy to adulthood, with the emergence of the ‘individual solar ego’. Before today I had never heard about this blindness to the color blue, and that it matches the literature! This parallel between the ancient Greeks’s experience of color and the yet-to-come experience of selfhood, in relation to color theory, is amazing. There is one point that remains unclear to me in that respect. It’s that in the experience of blue and cold colors the light ‘recedes from the viewer’. How can light ever recede from the viewer? I am missing this link, however the idea that, until Plato, Greeks couldn’t see blue from their embedded position in nature, lacking as they were all personal agency independent from it and its deities, makes real sense.


The next interesting turn in the journey is that 400-year period between Plato and Christ, the infancy - or darkness? - of modern humanity, when the world of spirit had already faded away from human perception, while the ‘ontological sanctuary’ of Plato’s ideal forms had been built up. The spiritual sun was gone, the cord of mystical participation was cut, but the sun of individuation was not there yet.
With his concepts that precede things, Plato had forced humanity out of merger with nature. Then with Aristotle, humanity volplaned down into immanence of concepts in things. Fitting them back in things as instances of nature, Aristotle set the premises to scientific reasoning, and the fragmentalizing energies of intellect were released. Concepts were constrained in the tight chest of immanence, got petrified, and crushed into ‘fine rationalistic dust’. This connects with what you and Cleric often refer to as the crystallized intellectual thoughts of our times. It’s interesting to consider the historical-philosophical perspective of how this came about.


Apparently what’s suggested is that these universal concepts were all humanity could cling to during that meantime. So those universalia have been the one force that, first with Plato, has pulled humans out of cosmic unity, originating modern times.Then with Aristotle, those concepts have dragged us down into the immanence of things, bringing about the premises of a long era of rationalism. From there, we have traveled all the way down to complete abstraction and today’s ‘pluriverse’ of particularisms.


The conclusion resonates with my current reflections on sacrifice and death. Midway along the trajectory to our present time’s afflictions, Christ has gifted humanity with the sun of Love that radiates from within, the seed of unity with creation again, though in an new sense, and since that sacrifice was made, there is no way back to passive reliance in salvation coming from above. My last takeaway, and core of many discussions here, has been that salvation only comes ‘according to one's own initiative’. (I have given up on alchemy and honeybees for now).
For the reader, even the unsophisticated one who might miss a number of subtleties, it’s an insightful, stunning tale of the adventurous emergence of modern humans. Thank you!



PS. A trivial note on pronouns. Great intention of acting against common practice with pronouns, although, in this one application, the result sounds odd to my ear, like in “the world enjoins the human being to awaken from her slumber that she may fulfill her role…” Anyway I am only noticing this because, in fact, the one pronoun that should have been feminine is the one in reference to the author of that painting of Virgin Mary clothed in golden yellow. That the painter is a woman is just the kind of minor detail I personally would have liked to be made aware of, and maybe your friend would too.

Thank you for this great feedback and sharing of your insights, Federica. There is a whole lot to be explored in your comments. You have clearly followed the essay's core meaning with impeccable reasoning. I just realized that I forgot to include the link to the full essay, but I'm glad you found it - https://theoriapress.substack.com/p/the ... archetypal

Let's begin at the Center - Christ incarnate. It's very useful to understand this 'Mystery of Golgotha', which denotes all the events over those 3 years from the baptism of Jesus to his death-resurrection (and then actually beyond to the event at Pentecost, in which the Spirit descended into the disciples), as a Cosmic Idea. Similarly to how the idea of a musical symphony, guided by the conductor, will precipitate into the flow of beats, notes, chords, instruments over time, this Cosmic Idea has precipitated into the whole of humanity's evolution on Earth. At the same time, it was also a singular historical series of events in human history. So it is really the Mystery of all mysteries! In its occurrence, we see all the archetypal polarities united - the One-Many, Time-Space, Macrocosmic-Microcosmic, Heaven-Earth, Invisible-Visible, Moral-Natural (Historical), etc. - which of course is symbolized in the image of the Cross. Yet it also shows us how the polarities will be united through human evolution as we progress - it is what makes possible the uniting through the individuated human soul. Every human individual will go through the Christ events as he went through them over those years. 

