Anthony66 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 7:15 am
Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 10:52 pm
If it is not yet the time to put our nose into the affairs of the spaces that from behind the scenes bend the geodesics of our human expression (that we colloquially call 'me'), then
what is it time for?
Perhaps it's time to be more diligent in our middle-manager duties. Perhaps it's time to revere the CEO. I don't know.
Certainly the picture that is being painted is one that will lead to increased understanding and intuition of the workings of the Cosmos. As Ashvin says, there are some benefits along the way:
The individual implications are pretty clear and relate to better health, more vital energy, less existential anxiety, less swings into depressed states, greater holistic knowledge of the world around us, more creative impulses, greater feeling of communion with the living spiritual atmosphere, more healthy control over and therefore acceptance of one's destiny, and many more similar ones. That is certainly an interesting pursuit.
But where do we actually derive our marching orders from? Who or what determines the telos and where is the strategic plan to be found?
Anthony,
I'm sure Cleric will weigh in with his more insightful thoughts, but in the meantime I wanted to share a response. First and foremost, we need to be ready and willing to put in the time and effort for answers to these questions. I am sure you felt your previous question about Newtonian science was pretty simple and straightforward, but as we can see, Cleric sacrificed his own time and effort to take a significant 'detour', all as a means of adequately answering that one question. And I am sure he would say the question still hasn't really been answered - rather the opportunity has been provided for you to continue the work of answering your own question from within. The same applies to these latest questions, which I would say were largely also addressed in the response to the first question.
Cleric wrote:In no way should this cause any pride in us like in saying “Look at me, I’m no part of the herd.” Such an attitude has catastrophic consequences. It can only be balanced by the understanding that any degree of freedom we win for ourselves immediately becomes a responsibility. Thus anyone who approaches these new evolutionary currents has to understand how great of a responsibility we bear in order to lead these currents into the general life.
The above is critical for anyone on the path of intuitive spiritual activity to contemplate deeply. When we navigate our human-scale geodesics within the thinking space in a living way, as concrete intuitions of reality's full spectrum, we discern that it's the ultimate human responsibility to bring the balance between mystical and materialistic reductionism, within our own souls and, therefore, within our group-souls and the collective human soul. Why? Because no other soul can do this balancing task for us or for our species. Our further evolution to becoming true humans depends entirely on that responsibility being taken up. Cleric made this a central theme of answering the question of why spiritual science cannot be understood and treated as any other science or field of knowledge we are familiar with. We could understand the entire post as an illumination of why there is no possibility of someone understanding and living spiritual science while also treating it as an 'end-user experience'.
First we had to discern the reasons why we are able to approach secular science in that way, which is rooted in its myopic study of phenomena which are dead, rather than living. It's not necessarily a moral judgment on secular scientists - they can only investigate what is dead because the source of life in the world - our living thinking - remains in their blind spot. Therefore they cannot even imagine any living mode of cognition which participates in the redemption of the philosophies and sciences, of human culture in general and of the natural kingdoms themselves. The lower nature of personalized interests, passions, theories, emotions, opinions, etc. continually reasserts itself in every inquiry. The sensory-conceptual plane of thinking experience is Maya through and through. Every physical impression, event, technology, institution, etc. appears to us as something isolated which we permeate with concepts, just like the molecules and cells the scientist models with computer algorithms. The algorithm is a reflection of our current mode of physical cognition. Without higher cognitive development, we are constantly jumping from one Maya experience to another, in observation and in thought, and deriving our conclusions based on those.
Something needs to be said here with respect to philosophical and scientific
principles. With ordinary reasoning, we have no chance of penetrating beyond the normal sensory-conceptual Maya without our principles. This is a major theme of PoF - how our thinking begins to dimly perceive archetypal ideations through the World Content when it logically reasons from fragmented percepts-concepts to principles. We are still perceiving these principles outwardly with ordinary cognition rather than in their living inner nature (which is always tied up with the activity of spiritual beings), yet we are nevertheless projecting our thinking into the higher order configuration spaces. The only reason Levin's models can potentially steer the scientific intellect towards its own inner reality is because it reaches foundational principles.
OAM wrote:Principles, laws and facts: the structure of the universe is summarized in these three words. Facts exist in incalculable number, and they are governed by a lesser number of laws. These laws are themselves governed by a few principles, which are really but one: God himself. The world of facts is the world of multiplicity, of dispersion, while the divine world is the world of unity. Here you have a key of great simplicity which can give you the solution to all problems.If people complain of feeling as if they live in darkness and chaos, it is quite simply because they have no knowledge of these three worlds, of their structure or how they function. As long as they remain focused on the physical world, on facts and events, they will never manage to see clearly and master their situation. In order to have a clear vision of things, and even to act correctly, they must rise by way of thought to the region of principles where the spirit and light of God reign.
So the key principle here is that of balancing the higher and lower configuration spaces, i.e. redeeming the latter through the inflow of the former, with our increasingly conscious steering of thinking through the rhythmic geodesics. We need to find the concrete intuitions of what this means in our first-person experience of physics (dynamics of sense perception), biology (formative life forces), psychology (soul life), and spirituality (higher thinking life where we awaken to ourselves as creative agencies). All of these configuration spaces are rooted in intelligent and intentional forces, but our human-scale spiritual space is the only one where the intentional agency and the products of that agency coincide (thinking activity and thought-forms). That is because the Ego incarnated on the physical plane within the individual human soul through the events 2,000 years ago. For every other lower configuration space, the Ego-force responsible for the appearances is to be found in the corresponding higher space (1st-7th, 2nd-6th, 3rd-5th). Our 4th thinking space is like the gateway between the the appearances and the realities. To bridge them is the task of the true human.
