Anthroposophy as Fascio

[Stranger]

The question I was raising was related to added anxiety. The suggestion offered was this was due to guilt. I didn't quite get how that might unfold and passed the guilt question to you. Got any thoughts?

Yes, sorry, I missed it. I agree, I don't get it either and I don't see how it could be related to the sense of guilt.

[AshvinP]

By the way, we should be very critical and skeptical to what discarnate beings tell us, most of them are as confused as we humans are (which does not necessarily mean they are "evil", but it only means that they, like us, are evolving and transitioning through evolutionary phases, and on each phase have their beliefs and confusions according to the level of the phase).

On this point, we should be clear about what is necessary to test such spirits. It is obviously our critical thinking faculty which can discern whether various percepts-concepts about the World can cohere with each other into a harmonious whole which helps us make more sense of our living experience than our previous ideas, and, as Lou also indicated, feed back into actionable ways of fulfilling our ideals in life. This is the phenomenological and pragmatic approach to truth. We need to continuously exercise this thinking faculty before it is strong enough to test experiences of a soul-spirit nature. We take this faculty for granted with regards to the sensory spectrum because it was developed for us in early stages of childhood that we hardly remember, but we can't expect it to suffice for the supra-sensory spectrum or for someone else to develop a more strengthened thinking for us. 

A great practice is to really delve into and reason through a post such as Cleric's latest one on the other thread, which presents a detailed illustration of what has been discerned from spiritual scientific research. Those are, for the most part, supra-sensory observations which cannot be analyzed in any habitual way by the intellect. It pushes us to accustom our thinking organism to a more flexible, fluid, analogical mode of reasoning, and the content/reasoning is so far removed from our familiar habits of thinking that we may find it easier to resist defaulting into them. We will almost certainly experience a great discomfort at first, and which lasts for a while, but practice really does make perfect here. If we are unable to do something of this preparatory nature right now, then we have little chance of testing the spirits which approach us in our conscious experience of supra-sensory realms.

It should also be obvious that we cannot 'test' the spirits by seeing how their messages make us personally feel, whether they resonate with what already makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside or intellectually validated in our current opinions and theories. Let's say we are physics professors and want to test our students, not so much on the content of their answers, but on how their answers reflect their underlying mode of thinking through these matters.

Q: Please describe the fundamental forces of physics and where we find their influences in our daily experience, in your own words.

A1: They all came from Oneness and differentiating them would be a dualistic illusion, so no thank you.
A2: The forces speak to me of love, compassion, kindness - they're not interested in cognitive details, so neither am I.
A3: The forces give orderly structure to my experience, BUT they also tell me I can explore the Universe infinitely and endlessly at my pleasure, so there is really no need to keep describing that structure to you.

Do these students really pass our test? I hope not. If we are willing to give these students passing grades, then that speaks more about our own soul-state and personalized relation to 'truth', and practically nothing about the truth value of what we are receiving from them. 

Man strives towards truth; but when people try to form views concerning one thing or another, we find that in the most varied realms of life conflicting opinions are advanced. When we see what different people take for truth, we might think that the striving for truth leads inevitably to the most contradictory views and standpoints. However, if we look impartially at the facts, we shall find guidelines which show how it is that men who are all seeking truth, arrive at such a diversity of opinions.
...
A view, in the sense of an opinion, is a thought which reflects the outer world. When we form a thought or reach a decision about something, does it follow that we have a true picture of it?

Suppose you take a photograph of a remarkable tree. Does the photograph give a true picture of the tree? It shows the tree from one side only, not the whole reality of the tree. No-one could form a true image of the tree from this one photograph. How could anyone who has not seen the tree be brought nearer to the truth of it? If the tree were photographed from four sides, he could collate the photographs and arrive finally at a true picture of the tree, not dependent on a particular standpoint.

Now let us apply this example to human beings. A man who leaves himself out of account when forming a view of something is doing much the same as the photographer who goes all round the tree. He eliminates himself by conscious action. When we form an opinion or take a certain view, we must realise that all such opinions depend on our personal standpoint, our habits of mind and our individuality. If we then try to eliminate these influences from our search for truth, we shall be acting as the photographer did in our example. The first condition for acquiring a genuine sense of truth is that we should get away from ourselves and see clearly how much depends on our personal point of view.