As you can imagine, the depth of significance here is endless and we can't really comprehend what exactly happened yet, but it does stand at the very Center of our existence and evolution. And we now stand at the time when the Mystery is becoming demystified, so to speak - its higher reality is precipitating into our consciousness in a way that can be concretely known and, therefore, perceived (like the ancients could begin perceiving the color 'blue' as Self-consciousness emerged). We can each go through our 'road to Damascus' moment, which was, in fact, Saul of Tarsus perceiving Christ through higher imaginative cognition, thereby being initiated into the new Mystery and becoming Saint Paul. So the events of this Mystery are unfolding throughout the entire course of human evolution on Earth. All the prior ancient Mysteries of Indo-China, Persia, Egypt, and Greece find their fulfillment in this One and it is now bearing its fruit for modern man - the individual, awakening human heart and mind is the new 'Mystery Center'. 

Now this may clarify your question about Plato and Aristotle - the beginning of ancient Greek philosophy was a key 'measure' which unfolded from the Cosmic Idea - the overarching conducted symphony - of the awakening Self. It marks the very beginning of humans feeling themselves to have an inner, independent thought-life as such, and the difference between Plato and Aristotle really highlights this transition. (I'm glad you gained deeper appreciation and insights into Raphael's painting from the essay, which I did as well - now you are perceiving more of the esoteric dimension to exoteric culture). Even at the time of Homer, it was still felt that inspirations came directly from the Gods and the human merely acted as a vehicle of its expression. Philosophy as such only becomes possible with the emergence of the inner thought-life. The Christ events are truly at the Center, and all these other developments revolve around it like planets around the Sun, or like the solar system around the black hole at the Center of our Galaxy.  There is a very lawful and traceable development of the Self-awakening which occurs even from the ancient Indian civilization. We find the most ancient recorded and sublime image of this in the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna is none other than the Christ being, pre-incarnate. 

There is one point that remains unclear to me in that respect. It’s that in the experience of blue and cold colors the light ‘recedes from the viewer’. How can light ever recede from the viewer?

Well, we can remember here that all phenomena can only be understood from the first-person perspective, the only perspective there is. That is at the core of Goethe's color theory, while Newton's theory takes the standard 3rd-person view which concludes "light" to be some entity existing independently of human thinking perspective and agency. When we perceive the blue sky during the day, for example, we are perceiving the darkness of outer space through light, or "dark lightened". There is simply no meaning to this approach if we don't remember the "we are perceiving" part. It is the case that another living organism, with a different mode of consciousness, would be perceiving another color or no color at all, perhaps experiencing the force interaction more as a smell or taste or an inner shock.  As an aside, secular scientists also talk about 'light receding from the viewer' in terms of "blue-shifting" (or the attenuation of light as "red-shifting"), but not realizing its actual significance from first-person perspective.

"blue-shifting" (noun): the displacement of the spectrum to shorter wavelengths in the light coming from distant celestial objects moving towards the observer.

We should note that we are never perceiving Light or Darkness directly. They are supersensible forces, which the abstract scientist can only refer to as "wave-lengths" and such. What we perceive is the interplay of Light-Darkness from our given perspective, which manifests as colors. And all the various forms we perceive around us can be understood as arising from the intersection of these color-forces. Steiner developed a very interesting method of painting which utilizes this understanding, where the forms emerge out of the interweaving colors painted. 

The conclusion resonates with my current reflections on sacrifice and death. Midway along the trajectory to our present time’s afflictions, Christ has gifted humanity with the sun of Love that radiates from within, the seed of unity with creation again, though in an new sense, and since that sacrifice was made, there is no way back to passive reliance in salvation coming from above. My last takeaway, and core of many discussions here, has been that salvation only comes ‘according to one's own initiative’. (I have given up on alchemy and honeybees for now).

