The Alchemical Marriage of Thinking and Will

[Stranger]

Let's put it another way, then - why have all of your posts since returning been exclusively focused on highlighting this 'seeing and transcending into the Eternal'? We have never disputed that the Godhead can be 'divined' from experience. In fact, every percept-concept mediated through "I" consciousness embeds Intuition of the eternal Godhead. And surely this Intuition can be fleshed out more and more through esoteric development. But we are asking why there is such a one-sided focus on that, while every mention of scientifically rigorous understanding of our spiritual be-ing goes ignored? When such things are being discussed, you take every opportunity to shift back to the one-sided focus. Do you think that, perhaps, this could point towards a subconsious soul-constellation to be made more conscious? And that making such things more conscious is identical to lifting the veils between normal waking cognition and Divine Consciousness which is precisely aware of how it has erected the veils? When we start asking these questions with genuine interest to answer them, we are then understanding our own be-ing as embedded within the vertical depth gradient of nested spiritual activity in a living way.

I don't ignore the scientifically rigorous aspects of our spiritual constitution and do not deny their reality and relevance, but I see that they are being thoroughly discussed by people on this forum that are much more knowledgeable in these topics (like Cleric and you) compared to me, so I have nothing really meaningful to contribute. Ideally both aspects - working and peeling through the layers, and transcending into the Eternal - should work in harmony.

[AshvinP]

PS: I'm not convinced that "glory" in the Biblical context "refers to a specified duration of evolution". If that would be the case, why it is described in the Scriptures as "His eternal glory"? How "eternal glory" could refer to a "a specified duration of evolution"?

But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus
1 Peter 5:10

Words can clothe different meanings in different contexts, and there can also be a depth structure of meaning for a single passage, verse, word, or even letter. Vertical consciousness begins to discern the imaginative layers embedded within these texts. That is the esoteric, as opposed to exoteric, dimension.

In this specific context, St. Paul speaks of being transformed from glory to glory. Cleary this is referring to a temporally extended process. Many other passages in the New Testament also points towards the Kingdom of God being progressively realized on Earth as it is in Heaven.

When we consider the successive Planetary evolutions we find that each one is a stage of a particular condition of evolution, which has 7 Rounds, 7 x 7 Globes and 7 x 7 x 7 Races. The purpose of every such Planetary evolution is to lead one condition of consciousness through all its stages. In the different esoteric religions these stages are named in various ways. In Christian esotericism

a condition of Consciousness is called Power
a Round is called Kingdom, Wisdom
a Globe is called Splendour, Glory

When in Christian esotericism we speak of Power we mean ‘going through a condition of consciousness’. Going through a Round is going through a Kingdom. In the successive rounds man experiences seven Kingdoms:

First Elemental Kingdom
Second Elemental Kingdom
Third Elemental Kingdom
Mineral Kingdom
Plant Kingdom
Animal Kingdom
Human Kingdom

Going through the seven conditions of Form or Globes is called Glory. Glory signifies what has external appearance, what takes on shape and form. The Lord's Prayer gives us in its final words: ‘For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory,’ a gazing upwards to Cosmic events. When once again this will be present in consciousness, a knowledge of God will be possible.

[AshvinP]

Let's put it another way, then - why have all of your posts since returning been exclusively focused on highlighting this 'seeing and transcending into the Eternal'? We have never disputed that the Godhead can be 'divined' from experience. In fact, every percept-concept mediated through "I" consciousness embeds Intuition of the eternal Godhead. And surely this Intuition can be fleshed out more and more through esoteric development. But we are asking why there is such a one-sided focus on that, while every mention of scientifically rigorous understanding of our spiritual be-ing goes ignored? When such things are being discussed, you take every opportunity to shift back to the one-sided focus. Do you think that, perhaps, this could point towards a subconsious soul-constellation to be made more conscious? And that making such things more conscious is identical to lifting the veils between normal waking cognition and Divine Consciousness which is precisely aware of how it has erected the veils? When we start asking these questions with genuine interest to answer them, we are then understanding our own be-ing as embedded within the vertical depth gradient of nested spiritual activity in a living way.

I don't ignore the scientifically rigorous aspects of our spiritual constitution and do not deny their reality and relevance, but I see that they are being thoroughly discussed by people on this forum that are much more knowledgeable in these topics (like Cleric and you) compared to me, so I have nothing really meaningful to contribute. From the practical perspective, both aspects - working and peeling through the layers, and transcending into the Eternal - should work in harmony.

