Fairy Tales for the Spirit

[AshvinP]

Hi everyone,

First of all, I know it's a different thread I am posting this in, but I appreciate the variety of responses that were given on my post about the hard problems faced in modern philosophy and science.

Now, for this thread, I would like to add in something to this thread on "Fairy Tales for the Spirit" that I believe fits in with the discussion. Although this is not specifically about a folk tale, or mythology, it still has relevance to the heart of the discussion in my opinion.
I'm not sure if anyone here has read Owen Barfield's book "Romanticism Comes of Age", he wrote a fascinating chapter on how William Shakespeare's plays express or embody the Consciousness Soul; the experiences of isolation, loneliness, materialism, loss of faith in a spiritual world, and uncertainty, are embodied very poetically within these plays. The Consciousness Soul human lives 'in the dark' and no longer feels the older instinctive promptings from the spiritual world that people seemed to have in the past. Barfield uses Shakespeare's Hamlet as the main example, providing justification for this, and justification for his claim that Shakespeare's imagination was, unconsciously, a vessel for the Consciousness Soul era (which was something only just starting to unfold at the time). This, of course, also applies to other poets and artists of that time period.

I would like to share excerpts from the book because Barfield expresses it so excellently, and also because I am not as deeply familiar with Shakespeare as he seemed to be. If anyone reading this has an opinion to share, I'd be interested to hear.

I would like to share an excerpt from one of Steiner's lectures which relates to this momentous metamorphosis of awakening in the individualized consciousness soul which we are now still very much in the midst of and struggling with. As we remember the climactic events of the 1st century this weekend, we can also take heart that they are just now beginning to bear their inner fruits for the thinking consciousness of those who are willing to bear the Cross and sacrifice the persistently nagging desire to personalize and thereby fragment the World Content. That is how we expand the confines of our current "I" to encompass broader and broader spheres of interest, motivating the desire to progressively harmonize relations of spirit, soul, and body within the Earthly and Cosmic organism.

It is not perhaps quite accurate, though not far wrong, to say that if we go very far back in evolution, human souls were not yet truly individualized; they were still entangled in the group-soul nature. This was particularly the case with the more prominent among them, so we may say that such natures as Hector or Empedocles were typical group-soul representatives of their entire human community. Hector grew out of the soul of Troy. He stands as an image of the group soul of the Trojan people in a particular form, specialized but nevertheless just as rooted in the group soul as Empedocles. When they were reincarnated in the post-Christian era, they had to face the necessity of experiencing the ego-consciousness. This passing over from the group-soul nature to the experience of the individual soul causes a mighty leap forward. It causes souls so firmly embedded in the group-soul nature as Hector to appear like Hamlet, i.e. wavering and uncertain, as though incapable of dealing with life. On the other hand it causes a soul like that of Empedocles, when it reappears in post-Christian times as the soul of the Faust of the sixteenth century, to become a kind of adventurer who is brought into various situations from which he was only with difficulty able to extricate himself, and who is misunderstood by his contemporaries and even by posterity.

Indeed, it has often been emphasized that in developments such as those here referred to, all that has taken place since the Mystery of Golgotha is not particularly meaningful. As yet everything is only at the beginning; only during the future evolution of the earth will the great impulses that may be ascribed to Christianity make themselves felt. Over and over again we must emphasize the fact that Christianity is only at the beginning of its great development. If we wish to play a part in this great development, we must enter with understanding into the ever increasing progress of the revelations and impulses which originated with the founding of Christianity. Above all we are required to learn something in the immediate future; for it does not take much clairvoyance to see clearly that if we wish for something definite to enable us to make a good beginning in the direction of an advanced and progressive understanding of Christianity, we must learn to read the Bible in quite a new way. There are at present many hindrances in the way, partly because of the fact that in wide circles biblical study is still carried on in a sugary and sentimental manner. The Bible is not made use of as a book of knowledge, but as a book of common use for all kinds of personal situations. If anyone has need of it for his own personal encouragement, he will bury himself in one or the other chapter of the Bible and allow it to work on him. This seldom results in anything more than a personal relationship to the Bible. On the other hand, the scholarship of the last decades, indeed that of virtually the whole nineteenth century, increased the difficulty of really understanding the Bible by tearing it apart, declaring that the New Testament is composed of all kinds of different things that were later combined, and that the Old Testament also was composed of many different parts which must have been brought together at different times. According to this view, the Bible is made up of mere fragments which may easily produce the impression of an aggregate, presumably stitched together in the course of time. This kind of scholarship has become popular; very many people, for example, hold that the Old Testament is combined out of many single parts. This opinion disturbs the serious reading of the Bible that must come in the near future. When such a serious way of reading the Bible is adopted, all that is to be said about its secrets from the anthroposophical viewpoint will be much better understood.