Very well stated! It's not necessarily that we have stopped relying on higher powers above for our salvation, but we must take the active initiative to "seek first the Kingdom of God in righteousness" before "all these things will be added to [us]". We must meet the descent of the Christ being, who is now dwelling on a higher plane of consciousness, with our own ascent. Nevertheless, no salvation is possible without the ongoing efforts of the higher hierarchies to raise us up. The whole theological debate between salvation by "works" or by "faith/grace" is yet another polarity which is united through the Christ impulse - unlike what the modern evangelicals proclaim with their abstract dogma, these can coexist harmoniously.

Yeah, the honeybees are best left for another time, but they are a fascinating topic. It is yet another unnecessary tragedy of our times that they are in such peril from our ignorance of the higher worlds which they represent. 

PS. A trivial note on pronouns. Great intention of acting against common practice with pronouns, although, in this one application, the result sounds odd to my ear, like in “the world enjoins the human being to awaken from her slumber that she may fulfill her role…” Anyway I am only noticing this because, in fact, the one pronoun that should have been feminine is the one in reference to the author of that painting of Virgin Mary clothed in golden yellow. That the painter is a woman is just the kind of minor detail I personally would have liked to be made aware of, and maybe your friend would too.

I don't quite follow. I assure you that Max is not playing any of the recent 'pronoun games' that are so common. The human soul, and the Soul in general, is usually referred to as female. Actually the pronouns are of great importance in esoteric spiritual tradition - "He", "She'", "It", "I", have profound significance, so it's yet another disappointment that people feel they can be so carelessly thrown about and interchanged for our own convenience these days. 

Also, Max himself may come across this thread, as I alerted him to its existence, in which case I obviously defer to his own answers to your questions.

[Federica]

Thank you for this great feedback and sharing of your insights, Federica. There is a whole lot to be explored in your comments. You have clearly followed the essay's core meaning with impeccable reasoning. I just realized that I forgot to include the link to the full essay, but I'm glad you found it - https://theoriapress.substack.com/p/the ... archetypal

Let's begin at the Center - Christ incarnate. It's very useful to understand this 'Mystery of Golgotha', which denotes all the events over those 3 years from the baptism of Jesus to his death-resurrection (and then actually beyond to the event at Pentecost, in which the Spirit descended into the disciples), as a Cosmic Idea. Similarly to how the idea of a musical symphony, guided by the conductor, will precipitate into the flow of beats, notes, chords, instruments over time, this Cosmic Idea has precipitated into the whole of humanity's evolution on Earth. At the same time, it was also a singular historical series of events in human history. So it is really the Mystery of all mysteries! In its occurrence, we see all the archetypal polarities united - the One-Many, Time-Space, Macrocosmic-Microcosmic, Heaven-Earth, Invisible-Visible, Moral-Natural (Historical), etc. - which of course is symbolized in the image of the Cross. Yet it also shows us how the polarities will be united through human evolution as we progress - it is what makes possible the uniting through the individuated human soul. Every human individual will go through the Christ events as he went through them over those years. 

As you can imagine, the depth of significance here is endless and we can't really comprehend what exactly happened yet, but it does stand at the very Center of our existence and evolution. And we now stand at the time when the Mystery is becoming demystified, so to speak - its higher reality is precipitating into our consciousness in a way that can be concretely known and, therefore, perceived (like the ancients could begin perceiving the color 'blue' as Self-consciousness emerged). We can each go through our 'road to Damascus' moment, which was, in fact, Saul of Tarsus perceiving Christ through higher imaginative cognition, thereby being initiated into the new Mystery and becoming Saint Paul. So the events of this Mystery are unfolding throughout the entire course of human evolution on Earth. All the prior ancient Mysteries of Indo-China, Persia, Egypt, and Greece find their fulfillment in this One and it is now bearing its fruit for modern man - the individual, awakening human heart and mind is the new 'Mystery Center'. 