But then why quote various passages from Steiner of all people, including a lecture specifically dealing with the spiritual scientific details (as almost all of them do), as support for 'transceding into the Eternal'? I am sure you can see why this leads us to feel you are taking a one-sided approach. Once we get to this concept of 'transcending into the Eternal', there is also nowhere left to go. Nothing left to discuss about the precise path forward. We can only keep reiterating that same concept in slightly different language.

[Stranger]

But then why quote various passages from Steiner of all people, including a lecture specifically dealing with the spiritual scientific details (as almost all of them do), as support for 'transceding into the Eternal'? I am sure you can see why this leads us to feel you are taking a one-sided approach. Once we get to this concept of 'transcending into the Eternal', there is also nowhere left to go. Nothing left to discuss about the precise path forward. We can only keep reiterating that same concept in slightly different language.

I applaud your professional interrogation skills

[Federica]

Ouah… yeah, that was an impressive exchange!
Resuming on a much less incisive, precise, and knowledgeable line of reasoning, more Feeling-based - but relevant too, because as Steiner teaches, Thinking and Feeling (our own, not their concepts) should never be considered separate and independent on the living path to Truth - I wonder:
How is it that, from your very first post as Stranger, I've been feeling that your arguments read as stories, with the palpable presence of a savvy narrator shaping the story line, fashioning the time swings, and so on?

At some point in the evolution the cognitive abilities of the alters become so powerful that ....
At the end of this evolutionary process the MAL reaches the state of omnipotence and omniscience…
At this point the MAL knows that in order for itself and for such omniscient state to exist…
However, at this point MAL abides beyond time, which allows it to....

…is the task of reflecting about the nature and cause of reality similar to the task of writing the plot of a detective novel…?

*******

...we think that we are approaching the Self from the peripheral regions where we cannot find the presence of the Self, and so we think that there is "more" Self in the center, and "less" or "no" Self at the peripheries.

I would say, it does not have to be like that, this is a narrative.

*******

…At this point we also discover that such "bypassing of structures" was only seeming, because there are actually no structures "external" to the Self or separate from the Self.

…what are you exactly describing by this story, your reading of the author's viewpoint, or a process that you consider accurate and truthful, something else…

*******


Of course, there is an easy way out of the question (beyond ignoring it), and you can go there, be my guest, I don’t mind.

But if you can believe that I am writing all this in good faith (and even with all the other things that you believe) maybe you can still test-consider how this 'plot feeling' with an external reader like me makes complete sense, when the process through which the reasoning has been formed for oneself first is what Ashvin has described above as goalseeking, guided by personalized preferences, then worked out backwards.

The two T and F sides of the question are very consistent with each other here. When your Thinking jumps ahead to your preference, and then reverse-engineers the argument, it leaves inadvertent fingerprints on its way back. Feeling-detectable evidence is scattered all along the way.

[Cleric K]

Regarding Klocek’s Seer’s Handbook, my wish is that no one here that checked this thread, and was lucky enough to become aware of Ashvin’s suggestion to read it, will overlook this book. I hope no one here will have to suffer the sadly ironic fate of not taking action, after having been pointed towards it.
My first impression is that, beyond being astonishingly accessible and practical, the book is corresponding, and yet also perfectly complementary to Steiner's own handbook for the seer, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
In this post, I am loosely referring to the Seer’s Handbook as background for a re-elaboration on Truth versus Both/And, starting from what Ashvin has written about the apparent magic of metaphors. I am sorry if this will sound know-it-all, and yes I had never read anything about alchemy before last week, when I started reading the Handbook, which I haven’t even finished. Still, I am inspired to write the following, in case even only one person resonates with it, trusting that any inadequacies will be signalled.

That was delightful, Federica, Thank you! It is such a great feeling to read words that spring from genuine inner experience and not simply thrown around as banknotes acquired or stolen. Ashvin's addition is also very important. We should indeed keep in mind that we don't simply extricate ourselves from our lower elemental nature but by transforming it we grow into the archetypal worlds of which the elemental forces are like multiplied fractal manifestations.