[LukeJTM]

Hi Luke,

Thank you for bringing these insightful reflections to the forum!
I unfortunately know very little of Barfield's works. For now I only started reading Saving the appearances, one of Ashvin’s recommended books to develop a living understanding of reality. I realize the influence of Barfield’s work in the United Kingdom is probably more significant than the influence a thinker such as Bergson, or Teilhard de Chardin, might have had in France, for instance. Similarly, other thinkers of the XXth century who received and propagated in other nations some of the waves of living cognition catalyzed and disseminated by Steiner from Central Europe, might have had smaller and more confidential spreading, compared to Barfield's in the UK. So I’m glad that those who are located there, as I noticed you are, can access and benefit from that important resource.

Hi Federica,

Yes I think Barfield has a bigger influence here than other countries. He was a member of The Inklings actually-- his work influenced that of his associates such as Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis, I believe.

But I will say that I did learn about Barfield through a recommendation of Saving the Appearances on Discord. I think it was Ashvin who recommended it actually. I'm not familiar with writers like Bergson, or Chardin.

The will, or the lack thereof, is the weak link in our present-day constitution, or at least this is my current sense of what the main stumbling blocks is, on the path of living thinking, based on both my direct experience and external observations also. Coincidentally, I was recently sharing this same thought with reference to the ongoing discussion on the other thread. As you say, Barfield's reading of Hamlet has relevance to the heart of the current forum discussions.

Yes. I agree that the will is an overlooked aspect of ourselves in the modern West. How many of us have a lack of will (as you are pointing to) or have to merely push through with our will just to get through the day? That already is a sign we are out of balance in some way...
How is our will connected with thinking and feeling? How is it connected with our body? (well, it influences our body through the etheric body for a start, I believe). It's certainly a very interesting topic when we connect it with our daily lives/experiences.

And as you say, the will is an overlooked factor for spiritual development. I have this problem myself included. Sometimes it can just be easier to distract myself with something external like the internet than to focus on my inner world. There seems to be a fine balance that is needed between both the inner and outer duties/responsibilities, that's what I am starting to learn.

I got a hold of a couple books by Rudolf Steiner that focus on strengthening and discipline will impulses, so hopefully the exercises will help me a lot.

...that same solipsism has been evoked by Cleric a few days ago from another entry point, with reference to the mystic reductionist tendency of searching abstract unity with the One Consciousness plaguing our present-day spirituality:

If we neglect this, we end up in a kind of solipsistic view. It’s of course not explicitly solipsistic but it becomes implicitly so because we assume that our human consciousness (even if ‘non-dually realized’) already coincides with the so-called pure consciousness. This makes us feel that our intuitive sense for what consciousness and reality are, is already the fundamental perspective and all that’s left is to expand it and fill the gaps within it. Such a position basically puts the lid on our development.

Thanks for sharing that. That's a great observation too. It sounds like what you and Cleric are trying to say is the mystical reductionism sort of flattens down the Cosmos into just our personal sphere of thinking. Or the pure-consciousness stage is treated as the top possibility of spiritual development, when it is actually just a threshold to the next 'level'. That's what I interpret from that quote.

Steiner pointed out this mystical reductionism in his Philosophy of Freedom book actually, in chapter two. And, he point out the one-sidedness in this approach (just like materialism and dualism are one-sided).

