The birth of the Self amidst archetypal polarities in the evolution of consciousness
Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:12 pm
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.
My comment/question:
Max wrote: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.
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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.
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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)