An example from everyday life has shown us, that if a man fails to realise how much his personal standpoint or point of departure influences his views, he will arrive at narrow opinions, not at the truth. This is apparent also on a wider scale. Anyone who looks at the true spiritual evolution of mankind, and compares all the various “truths” that have arisen in the course of time, will find — if he looks deeply enough — that when people pronounce a “truth” they ought first of all to get away from their individual outlooks. It will then become clear that the most varied opinions concerning truth are advanced because men have not recognised to what extent their views are restricted by their personal standpoints.

[Lou Gold]

Lou, in addition to what Ashvin said, what you might also be missing is this: how do you know that you are adopting a "purely descriptive witness perspective"? Could it not be that your current thoughts are inseparable from, and influenced by, feelings and other soul influences that you don't currently have in perfectly sharp focus?
This might not be a very "juicy" matter, still SS guides the seeker, among other things, towards a clearer differentiation of consciousness, where one becomes more and more able to discern the objective element in the flow of thinking, as well as the subjective influences exerted by various personal soul forces on the finally packaged thought that we record. So we can become aware, not only of the final tip of the thought as it falls in our perceptual range (perceivable tip of the iceberg of our thinking), but also of the various interacting forces that make the final shape of the tip into what falls into the scope of our normal perception as 'this is my thought'. In fact, that is only the tip of a massive, largely submersed iceberg, and the only way to know whether it is detaching from Antartica, drifting off to this or that attractor, etc., is to develop this differentiating ability, for instance through Spiritual Science. Such skill would have come in handy, in a case like this one for instance, not true?

Of course! And this is true of every path, which is why we focus not exclusively on Truth but on Truth , Goodness and Beauty in order to test our perceptions. And, BTW, I like your notion of "tip of the iceberg" because it so well explains why I think ascent-and-descent are necessary in an expanding awareness. Indeed, sometimes it can be more important to know the below (ex: Antarctica). And, in short, to know if our direct perceptions or experiences are more than idiosyncratic we must have a peer group and see if the results are the beautiful ones promised by our stories, hopes and dreams.

I would add that I am aware of at least some of the soul forces beyond my puny personal perceptions, which is the result of my path including a doctrine and communion with vastly larger forces via ritual devotion.

So if you recognize that you are aware of some soul forces, and otherwise you rely on a peer group, why did you state as a matter of fact that you were writing from a "purely descriptive witness perspective" with regards to the Mother?

Also, how can a peer group be the solution, given that peer advice only can come way afterwards, and not in the moment when the objective consciousness is needed, and given that the peers are themselves required to be aware of their personal unconscious influences, in order to provide reliable advice?

So if you recognize that you are aware of some soul forces, and otherwise you rely on a peer group, why did you state as a matter of fact that you were writing from a "purely descriptive witness perspective" with regards to the Mother?

I was referencing my life changing dream encounter as a "purely descriptive witness perspective" event. At the time, I surely did not expect the dream would be life-changing. Of course, the life changes came later. And my discovery of a spiritual path under the guiding light of the Queen of the Forest came still later. All spiritual paths, including SS, have a peer process for evaluation and elaboration.

Also, how can a peer group be the solution, given that peer advice only can come way afterwards, and not in the moment when the objective consciousness is needed, and given that the peers are themselves required to be aware of their personal unconscious influences, in order to provide reliable advice?

I truly wondered how the glance of the Mother might have been so powerful. In a purely intellectual way I speculated that I had met the Feminine Generative Goddess and that She looked at me the way a mother first sees a newborn -- as perfect -- and that was the power of the glance. Later, as I discovered others familiar with Her, there was a commonality and ease of communication based on the first-person direct experiences we previously had. But I don't mean to go exclusively "mystical". It's more like the difference between people who think about recipes in cookbooks and those who have actually cooked the food.

In the earlier post I asked how childbirth might be a good analogy except for people who had experienced it. I had not birthed a child. For my dream, I only had a speculation, which I have later discussed with peers of group called "mothers". Only last week I shared my dream story and speculation with my massage therapist. She instantly responded, "When I saw my son, I felt pure unconditional love." This is, I believe, the power and the glory of that glance.

[Stranger]

Q: Please describe the fundamental forces of physics and where we find their influences in our daily experience, in your own words.