What of the spiritualistic theory? The genuine spiritualist denies to matter all independent existence and regards it merely as a product of spirit. But when he tries to use this theory to solve the riddle of his own human nature, he finds himself driven into a corner. Over against the “I” or Ego, which can be ranged on the side of spirit, there stands directly the world of the senses. No spiritual approach to it seems open. Only with the help of material processes can it be perceived and experienced by the “I”. Such material processes the “I” does not discover in itself so long as it regards its own nature as exclusively spiritual. In what it achieves spiritually by its own effort, the sense-perceptible world is never to be found. It seems as if the “I” had to concede that the world would be a closed book to it unless it could establish a non-spiritual relation to the world. Similarly, when it comes to action, we have to translate our purposes into realities with the help of material things and forces. We are, therefore, referred back to the outer world. The most extreme spiritualist — or rather, the thinker who through his absolute idealism appears as extreme spiritualist — is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He attempts to derive the whole edifice of the world from the “I”. What he has actually accomplished is a magnificent thought-picture of the world, without any content of experience. As little as it is possible for the materialist to argue the spirit away, just as little is it possible for the spiritualist to argue away the outer world of matter.

When man reflects upon the “I”, he perceives in the first instance the work of this “I” in the conceptual elaboration of the world of ideas. Hence a world-conception that inclines towards spiritualism may feel tempted, in looking at man's own essential nature, to acknowledge nothing of spirit except this world of ideas. In this way spiritualism becomes one-sided idealism. Instead of going on to penetrate through the world of ideas to the spiritual world, idealism identifies the spiritual world with the world of ideas itself. As a result, it is compelled to remain fixed with its world-outlook in the circle of activity of the Ego, as if bewitched.

[LukeJTM]

I would like to share an excerpt from one of Steiner's lectures which relates to this momentous metamorphosis of awakening in the individualized consciousness soul which we are now still very much in the midst of and struggling with. As we remember the climactic events of the 1st century this weekend, we can also take heart that they are just now beginning to bear their inner fruits for the thinking consciousness of those who are willing to bear the Cross and sacrifice the persistently nagging desire to personalize and thereby fragment the World Content. That is how we expand the confines of our current "I" to encompass broader and broader spheres of interest, motivating the desire to progressively harmonize relations of spirit, soul, and body within the Earthly and Cosmic organism.

Hi Ashvin,

Thanks for sharing the quote from Barfield, and Steiner. Great quotes, and really significant for today's time. I hadn't thought of the modern isolation and guilt being a modern form of what people used to call 'sin'.

It does seem that this modern 'solipsism' or 'cut-off-ness' (from the spiritual) is connected with the concept of 'dissociated alters' is in regards to Bernardo Kastrup's theory of idealism. I.e. he claims that we are 'dissociated alters, cut off from a universal mind. I'm sure it has been asked many times to Bernardo "what causes dissociation". And the answer (or part of it) seems to be right here in plain sight, here in this discussion in here about the consciousness soul (and also in the other thread about the hard problem of consciousness).
Did humans in earlier epochs experience this 'dissociation'? Based on my limited knowledge, it doesn't seem to be like that. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that (or anyone else here with knowledge on that). Understanding how earlier humans experienced the world is fascinating to me.
I would assume that Jean Gebser's book 'The Ever Present Origin' (which I think you recommended on Discord's idealism server) brings this up? I haven't given it a full and in depth read yet (it's just so big). I am going to do so very soon, because, based on some short reads, it looks very thorough.

[LukeJTM]

Did humans in earlier epochs experience this 'dissociation'? Based on my limited knowledge, it doesn't seem to be like that.