As a very simplified example, we may find that we constantly get in some kind of trouble. One approach is to mechanically try to arrange our every step, such that our general walk is less problematic. This however turns out to be similar to the attempt to remove the dimple of a slightly deflated ball. We remove it from one place but it appears somewhere else. Hopefully we come to the stage where we identify an overarching tendency in our character which has been subconsciously steering us all the time. So our liberation from deeper entanglement is not simply extrication from the elemental details or mechanically forcing them in certain order but finding a higher intuition with corresponding higher degrees of freedom. When we transform our soul life at that overarching higher level (corresponding to the archetypal in this analogy), the elemental happenings take different course too. Of course, this is too obvious when it is a matter of our personal life, but we still can't take it seriously for humanity as a whole. As the conversations in the other thread with Lou, people still prefer to seek some convenient equilibrium, instead of deepening our spiritual life (which is seen as biased search for higher understanding instead of nicely balanced interplay of knowledge and ignorance). Alas, in this way the dimple will always reappear somewhere else, unless we address the forces in the depths of humanity and the Cosmos. This doesn't mean that we can ignore the elemental and seek only to pull string on high. This isn't possible. We can arrive at higher intuition only by investigating the elemental - not by progressively reducing it but by entering its dynamics and prayerfully seeking higher synthesis. This is also the reason we can never know the reality of the human being and its Cosmic depth unless we enter with all our energy in the dynamics of thinking. Only in relation to it, can also be found the deeper archetypal intuitions that 'rotate' the fractal on a higher level. If we don't enter into thinking, we simply have no material to experience higher intuition in relation to. It would be like expecting to find the intuition of a 'chair', somehow existing in itself, without ever having seen a human being and its buttocks.

[Federica]

We can arrive at higher intuition only by investigating the elemental - not by progressively reducing it but by entering its dynamics and prayerfully seeking higher synthesis. This is also the reason we can never know the reality of the human being and its Cosmic depth unless we enter with all our energy in the dynamics of thinking. Only in relation to it, can also be found the deeper archetypal intuitions that 'rotate' the fractal on a higher level.

Yes, Cleric, I was indeed wondering about this whole idea. Now, with this larger context, I better see the means/goals connection. It's an extra degree of freedom that I can borrow as an equipment to exercise and check if I recognize the idea and if I can express it for myself with this vocabulary - Thank you!

[Federica]

Once we get to this concept of 'transcending into the Eternal', there is also nowhere left to go. Nothing left to discuss about the precise path forward. We can only keep reiterating that same concept in slightly different language.

Eugene - that's what I've also tried to flag, with a question that you have ignored:

Let’s take it for our common acknowledgement: "we are in Oneness". Now, from here, when we look ahead, what do we see? How do we proceed? What is the mystery, what are the motives, what do we do next?

[AshvinP]

But then why quote various passages from Steiner of all people, including a lecture specifically dealing with the spiritual scientific details (as almost all of them do), as support for 'transceding into the Eternal'? I am sure you can see why this leads us to feel you are taking a one-sided approach. Once we get to this concept of 'transcending into the Eternal', there is also nowhere left to go. Nothing left to discuss about the precise path forward. We can only keep reiterating that same concept in slightly different language.

I applaud your professional interrogation skills

I'm sorry if it feels that way, but I'm only trying to find some foothold of shared understanding we can reach, and this is proving difficult. Although you write 'agree' to many things, the whole course of comments, when pressed a bit, tend to say 'disagree'. I will also take blame for introducing too many new elements for consideration. Let's just focus on one single thing, which Federica also highlighted again in her last comment.

I don't ignore the scientifically rigorous aspects of our spiritual constitution and do not deny their reality and relevance, but I see that they are being thoroughly discussed by people on this forum that are much more knowledgeable in these topics (like Cleric and you) compared to me

So can you share your approach to the scientifically rigorous aspects at this stage? Surely you see that none of us got knowledgeable in these topics without clear aims and efforts. And I know that you are also a scientist/engineer by trade who is familiar with the rigorous method Goethe spoke of in that quote. I am not asking you to share any Divine mystical or higher cognitive experiences, only the basic outlines of your scientific approach to the spiritual dynamics or, if you haven't really started any approach yet, what you envision might be a good path forward from wherever you are.

[Stranger]

So can you share your approach to the scientifically rigorous aspects at this stage? Surely you see that none of us got knowledgeable in these topics without clear aims and efforts. And I know that you are also a scientist/engineer by trade who is familiar with the rigorous method Goethe spoke of in that quote. I am not asking you to share any Divine mystical or higher cognitive experiences, only the basic outlines of your scientific approach to the spiritual dynamics or, if you haven't really started any approach yet, what you envision might be a good path forward from wherever you are.

There is not much to share. For me the structural approach is practical, it's a "soul engineering", it's a collection of methods to develop the faculties of higher cognition. I'm reading some Steiner's texts and find many of his exercises and methods useful, but the point is to practically apply them, there is not much to discuss IMO. Also, when we start diving into these methods and structures, they become so complex that we sometimes tend to get so much immersed in them that we "do not see the forest for the trees". So, what I'm doing here is to remind about the importance of seeing the "forest", of holding the holistic view without disregarding the trees. Surely, there would be no forest without the trees, and the trees need to be grown, but the structure of the jungles is often so dense that we tend to lose the sense of direction towards the holism.