A1: They all came from Oneness and differentiating them would be a dualistic illusion, so no thank you.
A2: The forces speak to me of love, compassion, kindness - they're not interested in cognitive details, so neither am I.
A3: The forces give orderly structure to my experience, BUT they also tell me I can explore the Universe infinitely and endlessly at my pleasure, so there is really no need to keep describing that structure to you.

It's neither of those, see my answer to Cleric above. And by the way, Oneness is not the absence of differentiation and multiplicity.

[Stranger]

I have tried to show that it is impossible to live in the Inspirative and Intuitive stages of consciousness and not understand the oneness of spiritual reality in the most living and direct way

PS: Cleric, it still seems strange that you claim this and yet in another thread you still say:

If we simply smear everything out and enjoy the oneness, we in fact remain in the most convoluted state and confuse it for the ground of reality.

which means that you still conflate oneness with flat universe and "smearing everything". Oneness does not negate any folding and hierarchical content in any way but fully embraces it. So, I do not see the "understanding of oneness in the Inspirative and Intuitive stages of consciousness" claimed above.

[Lou Gold]

On the other extreme end, if the ego has no solid ground, it’s impossible to find orientation and follow any route. A point of self-reference needs to be there in defined form, working as a soundbox to echo the inputs, so one can use the feedback for continuous adjustment. It doesn’t matter that it’s imperfect, as long as it's kept ‘scalable’.

So what I meant is, in order to quench the thirst for knowledge one has to find a balanced route for the ego, where self-origin is maintained in individuated form, but also scalable, rather than simply extensible. And if one prefers to stay strong and immovable in that origin instead, then the thirst for knowledge cannot be quenched, but only renounced, or numbed.

OK, good. Balance is the in-the-now quest in a dynamic system. I might prefer the word "expandable" to "scalable" in order to accomodate all "externalities" but I think we are talking about much the same thing.

Lou... I intentionally used scalable - as opposed to extendible, or expandable - to suggest that there really are two very different ways to conceive progression on the path. We can either remain stuck in our current, possibly ego-inflated, level of understanding, when we do add pieces of knowledge by expansion, but without accepting to move the apex of our cone of awareness. Most of all we want to remain true, so to say, to what we are currently persuaded our self is, more than to Truth. So we only broaden the aperture of our cone of awareness, and in so doing we subtly cap any qualitative progression. We only add pieces to our current setup, but we refuse to question the setup itself. Maybe scalable is not the ideal word, as it may suggest the preservation of some initial proportions. But do you get what I was trying to say?

Alterantively, we keep our current mode of knowledge scalable, and so we are humbly conceiving the possibility that our very sense of what understanding is will be revolutionized and transformed in currently unconceivable ways. We are open to a quantum leap that can blow away our current perspective. This second mode is necessary to allow for true progression. But this possibility is excluded, when one's ego is too proud and out of balance, more attached to remaining "true to oneself", as we often hear today, than to discover what reality are (if I can say so).

Hi again Federica,

But do you get what I was trying to say?

I thought about it more. Perhaps I stumbled, as a photographer, on the word "aperture," which is used to adjust the amount light in a given unchanging view. Sometimes the best view needs more light and other times it needs more shadow. To change the view one must change the focal length and quality of the lens, for example: normal or macro, wide angle or telephoto. These adjustments would expand the views to be broader or longer or deeper. They would all be expansions of what the human eye can normally see. So... perhaps I am a bit confused as to exactly what you meant.

[ScottRoberts]

While awareness is universal, my awareness is not (otherwise you would know what I had for breakfast this morning.) The point of calling it "relative oneness" is to note that mystical "experiencing oneness" is not final, and may just be your oneness, and from a higher POV may be more manyness.

Universality of awareness does not necessarily mean full exchange of information across its space. Awareness as the lucidity of conscious experience is the same in all individuals, the content of what is being awared of is different.

And I am saying the experience called 'oneness' is not absolute, and the name for that which is not absolute is 'relative'.

1. subject/object dualism. I already said this is misnomer, and should be called subject/object polarity, our current experience of oneness/manyness polarity, and see no problem with it.

2. spirit/matter dualism. This is a necessary stage in our spiritual development to finalize our becoming individuals. It is also clearly not the cause of our badness, since all that badness existed long before it arrived. (If anything it has lessened it, in that we are more self-conscious.) It is, though, a false view of reality, and will be overcome when, through higher cognition, we once again experience the spirit of matter.