In case any clarity is needed. When I say 'dissociation' in relation to BK's theory of idealism, I am talking about the abstract concept and it's relation to first person experience. This 'cut-off ness' or 'isolation' that is symptomatic of today's human being (at least in the West) is how we end up with concepts like 'dissociated alters'. People ask questions like "ok we all seem to share the same world when we are awake, but why do we seem to have separate minds? Why can't I read your thoughts?", and I am saying it seems connected to the symptoms that Steiner and Barfield are calling the Consciousness Soul. The humans that came before us (mostly in the West, not sure about the Eastern countries) developed their intellects very strongly, and the scientific revolution began to spread around, etc. But, because the intellectual faculties have been so developed, the spiritual connection has been lost. Thus, we end up feeling like 'dissociated alters'; although we can certainly use our minds to notice how this is not really the case. For ex. people today use terms like "vibes" to describe people and places i.e. "I loved the vibe of the place", or "that person gives off such an evil vibe/that person has such a cool vibe". This is one small example pointing to the shared mental environment, I believe. I'm sure there's countless examples we could use from ordinary experience.

[AshvinP]

Did humans in earlier epochs experience this 'dissociation'? Based on my limited knowledge, it doesn't seem to be like that.

In case any clarity is needed. When I say 'dissociation' in relation to BK's theory of idealism, I am talking about the abstract concept and it's relation to first person experience. This 'cut-off ness' or 'isolation' that is symptomatic of today's human being (at least in the West) is how we end up with concepts like 'dissociated alters'. People ask questions like "ok we all seem to share the same world when we are awake, but why do we seem to have separate minds? Why can't I read your thoughts?", and I am saying it seems connected to the symptoms that Steiner and Barfield are calling the Consciousness Soul. The humans that came before us (mostly in the West, not sure about the Eastern countries) developed their intellects very strongly, and the scientific revolution began to spread around, etc. But, because the intellectual faculties have been so developed, the spiritual connection has been lost. Thus, we end up feeling like 'dissociated alters'; although we can certainly use our minds to notice how this is not really the case. For ex. people today use terms like "vibes" to describe people and places i.e. "I loved the vibe of the place", or "that person gives off such an evil vibe/that person has such a cool vibe". This is one small example pointing to the shared mental environment, I believe. I'm sure there's countless examples we could use from ordinary experience.

Luke,

You may find the following excerpt helpful. 

However, one has to realise if one considers the human being as a whole that the human soul that enjoys life in the entire, also bodily-mental organisation is not a simple one. One can want again wholeheartedly to be trivial and say, why do you anthroposophists have the strange habit to distinguish three soul members and even many members of the human nature? You talk there about a sentient soul, an intellectual soul, and a consciousness soul. Nevertheless, it would be much easier to speak of the soul as a uniform being which has thoughts, feelings and will-impulses. -- Certainly, it is easier, more comfortable — and more trivial, too. However, this is something at the same time that cannot promote the scientific consideration of the human being really. For it is not the longing for categorising and speaking many words. The arrangement of the human soul arises in the sentient soul, which is connected with the surroundings at first and receives the perception and sensations from the outside, in which the desires and instincts develop, and which is to be separated from the part in which already in a certain sense the received is processed. We activate our sentient soul, facing the outside world, perceiving its colours and sounds, but we also let appear what we, as normal human beings, cannot control at first: our desires and passions. However, if we withdraw and process what we have taken up by the perception et cetera in ourselves, so that the things of the outside world which are animated in us transform themselves into feelings, then we live in the second soul member, in the intellectual soul. As far as we control our thoughts and are not controlled by them, we live in the consciousness soul. In the Occult Science or in the Theosophy you see that three soul members have much more relations — in other way — to the outside world, not because we like to categorise, but the sentient soul is assigned in quite different way to the universe than the consciousness soul.

The consciousness soul isolates the human being and makes him feeling as an internally closed being. The intellectual soul relates him to the surroundings and to the whole universe; thereby he is a being that appears as an essence, as a confluence of the whole world. By the consciousness soul the human being lives in himself, isolates himself. The most principal what one experiences in the consciousness soul is that what one develops as the latest of his arrangements: the ability of logical thinking that we have opinions, thoughts et cetera. This rests in the consciousness soul. Concerning these qualities, the individual essence of the human being that enters existence at birth is indeed mostly subject to isolation. This innermost essence works its way at the latest. While his cover, his bodily organisation emerges at the earliest, his real individuality emerges at the latest. Nevertheless, as the human being is in the present — he was different in the past and will be different in the future -, indeed, he develops his opinions, concepts, mental pictures in the most isolated part of his nature. Hence, these exert the least influence on the entire construction and arrangement of his personality and appear only as predispositions when the whole personality is formed plastically.  

