Stranger wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 2:01 pmThanks, that's a good read. I agree that earthly and heavenly gravitational poles are one example of the polarities fueling the evolution of humanity. But notice that they both exist withing the framework of the dualistic state of consciousness.
That's right. These polarities drive the evolution of souls while they exist in the dualistic state up to the point when they become ready and mature to transcend it and realize themselves as the Cosmic "I". And it is the "Third Force" that is actually curving the evolution towards such realization. The "I"-realization transcends the earth-heaven polarity and has no particular bias towards one or the other pole.Poplawski wrote:THE INFLUENCES OF LUCIFER AND AHRIMAN
In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, a strong figure stands with one clenched hand upraised to the beautiful Lucifer, the other hand stretched downward to the twisted and sclerotic Ahriman. The Representative of Humanity stands heroically, holding at bay and in balance the two opposing forces, centered within the “Third Force,” that force which we recognize in ourselves in the word ‘I’.
You are right that my interpretation of Lucifer and Ahriman is somewhat different. I agree that they represent a polarity, but IMO Ahriman and Lucifer are two "faces" or "personifications" of the same force-being, the force of duality (whatever we call him, the name does not matter, I call him "Demiurge"). Greeks intuitively knew that and depicted him as a "Two-faced Janus" deity who is a mythical metaphor of any polarity being two "faces" of the same essence. It is like the same electromagnetic force acting through two opposite positive and negative charges. Note that I'm not suggesting that the Demiurgic force is "evil", it represents an inevitable but temporary stage in the evolution of souls, it promotes evolution at certain developmental stages but becomes an impediment at further transitory stages until it becomes fully transcended at more mature stages.
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Eugene wrote:I agree that earthly and heavenly gravitational poles are one example of the polarities fueling the evolution of humanity. But notice that they both exist within the framework of the dualistic state of consciousness.
Well, no This is a way to pull yourself out of the polarities, at least to the extent that you are able to reach and maintain the "non-dual state". Whilst in reality, the true, fully integral non-dual state can only be reached by learning to progressively work through, and not aside of, the polarities. Our communion with Oneness is to be pursued within and not without the polarities. Until the over-spiritualizing impulse is recognized and evolutionarily factored in (together with its opposite) there will remain that sense of incomplete understanding already referred to multiple times in the recent threads. Not that I have direct experience of this, of course. I am merely seeing from afar how it makes more and more sense with every further step. But yes, it's a progressive realization, it takes time and iterations, and we are all embarked on this journey!
Eugene wrote:IMO Ahriman and Lucifer are two "faces" or "personifications" of the same force-being, the force of duality (whatever we call him, the name does not matter, I call him "Demiurge"). Greeks intuitively knew that and depicted him as a "Two-faced Janus" deity who is a mythical metaphor of any polarity being two "faces" of the same essence.
I guess it can indeed be said that Lucifer and Ahriman are two faces of the same essence, depending on at what level we consider the matter. If we say that they are the two faces of the human essence, then yes we can say that. However if we say that they are two faces of an evil essence that we place outside us, and that we should endeavor to escape in order to reach Oneness, then no, this is not the case.
By the way, you are operating a very arbitrary recruitment of Janus at the service of your opinion of choice here. As I noticed before on the forum, it is common that there is some level of confusion between ancient Greek and ancient Latin cultures, and I would like to seize the opportunity to say a word about that. Not that I am an expert, still it should be said that Janus is actually not a Greek deity, or god. It's interesting - Janus is practically the only Latin god that does not come from Greek cosmogony. He is inherently Latin/Roman. Janus is the god of the beginnings, the one who has always been there, from the origins of everything. The origin of his name is associated with the meanings of beginning, entrance, passage, and door. In English, the word January, and even the word janitor come from this same root. It means the god of the initial times/spaces, and the god of the passage, or entrance. In this way we can understand the sense of his two faces, that watch over both sides of the passage. So in this sense, yes, Janus is also the god of change and transmutation, but saying that the ancient Romans intuited the two-sided nature of evil and represented them through Janus, really is arbitrary.
If I can add a last word from Steiner that gives an insight about the difference between Greek and Latin culture:
Steiner wrote:I also referred to how, in the transition from the Greek culture to the Roman-Latin culture, that is to say in the fourth Post-Atlantean period, the single sounds in language lose their names and, as in contemporary usage, merely have value as sounds. In Greek culture we still have a name for the first letter of the alphabet but in Latin it is just ‘A’. In passing from the Greek to the Latin culture something living in speech, something eminently concrete changes into abstraction. It might be said: as long as Man called the first letter of the alphabet ‘Alpha’, he experienced a certain amount of inspiration in it, but the moment he called it just ‘A’, the letters conformed to outer convention, to the prosaic aspects of life, replacing inspiration and inner experience. This constituted the actual transition from everything belonging to Greece to what is Roman-Latin — men of culture became estranged from the spiritual world of poetry and entered into the prose of life.
So the Romans made the Western world enter "into the prose of life" - that is a much more rational and material approach to existence, compared to the Greek's, prefiguring the subsequent materialist turn that developed more explicitly from the 14th century on. An outer example of this more practical and down-to-earth nature is the law system, there are many more.