Subject-object has nothing to do with oneness/manyness, it is a false view of reality similar to mind/matter, there is no such thing in reality as objects separate from subjects. Yes, these views are both necessary as an evolutionary stage, but at certain evolutionary point become outdated just like the view that the Earth is placed on turtles. And what the heck is the "spirit of matter" if there is no such thing as "matter"?

Sorry, I was careless. I meant spirit in our sense perceptions.

I was also careless in not distinguishing two meanings of "subject/object".

Meaning 1: the distinction one makes between that which comes from within and that from without, or it could be described as that over which we have some control, and that over which we don't control. {I might note that this too changes with consciousness evolution, in that when people were naive idealists, thoughts were experienced as coming from without.) I see no problem in making this distinction, and the only way, as far as I can tell, that it could be transcended is if I become God.

Meaning 2: What one gets with the exercise of asking "What am I", where one notes that I am not this and not that. Usually, the exercise is intended to show "there is no I", but this is fallacious because all the thises and thats are objects, while the "I" is not an object. It is (meaning 2) subject, and exists in polar relation to all the thises and thats. So, again, not a dualism.

3. self/other dualism. This is simply always the case unless we simply dissolve into the Godhead. In that case, our whole existence would have been meaningless. Even if we merge with a "group soul", as esoteric literature describes it, we are still individuals within it, though in that case we will know what the other had for breakfast.

It depends on what is meant by "self". If you ask an average human they will tell you that they perceive their "self" as an entity existing separate from other selves and from the outside world, existing inside its human body as an experiencer of the outside world and a "doer" in the outside world. People perceive their self as an entity in almost ontological sense as a "center of perception and actions". They basically view the reality as if it is perceived by their "self" from the center inside their head. Likewise, they perceive others as "entities" existing inside their heads or bodies. This is just another false view, we will call it "separate self-entity" dualism. But if by "self" we mean an individuated spiritual/thinking activity interacting with other similar thinking activities, then this is not a false view, but you will find very few humans who actually perceive/view their self in this way. So, the "separate self-entity" can be transcended after it is realized as a false view without dissolving into the Godhead.

RIght, a false view. But all we need to "transcend" it is a little philosophy.

What I am getting at is, though it is the case that self/other dualism is a prerequisite for badness, we won't eliminate badness by transcending dualism, since we won't be transcending dualism (other than spirit/matter dualism, which as noted, is not the cause of badness). Badness is a result of our beliefs, desires, and feelings. So to become good we need to unearth these beliefs, desires, and feelings, which is to say, to explore our thinking, an unending work which meditating on oneness and awareness is just a desire to shortcut.

So, all these three four kinds of dualism can be transcended (even though it may take a long time to practically accomplish).

Two of the four will not be transcended without becoming God. One is a polarity, not a dualism.

But this is of course not enough to transcend the badness, all those additional false beliefs need to be dismantled, desires and feelings sacrificed, and this requires a consistent practice. However, once the dualism is transcended in a practical way, the egoic desires will lose much of their ground and justification, because there is no longer the "entity-self" to which these desires would pertain. One needs to examine this mechanism by penetrating into subconscious layers in meditation and experiencing how these desires form and how they are always rooted in the sense of the separate self-entity. As an example, how would one sustain a desire for wealth if there is no sense of separate self-entity to whom this wealth would belong?

Yes. False beliefs need to be corrected, for which the practice is philosophy. The practice for the rest is called SS.

[Cleric K]

I have tried to show that it is impossible to live in the Inspirative and Intuitive stages of consciousness and not understand the oneness of spiritual reality in the most living and direct way

PS: Cleric, it still seems strange that you claim this and yet in another thread you still say:

If we simply smear everything out and enjoy the oneness, we in fact remain in the most convoluted state and confuse it for the ground of reality.

which means that you still conflate oneness with flat universe and "smearing everything". Oneness does not negate any folding and hierarchical content in any way but fully embraces it. So, I do not see the "understanding of oneness in the Inspirative and Intuitive stages of consciousness" claimed above.

When you say the bold you mean that the oneness embraces these things in principle but you haven't yet reached that level yourself? Or that you have already embraced them but don't find it necessary to look into the details (and that's why you can't confirm anything about the sheaths, soul organs, spheres, hierarchies, etc.) since after death you'll be free of these folds anyway?