Now this may clarify your question about Plato and Aristotle - the beginning of ancient Greek philosophy was a key 'measure' which unfolded from the Cosmic Idea - the overarching conducted symphony - of the awakening Self. It marks the very beginning of humans feeling themselves to have an inner, independent thought-life as such, and the difference between Plato and Aristotle really highlights this transition. (I'm glad you gained deeper appreciation and insights into Raphael's painting from the essay, which I did as well - now you are perceiving more of the esoteric dimension to exoteric culture). Even at the time of Homer, it was still felt that inspirations came directly from the Gods and the human merely acted as a vehicle of its expression. Philosophy as such only becomes possible with the emergence of the inner thought-life. The Christ events are truly at the Center, and all these other developments revolve around it like planets around the Sun, or like the solar system around the black hole at the Center of our Galaxy.  There is a very lawful and traceable development of the Self-awakening which occurs even from the ancient Indian civilization. We find the most ancient recorded and sublime image of this in the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna is none other than the Christ being, pre-incarnate. 

There is one point that remains unclear to me in that respect. It’s that in the experience of blue and cold colors the light ‘recedes from the viewer’. How can light ever recede from the viewer?

Well, we can remember here that all phenomena can only be understood from the first-person perspective, the only perspective there is. That is at the core of Goethe's color theory, while Newton's theory takes the standard 3rd-person view which concludes "light" to be some entity existing independently of human thinking perspective and agency. When we perceive the blue sky during the day, for example, we are perceiving the darkness of outer space through light, or "dark lightened". There is simply no meaning to this approach if we don't remember the "we are perceiving" part. It is the case that another living organism, with a different mode of consciousness, would be perceiving another color or no color at all, perhaps experiencing the force interaction more as a smell or taste or an inner shock.  As an aside, secular scientists also talk about 'light receding from the viewer' in terms of "blue-shifting" (or the attenuation of light as "red-shifting"), but not realizing its actual significance from first-person perspective.

"blue-shifting" (noun): the displacement of the spectrum to shorter wavelengths in the light coming from distant celestial objects moving towards the observer.

We should note that we are never perceiving Light or Darkness directly. They are supersensible forces, which the abstract scientist can only refer to as "wave-lengths" and such. What we perceive is the interplay of Light-Darkness from our given perspective, which manifests as colors. And all the various forms we perceive around us can be understood as arising from the intersection of these color-forces. Steiner developed a very interesting method of painting which utilizes this understanding, where the forms emerge out of the interweaving colors painted. 

The conclusion resonates with my current reflections on sacrifice and death. Midway along the trajectory to our present time’s afflictions, Christ has gifted humanity with the sun of Love that radiates from within, the seed of unity with creation again, though in an new sense, and since that sacrifice was made, there is no way back to passive reliance in salvation coming from above. My last takeaway, and core of many discussions here, has been that salvation only comes ‘according to one's own initiative’. (I have given up on alchemy and honeybees for now).

Very well stated! It's not necessarily that we have stopped relying on higher powers above for our salvation, but we must take the active initiative to "seek first the Kingdom of God in righteousness" before "all these things will be added to [us]". We must meet the descent of the Christ being, who is now dwelling on a higher plane of consciousness, with our own ascent. Nevertheless, no salvation is possible without the ongoing efforts of the higher hierarchies to raise us up. The whole theological debate between salvation by "works" or by "faith/grace" is yet another polarity which is united through the Christ impulse - unlike what the modern evangelicals proclaim with their abstract dogma, these can coexist harmoniously.

Yeah, the honeybees are best left for another time, but they are a fascinating topic. It is yet another unnecessary tragedy of our times that they are in such peril from our ignorance of the higher worlds which they represent. 

PS. A trivial note on pronouns. Great intention of acting against common practice with pronouns, although, in this one application, the result sounds odd to my ear, like in “the world enjoins the human being to awaken from her slumber that she may fulfill her role…” Anyway I am only noticing this because, in fact, the one pronoun that should have been feminine is the one in reference to the author of that painting of Virgin Mary clothed in golden yellow. That the painter is a woman is just the kind of minor detail I personally would have liked to be made aware of, and maybe your friend would too.