These three soul members evolved in primordial times, but there was a further refinement of them in our current age. Generally the ancient Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean civilization associates with the refinement of the sentient soul, which experiences itself most connected with the Cosmic expanses. We see that reflected in the way these ancient civilizations understood everything physical as a reflection of the Cosmic spheres and really ordered their entire society to function harmoniously with the movements in the Cosmos. The ancient Greek civilization associates more with the refinement of the intellectual soul, which begins to close itself off to the Cosmic influences in order to develop more lucid concepts of the surrounding environment. A very harmonious balance was reached in ancient Greece and we see that reflected in everything from its art and architecture to its philosophy. Finally our own modern civilization associates with the development of the consciousness soul, where our conceptual life becomes very lucid by completely dimming out the Cosmic influences. Thus we gave birth to modern science and technology. 

We should really understand this as a continuous and progressive development, although it is not a strictly linear development, but more like a rhythmic alternation between spiritual causes and physical effects or vice versa. The seeds which are intentionally planted in previous epochs (by initiates of the mysteries) bear fruit in subsequent ones. For ex. we could look at the Egyptian practice of mummifying bodies at death. 

We recall how the Egyptian handled the dead; we remember the mummies, and how the Egyptian concerned himself that the outer physical form should be preserved for a long time. We know that he filled his tombs with such mummies, in which he had preserved the outer form, and that as mementos of the past physical life he gave to the deceased certain utensils and possessions suited to the needs of physical life. Thus what the person had had in the physical was to be retained. In this way the Egyptian bound the dead to the physical plane. This custom developed more and more and is a special earmark of the old Egyptian culture. Such a thing is not without consequences for the soul. Let us remember that our souls were in Egyptian bodies. This is quite correct; our souls were incorporated in these bodies that became mummies. We know that when man, after death, is freed from his physical and etheric bodies, he has a different consciousness; he is by no means unconscious in the astral world. He can look down from the spiritual world, even though today he cannot look up; he can then look down on the physical earth. It is not then indifferent to him whether his body has been preserved as a mummy, has been burned, or has decayed. A definite kind of connection arises through this. We shall see this mysterious connection. Through the fact that in ancient Egypt the bodies were preserved for a long time, the souls experienced something very definite in the period after death. When they looked down they knew — that is my body. They were bound to this physical body. They had the form of their body before them. This body became important to the souls, for the soul is susceptible to impressions after death. The impression made by the mummified body imprinted itself deeply, and the soul was formed in accordance with this impression.

These souls went through incarnations in the Greco-Latin period, and in our own time they are living in us. It was not without effect that they saw their mummified bodies after death, that they were repeatedly led back to these bodies; this is by no means unimportant. They attached their sympathies to these bodies, and the fruit of their looking down upon them appears now, in the fifth period, in the inclination that souls have today to lay great weight upon the outer physical life. All that we describe today as the attachment to matter stems from the fact that the souls at that time, out of the spiritual world, could look upon their own embodiment. Through this man learned to love the physical world; through this it is so often said today that the only important thing is the physical body between birth and death. Such views do not arise out of nothing.

This is not a criticism of the practice of mummifying. We only want to point to certain necessities that are connected with the repeated incarnating of the soul. Without this pondering on the mummies men would not have been equal to developing further. We would by now have lost all interest in the physical world had the Egyptians not had the mummy-cult. It had to be thus if a proper interest in the physical world was to be awakened. That we see the world as we do today is a consequence of the fact that the Egyptians mummified the physical body after death.