We can look at this balancing responsibility through the more Anthroposophical lens as well. What follows is nothing other than a different way of characterizing what Cleric explored in great detail through the modern scientific intellectual scaffolding, and which we are summarizing again now. The Luciferic beings correspond with the extreme of mystical reductionism and the Ahrimanic with the extreme of materialistic reductionism.
Now we may characterize these two kinds of beings from a more profound point of view. Let us observe the Luciferic beings and see what interests they have in cosmic existence. We shall find that their chief interest is to make the world, and above all the human world, desert the spiritual beings whom man must regard as his true creators. The Luciferic beings wish nothing more than to make the world desert the divine beings. Do not misunderstand me: it is not the prime intention of the Luciferic beings to appropriate the world to themselves. From various things I have said about them you can gather that this is not their chief intention; their chief aim is to make the human being forsake his own divine creator-beings, to liberate the world from these beings.
The Ahrimanic beings have a different aim. They have the decided intention to make the kingdom of man and the rest of the earth, subject to their sphere of power, to make mankind dependent upon them, to get control over human beings. While it always has been—and is now—the endeavor of the Luciferic beings to make human beings desert what they can feel as the Divine in themselves, the Ahrimanic beings have the tendency gradually to include mankind and everything connected with it in their sphere of power.
Thus, within our cosmos, into which we human beings are interwoven, there exists a battle between the Luciferic beings, constantly striving for freedom, universal freedom, and the Ahrimanic beings, constantly striving for everlasting power and might. This battle permeates everything in which we live. Please hold this fact in mind as the second idea, important to our further considerations. The world in which we live is permeated by Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings, and there exists this tremendous contrast between the liberating tendency of the Luciferic beings and the power tendency of the Ahrimanic beings.
If you consider this whole matter you will have to say to yourselves: I am only able to understand the world if I conceive of it in connection with the number three, the triad. For we have on the one hand the Luciferic, and on the other the Ahrimanic element, and in the middle the human being who, as the third element, in the state of equilibrium between the two, must feel his divine essence. We shall only arrive at an understanding of the world if we base it on this triad and become clear about the fact that human life is the scale-beam. Here the fulcrum; on the one side the scale pan with the Luciferic element, pulling upward; on the other side the scale pan with the Ahrimanic element, pulling downward. To keep the scales in perfect balance signifies the essential being of man. Those who were initiated into such secrets of the spiritual evolution of mankind have always emphasized the fact that it is only possible to understand cosmic existence into which man is placed if it is conceived of in the sense of the triad; that it cannot be understood if it is considered on the basis of any other number. Thus we may say, employing our own terminology: we have to deal with three main factors in cosmic existence, namely: the Luciferic element, representing the one scale of the balance, the Ahrimanic element, representing the other scale of the balance, and the state of equilibrium which represents the Christ Impulse.
Now you may well imagine that it is entirely in the interest of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers to conceal this secret of the triad. For the proper comprehension of this secret enables mankind to bring about the state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers; that means, on the one hand, to use the Luciferic tendency toward freedom for the achievement of a wholesome cosmic aim, and on the other hand, to strive to achieve the same with the Ahrimanic element. The human being's normal spiritual condition consists in relating himself in the proper way to this trinity, this triune structure of the world.
It should already be clear from the above that we cannot properly conceive this higher spiritual dynamic in terms of our Maya concepts of 'good' and 'evil'. We can't write off the Luciferic or Ahrimanic developments as silly superstitions like the materialists do, or demonic forces to be shunned and avoided, like the fundamentalists do. In fact, there can be no free spiritual evolution without utilizing their forces for wholesome Cosmic aims within our human-scale geodesic. By self-consciously steering our thinking by virtue of the Christ impulse, we are taking on the responsibility of redeeming the Luciferic-Ahrimanic powers which hold sway over Earth. This is a uniquely human responsibility as stewards and shepherds of the Earth kingdoms - no one else can be expected do it for us. Now if we truly and honestly feel, within our Heart of hearts, after careful examination, that this is not a high ideal worth pursuing, then nothing written on this forum needs to be taken seriously. It is only our own individual high ideal, freely chosen, which can put us on a path towards steering our intuitive thinking activity as a sacred duty and mission of Earthly redemption. Otherwise we will always feel like we have been given 'marching orders' from elsewhere.
But let's be clear - part of that careful soul-examination is to discern whether we are
already following marching orders as we ignorantly freefall through the morphic spaces. As said, there are intelligent intents permeating the entire superimposed structure, bending the spaces in which our willing, feeling, and thinking steers. We need to discern whether there is any
principle reason why we are justified to think that we are somehow more free when we remain in ignorance of the Cosmic forces, and that we are not following anyone else's marching orders when we let our thinking be steered from without. Does this make any sense? Again, if our high ideal (or lack of it) is to remain enslaved, then remaining ignorant is a perfectly valid option. But we need to be very honest with ourselves if that's what we really value, or rather if we value Truth, Love, and Wisdom, if we value Freedom. If it's the latter, then we may discern that many of our current intellectual tendencies are simply serving to obscure our true Heart's desire.