I don't quite follow. I assure you that Max is not playing any of the recent 'pronoun games' that are so common. The human soul, and the Soul in general, is usually referred to as female. Actually the pronouns are of great importance in esoteric spiritual tradition - "He", "She'", "It", "I", have profound significance, so it's yet another disappointment that people feel they can be so carelessly thrown about and interchanged for our own convenience these days. 

Also, Max himself may come across this thread, as I alerted him to its existence, in which case I obviously defer to his own answers to your questions.

I am glad I haven’t bored you with my meandering thoughts, Ashvin, and once again thank you, for linking everything together, and for the fitting next steps you are facilitating here. I appreciate the careful phrasing and above all, the chance to probe these ideas further! Now it remains to be seen how I am able to leverage all that.


About color theory, I have to grasp it better, but I see that it has to start from a first-person perspective and that color is our modulated synthesis of the light-darkness ideal encounter. Asking my question on receding light, I had somehow forgotten the subjective percept-concept interplay and the emergence of reality from that synthesis. Despite the fact that I am reading about exactly that in The philosophy of freedom, the old paradigm has kicked in while I was not vigilant. Besides the illustration of the painting technique, which I find fascinating, the painting you shared is a challenge, because I imagine that there is something to be seen in it, and that I am not seeing it. I realize this is not a Rorschach test, still the most improbable subjects have appeared in the upper part of the painting. Clearly, I am trapped in an attempt to read it, so my mind tries to discern things, which prevents the real thing from happening, I guess.


On the Mystery of Golgotha, reading your explanations I had the image of a cross on top of a height. I googled Mystery of Golgotha for images. As first overall result, a Steiner lecture by the same name came up. I read it, re-read it, and it’s been helpful to revisit and connect more tightly the dots you have laid out. I better understood (I hope) the meaning of “Every human individual will go through the Christ events as he went through them over those years”, and the drops of the Divine Word, as the musical notes of the symphony enclosing the one Cosmic Idea, both expressions of a primordial creative element. Also, the crucial role of the Christ you point to is illustrated with intensity in the lecture, as well as the encompassing perspective required to realize the ‘lawful and traceable development of Self-awakening’ that happened in parallel within different civilizations. With reference to the Indian one, yes I realize that. Advaita is one of the traditions that I have explored in the recent past and I’m sure the same applies to the other civilizations of the world. By exploring some elements in this realm, I have gained an understanding that the religions of the world are much more parallel than it's commonly considered. But what you are saying - that Krishna is no other than the same Christ Being who later would incarnate in Jesus - really takes that general idea much further, pushing the lawfulness to the limit switch of its clarifying powers. Indeed, it matches the message of unity conveyed in the lecture. It's a poignant but pacifying idea I was really happy to read.


Still, the lecture as a whole remains mind-blowing, with its reference to humanity as a stage of being-development that can be lived through, and has been lived through, by different Beings elsewhere than on Earth; and its reference to heavenly bodies as sort of islanded settling ponds, themselves possessing a series of bodies in the same manner beings do, where phases of evolution can be passed through by Beings at various stages of Self-awakening, not to speak about our physical ancestors who were evolved into various human tribes by individual Angels, spirits of the Moon... someone please fetch me the smelling salts : ) It’s good that I read this lecture now and not last month, now that I’ve gained some sense of the liveliness of all things - or rather the liveliness of all Ideas and the deadliness of all things…


There is one point from the lecture that I thought I would ask about. At the very beginning it is said that “with the appearance of Christ Jesus upon the earth something occurred which divided mankind into two parts”. I have been waiting to find out which parts it was referred to, but the confluence of the Golgotha events seems to only be unity, as opposed to the previous differentiation instilled by the Moon-beings: ”the unity among men was brought about by the Spirit poured out by Christ Jesus. What unites men came down to the earth through Christ Jesus.” Do the two parts simply refer to those who feel unity with Christ and those who don’t? Or maybe better - those who welcome in their hearts the Christ impulse and those who choose egoism, or even simply to wait for Grace to descend on them and embrace them?