So now the task is to use the fruits of our physical experience to strengthen and enliven our thinking force and expand our conscious aperture back into the Cosmic currents which are still active in the intellectual and sentient souls. As you point out, the big idolatrous trap of the modern age has been to lose sight of this whole cognitive evolution and reify the current soul-atomic experience, leading to all sorts of metaphysical theories and concepts like 'dissociative boundary', which is assumed as some immutable fact of reality's structure. If we don't continue falling into this trap, eventually we can rediscover the great Sun-wisdom of the ancient Persian civilization (Zarathustra), but now in full clarity of scientific consciousness. In fact we can already begin drawing on this Wisdom - also known as the Christ impulse - to purify, strengthen, and expand our thinking consciousness into the inner worlds. That is the task of modern initiation, which acts as a forerunner to the general stream of human evolution. The future is no longer prepared by only the 'chosen ones' in the mysteries, but by every individual who is willing to let the Christ impulse inflow the mind and heart. 

Of course a lot more living details can be added to our understanding of this whole progression through spiritual scientific study and inner practice, which then allows us to more efficiently and smoothly fulfill the higher intents for our age.

[Federica]

...

Ashvin,

What an impressive passage in this quote. To an extent, it brings more elements to a question I've had since the "Whirlpool's core/first motion" thread, where you mentioned the relation between Egyptian civilization and Imaginative cognition. But I have difficulties letting this part falling into place:

He can look down from the spiritual world, even though today he cannot look up; he can then look down on the physical earth. It is not then indifferent to him whether his body has been preserved as a mummy, has been burned, or has decayed. A definite kind of connection arises through this. We shall see this mysterious connection.

The difficulty is not of the type "the soul does not have sense organs then, so how can it look down on its former body". It's about grasping the relevance of the specific mode of decay of the elements of the past sheath... That the physical decay is slowed down by expanding the degrees of freedom within the mineral world and that this modifies the trajectory toward a future incarnation in a new body. I am not getting the nature of this connection maintained with some specific mineral element dynamic. Is there any indication you could point to?

[AshvinP]

...

Ashvin,

What an impressive passage in this quote. To an extent, it brings more elements to a question I've had since the "Whirlpool's core/first motion" thread, where you mentioned the relation between Egyptian civilization and Imaginative cognition. But I have difficulties letting this part falling into place:

He can look down from the spiritual world, even though today he cannot look up; he can then look down on the physical earth. It is not then indifferent to him whether his body has been preserved as a mummy, has been burned, or has decayed. A definite kind of connection arises through this. We shall see this mysterious connection.

The difficulty is not of the type "the soul does not have sense organs then, so how can it look down on its former body". It's about grasping the relevance of the specific mode of decay of the elements of the past sheath... That the physical decay is slowed down by expanding the degrees of freedom within the mineral world and that this modifies the trajectory toward a future incarnation in a new body. I am not getting the nature of this connection maintained with some specific mineral element dynamic. Is there any indication you could point to?

Federica,

I think the overarching principle is that, after death, we experience a certain longing for the physical plane at variable rates, depending on various factors. The main factor is what we have 'cast out' into the perceptual spectrum, i.e. what tasks we have left undone or partially done, which is the basis of our Karma. It is through this process of casting out at various nested scales that periods of manifestation continue to follow periods of spiritual consolidation, i.e. planetary pralaya, sub-pralaya of rounds/globes, death-rebirth, sleep. Everything which was cast out into the perceptual spectrum for our inner development but remains unredeemed (not reintegrated inwardly) serves as an attractor force which brings souls/worlds back into manifestation. Here is an example of that from even the primordial beginnings of our Solar evolution.

What was it that actually came to life in this new Sun-condition? The Spirits of Personality having now self-consciousness passed to it from ancient Saturn after the planetary condition of sleep; they were no longer required to pass through any similar condition to that which they had already passed through: they had breathed out certain eggs of warmth which had emerged again gradually, and differentiated themselves from the general mass; the consequence was that the Spirits of Personality were bound to that part of themselves which they had formerly left behind. If they had taken everything with them into the spiritual world they would not have been tied to the Sun, they would not have needed to come down again but they had to do so, because they had left behind them a part of their own essence, their own being. They had to concern themselves with it; it drew them downwards into a new planetary existence. This was the Destiny of Saturn, world-Karma, cosmic Karma. Because the Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn had not taken everything into themselves, they had prepared that Karma for themselves which obliged them to return.