P.S. The note was to signal that, with reference to the painter of the Virgin Mary clothed in yellow, it is said: "in his painting of Mary Magdalene from 1616". But the painter is a woman. Regarding pronoun use, I admit it didn’t occur to me that it could be usual practice, and not deliberate choice, to write in such terms about individuals and human beings in general: “Every individual has her multitudinous standpoints whence she measures the myriad issues of the day” or: “this spiritual principle, which the human being would later appropriate to herself, was for the Ancient Greeks, distributed over all of Nature”. The reason must be that I'm not familiar with the usual practice of philosophy. Regardless, I am more than assured of the absence of game playing of any sorts. Above all, I am thankful that the essay was made available for everyone to read, and that you shared it!

[AshvinP]

I am glad I haven’t bored you with my meandering thoughts, Ashvin, and once again thank you, for linking everything together, and for the fitting next steps you are facilitating here. I appreciate the careful phrasing and above all, the chance to probe these ideas further! Now it remains to be seen how I am able to leverage all that.

About color theory, I have to grasp it better, but I see that it has to start from a first-person perspective and that color is our modulated synthesis of the light-darkness ideal encounter. Asking my question on receding light, I had somehow forgotten the subjective percept-concept interplay and the emergence of reality from that synthesis. Despite the fact that I am reading about exactly that in The philosophy of freedom, the old paradigm has kicked in while I was not vigilant. Besides the illustration of the painting technique, which I find fascinating, the painting you shared is a challenge, because I imagine that there is something to be seen in it, and that I am not seeing it. I realize this is not a Rorschach test, still the most improbable subjects have appeared in the upper part of the painting. Clearly, I am trapped in an attempt to read it, so my mind tries to discern things, which prevents the real thing from happening, I guess.

I don't think there's anything really special to be perceived in the painting or, if there is, I haven't perceived it either! I just meant it as an example of this new Anthroposophical painting technique. It probably wasn't the best example - here's another one.

On the Mystery of Golgotha, reading your explanations I had the image of a cross on top of a height. I googled Mystery of Golgotha for images. As first overall result, a Steiner lecture by the same name came up. I read it, re-read it, and it’s been helpful to revisit and connect more tightly the dots you have laid out. I better understood (I hope) the meaning of “Every human individual will go through the Christ events as he went through them over those years”, and the drops of the Divine Word, as the musical notes of the symphony enclosing the one Cosmic Idea, both expressions of a primordial creative element. Also, the crucial role of the Christ you point to is illustrated with intensity in the lecture, as well as the encompassing perspective required to realize the ‘lawful and traceable development of Self-awakening’ that happened in parallel within different civilizations. With reference to the Indian one, yes I realize that. Advaita is one of the traditions that I have explored in the recent past and I’m sure the same applies to the other civilizations of the world. By exploring some elements in this realm, I have gained an understanding that the religions of the world are much more parallel than it's commonly considered. But what you are saying - that Krishna is no other than the same Christ Being who later would incarnate in Jesus - really takes that general idea much further, pushing the lawfulness to the limit switch of its clarifying powers. Indeed, it matches the message of unity conveyed in the lecture. It's a poignant but pacifying idea I was really happy to read.


Still, the lecture as a whole remains mind-blowing, with its reference to humanity as a stage of being-development that can be lived through, and has been lived through, by different Beings elsewhere than on Earth; and its reference to heavenly bodies as sort of islanded settling ponds, themselves possessing a series of bodies in the same manner beings do, where phases of evolution can be passed through by Beings at various stages of Self-awakening, not to speak about our physical ancestors who were evolved into various human tribes by individual Angels, spirits of the Moon... someone please fetch me the smelling salts : ) It’s good that I read this lecture now and not last month, now that I’ve gained some sense of the liveliness of all things - or rather the liveliness of all Ideas and the deadliness of all things…

Right. We basically have a similar thing in any evolutionary theory - "human" is simply a way of characterizing a set of beings with similar level of development, arising out of certain shared environmental conditions. Except here, we understand the "environment" to include, first and foremost, 'top-down' ideational activity, and the level of development is based on around the stage of consciousness. Namely, the human stage is when a set of beings attains an Ego-"I" consciousness and become individuated 'singularities' of Spirit. We also understand the entire progression in the sense of the overarching Ideas precipitating into  conditions of consciousness, conditions of life, and conditions of form on each planetary incarnation of Earth. It gets quite complex, but here is a graph which may help somewhat.





All of the above should be understood as differentiated and nested Time-rhythms of consciousness, as in the TC spectrum. When the Angels went through their human stage on Old Moon, we shouldn't imagine their experiential perspective to be the same as ours now. Their environmental conditions were radically different, much more spiritualized than ours now, due to prevailing mode of consciousness. Through higher cognition, humans will eventually re-member those conditions on a higher plane of consciousness. Our imaginations will form the basis of the next incarnation's (Jupiter) mineral kingdom, as the Angels' ideations did for ours on Earth. So our environment and consciousness are embedded within their consciousness as the current beings at "animal" stage are embedded within ours.

Sorry, but I wanted to insert something I had been thinking about recently in this relation between the higher beings and us. Recently I have been observing my new cat. When I open the blinds to the patio, she stares outside for a while and then starts scratching the glass door and screen to go outside. I let her out, she walks around for a while, gets agitated by all the creatures and sounds (especially if it's dark out), then she is begging to go back inside. One time I made the mistake of stepping over her before she went back in, so now all of a sudden I was perceived as the threat and she spent some time trying to bite and claw me. Now this can shed some light on our relation to the higher beings.

We are in a dreamy-conscious state in relation to them - like the cat, we suddenly appear in some circumstances in a dream, which we call our "earliest memories", but we have no clue how we got there or who made the environment such that we can have shelter, food, water, relative safety, some 'happiness' and satisfaction and comfort in more recent times. Many people hardly have the inclination to even ask why these things are the way they are - it's just taken as a given. Even if we are cultured and civilized and believe in the good Gods above, we still often oscillate into states of forgetfulness and fear of 'the hand that feeds', like the cat. If we are atheist materialist or pantheist/mysticist, then we have completely blotted out their existence from memory and the mere mention of them brings up feelings of the worst terrors lurking in the darkness of our psyche. I also imagine my cat, due to this constant state of dreamy forgetfulness, is also under the impression she is running the show. She makes various meow sounds and all the things she needs manifest on a regular basis

Similarly, we have various impulses, feelings, thoughts pop up into consciousness and we take all the credit for their manifestation in culture. The difference with the cat, of course, is that she has no self-reflective awareness which can discern these higher relations. I have no warrant to ever be upset at her for mistaking me, her protector and life-sustainer, for a threat to rebel against. She can't make analogies between herself and lower beings to discern something of the relation between her and myself. She doesn't really have the possibility of even becoming responsible for lower beings, like I have become for her. We have all of that thanks to our Ego-"I" and therefore little excuse for our forgetfulness and inner hostility towards the higher worlds.What's most important is not discerning all these evolutionary connections, which are certainly remarkable to ponder, because they won't give us lasting knowledge of the higher worlds - we will still lapse into forgetfulness periodically and our mere concepts won't be enough to offset the inner hostility to that which remains subconscious. 

But discerning the fact that we can discern these associations is a different matter. You have really internalized PoF at this point, so you know, without needing any of what was above, that your logical reasoning "I" spans the entire gradient from here to eternity, so to speak. It is entirely concentric with the "I" of all these higher angelic beings, who are more integrated iterations of we ourselves. That is the only reason we can discern the deep logic of all these relations without being able to imagine the higher first-person consciousness in the least. It should give us the greatest hope that we do not need to remain satisfied with conceptual theories and models, no matter how fantastic they make us feel, because the first-person experience is always better for us and for the noble aims we are meant to accomplish for the benefit of all beings.

There is one point from the lecture that I thought I would ask about. At the very beginning it is said that “with the appearance of Christ Jesus upon the earth something occurred which divided mankind into two parts”. I have been waiting to find out which parts it was referred to, but the confluence of the Golgotha events seems to only be unity, as opposed to the previous differentiation instilled by the Moon-beings: ”the unity among men was brought about by the Spirit poured out by Christ Jesus. What unites men came down to the earth through Christ Jesus.” Do the two parts simply refer to those who feel unity with Christ and those who don’t? Or maybe better - those who welcome in their hearts the Christ impulse and those who choose egoism, or even simply to wait for Grace to descend on them and embrace them?