We could say that, at a certain point in our Earth evolution, we awakened to this process and gained the capacity to directly influence it through initiation. That is when we could start working intentionally on the perfection of our spirit-soul-body organism. Just like we can begin anticipating future circumstances in our individual stream of becoming via higher cognition (in a much more clear way than normal intellectual anticipation), ancient initiates could then anticipate future developments in the collective streams and start preparing for them (actually we could say this anticipation process is actually what drives the manifestation of the 'future'). For ex., Steiner speaks of an exercise we can do to help remember where we have placed something. When we put down our keys, phone, wallet/purse, earrings, or some other item, we vividly visualize the surrounding environment and form the intention to remember placing the item in that context. That more strongly imprints the impression into our etheric memory, binding our thought-memory more to that perceptual constellation. So we could say a similar thing occurred here at a higher-order, more collective level. 

In this particular circumstance, the intention of the initiates who instituted the mummification practice was to help prepare the bridge between ancient clairvoyance and modern imaginative cognition through the incarnation of spiritual forces on the physical plane within the human intellect. It was all preparation for the Christ-being and impulse, who the ancient initiates could perceive working in the astral world on his way down to the physical plane, so to speak. 

Try to put yourselves in the position of an Egyptian sage, living, let us say, about 2000 B.C.. He would have said: Once upon a time, over in the East, men experienced living thinking. But the Egyptian sage was in a strange situation; his life of soul was not like ours today; experience of living thinking had faded away, was no longer within his grasp, and abstract thinking had not yet begun. A substitute was created by the embalming of mummies whereby, in the way I have described, a picture, a concept of the human form was made possible. Men trained themselves to unfold a picture of the dead human form in the mummy and began, for the first time, to develop abstract, dead thinking. It was from the human corpse that dead thinking first came into existence.

So the mineral element dynamic is mostly a reflection of the intention to bind the thinking force more closely to the physical instrument and establish the gradient. Cosmic Life must be stripped from thinking before it can become a force for our attaining degrees of spiritual freedom. We are not compelled to react in one way or another by only dead mental pictures-concepts.

Another interesting thing to mention here is how, what intentions were adapted to advancing our spiritual evolution in previous epochs, later becomes a positive hindrance to our evolution when it is adhered to. That is at the root of idolatry, which we see all too often on idealist forums in the context of ancient spiritual practices - eastern mysticism, shamanism, psychedelics, etc. It isn't imagined that we can idolize not only the physical spectrum, but also the spiritual spectrum. A real occult danger in our modern era is that souls can be increasingly tied to the physical plane after death by preserving the intellectual faculty long after it should have renounced itself in its disincarnate journey. That can be used by black magicians for all sorts of nefarious purposes. So that is a stark example of preserving a previously adaptive practice which is now maladapted to the spiritual tasks which need to be fulfilled, i.e. bridging the intellect to imaginative cognition so that Cosmic Life is reintroduced to our thinking force. 

[Federica]

...

Thank you, Ashvin, there is much to bing into focus in this post, let me read it another 25 times or so and I'll see what falls into place and what doesn't : )

[AshvinP]

This is a great video on understanding our evolution through Myths and Fairy Tales in the light of spiritual science. It really helps to accustom our spiritual organism to more symbolic/imaginative thinking. It's not so much about making definite correspondences between the mythic images and spiritual concepts in any discursive way, but about immersing our consciousness in the currents of spiritual activity suggested by the imagery. We will also find that this eventually helps us intuitively resonate with spiritual scientific concepts as well.

[AshvinP]

Here is a great series of videos on Goethe's fairy tale, the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily - which some rank among the best that were ever imaginatively condensed - that goes through it with quality illustrations. It is fundamentally an 'alchemical' allegory for the marriage between the purified soul and the higher Spirit.