On the two camps, I am not quite sure of the reference and context. Generally, evolution always proceeds through a flow and resistance, through differentiated tempos of development. As much as we get comfort from feeling all people will be brought along in equal measure, it simply defies all evidence and reason. And it would spell the end of all human rhythmic evolution. Nevertheless, our attitude should always be to want and expect the most out of our brothers and sisters in Christ. We can really influence the way these two camps may manifest in future ages in this way. There are 'black magicians' who prefer to maintain various divisions within humanity for some selfish aim or another, so we need to counteract that with our loving white magic.

P.S. The note was to signal that, with reference to the painter of the Virgin Mary clothed in yellow, it is said: "in his painting of Mary Magdalene from 1616". But the painter is a woman. Regarding pronoun use, I admit it didn’t occur to me that it could be usual practice, and not deliberate choice, to write in such terms about individuals and human beings in general: “Every individual has her multitudinous standpoints whence she measures the myriad issues of the day” or: “this spiritual principle, which the human being would later appropriate to herself, was for the Ancient Greeks, distributed over all of Nature”. The reason must be that I'm not familiar with the usual practice of philosophy. Regardless, I am more than assured of the absence of game playing of any sorts. Above all, I am thankful that the essay was made available for everyone to read, and that you shared it!

Ah ok, got it. Yeah I'm sure that was just a typo.

[AshvinP]

There is one point from the lecture that I thought I would ask about. At the very beginning it is said that “with the appearance of Christ Jesus upon the earth something occurred which divided mankind into two parts”. I have been waiting to find out which parts it was referred to, but the confluence of the Golgotha events seems to only be unity, as opposed to the previous differentiation instilled by the Moon-beings: ”the unity among men was brought about by the Spirit poured out by Christ Jesus. What unites men came down to the earth through Christ Jesus.” Do the two parts simply refer to those who feel unity with Christ and those who don’t? Or maybe better - those who welcome in their hearts the Christ impulse and those who choose egoism, or even simply to wait for Grace to descend on them and embrace them?

It occurred to me that he was possibly referring to the polar relation of our fourfold being. With the Christ events, the Ego-"I" fully descended into man's newest member, the astral body. This allows it to begin the work of transfiguring the lower bodies, beginning with the astral, into their spiritual counterparts (the culmination being Atma or Spirit-Man that Cleric mentioned, which is the physical body transfigured). We could think of the fourfold human as a polarity of the physical-etheric and the astral-"I". The former is what gives us consciousness of the corporeal plane while the latter gives us Cosmic consciousness of higher idea-worlds. Normally during waking state, these members are united together. Although there is still the hysteresis rhythm, it is too 'quick' or undifferentiated. Every day, when our astral-"I" longs to return to the supersensible and replenish its ideal forces, we go to sleep. Here is another inversion of the modern perspective - first comes the desire, then the 'mechanisms' which fulfill that desire, which we can understand in detail via spiritual science.

But without any higher development of the astral through the "I", we simply become unconscious during this state or we have dim dreams related mostly to physical processes. We have no perceptual organs, formed from the transfigured astral substance, to reflect our experiences of the journey into Cosmic expanses. The Christ impulse is what makes it possible to experience this separation of the astral-"I" consciously in a waking condition (which relates to the 'tingling sensation' Cleric mentioned on the other thread). That is the development of higher cognition - the increasing continuity of consciousness between these polar opposites of experience. As you may surmise, this can also extend to the threshold of life on Earth and life between death and rebirth, which is simply a more pronounced occurrence of the waking-sleeping discontinuity. We must first differentiate our members and their activity in clarity of consciousness before coming back to their higher Unity. It is what Christ incarnate accomplished that makes any of this higher development possible.

I'm not sure if that was the reference without further context, but it's helpful to keep in mind either way.