[Stranger]

When you say the bold you mean that the oneness embraces these things in principle but you haven't yet reached that level yourself? Or that you have already embraced them but don't find it necessary to look into the details (and that's why you can't confirm anything about the sheaths, soul organs, spheres, hierarchies, etc.) since after death you'll be free of these folds anyway?

In principle

[AshvinP]

Q: Please describe the fundamental forces of physics and where we find their influences in our daily experience, in your own words.

A1: They all came from Oneness and differentiating them would be a dualistic illusion, so no thank you.
A2: The forces speak to me of love, compassion, kindness - they're not interested in cognitive details, so neither am I.
A3: The forces give orderly structure to my experience, BUT they also tell me I can explore the Universe infinitely and endlessly at my pleasure, so there is really no need to keep describing that structure to you.

It's neither of those, see my answer to Cleric above. And by the way, Oneness is not the absence of differentiation and multiplicity.

The problem with the absolute 'Oneness' approach has never been absence of differentiation, but lack of self-awareness "to what extent their views are restricted by their personal standpoints." The personal soul-perspective is smeared out and therefore all the cognitive conditioning which restricts and formats the experience is left in the blind spot. There really are no alternate universes we explore by attaining deeper awareness-cognition. There is no "nothingness" realm we can explore before going on to explore other infinite realms. There is not one set of Karmic structures for the soul and another set for the body, which presupposes they are both atomic units obeying different laws (and the soul laws are left conveniently nebulous in the dark). There is only One reality and we are experiencing it right now, only its subtle structure (which is temporal or time-rhythmic in nature) is dimmed down by the reflective space-bound intellect.

As Scott says, all we need is some sound philosophy to overcome the 'separate self' belief. The rest of our task (99.999+%) is about lawfully working through the folds which format our less-than-Divine cognitive experience. The fourfold convolution evolved over what, from our perspective, is many aeons - it won't be erased with a snap of the finger. What are these folds? They are the intents of higher spiritual beings which give context to everything we desire, feel, think, and do. Whenever you form a desire to do a 'oneness meditation' and sit down to do the meditation, it is within that context. These higher-order intents are the fields of potential (as first-person states of being) in which all our striving towards Oneness - which everyone is undertaking, whether they know it or not - takes place. Even the serial killer and the genocidal despot are striving towards Oneness, as they seek to rid the World of its differentiated beings. What transmutes our striving from pathological to noble is self-consciousness of this living intentional structure and our precise role within it.

It is resistance to serving this higher-order intentional structure which maintains our naive realism in the face of reason. In ancient times, serving the wise Divine ordering of the Cosmos was felt as a duty and a privilege, but that is no longer the case (for good reason). This resistance to Divine service manifests because we are all within the context of the evolved consciousness soul which first isolates itself and strives for soul-atomic freedom. If we could physically float off the face of the planet and wander into other galaxies, we would, but living experience prevents that, so the next best thing is to conjure abstract thought-arrangements which convince us we can do this after death. As Cleric pointed out, none of the post-death candy shop speculations come from the 'Oneness' experience, but are drawn from ancient traditions, NDE reports, mediumistic channelled messages and so forth, and overlaid on top.

The more we dwell in these reflective thought-systems, the further we dig ourselves into dense abstractions and into the confines of the personal ego.The way out is to progressively make our thinking more flexible, fluid, creative, imaginative. We should become enthusiastic to precisely steer our way back through the folds which brought us to our spiritual awakening, so that we can be here asking the questions and seeking the answers. We can pray for the strength and wisdom to fulfill these intents, which we ourselves planted and then faithlessly forgot about. Even the first steps in this direction rid us of the 'separate self' belief and reveal to us that we are united in ideal essence with all which appears external to us. In fact, the first steps rid us of the idea that the separate self belief is even something worth spending too much mental effort discussing. Again, that belief is not the root problem but a flash in the pan of modern thought which will die away in the near course of evolution of its own necessity. All these abstract debates about one-many, subject-object, I-world, and so forth are taking place between dream characters who have confused their dream personalities for their core individuality, and therefore have spread their thoughts about what reality is across the depths of Time and Eternity and are now debating their own thought-creations. The real work is progressively awakening from within the dream into ever-higher stages.

It will always be good for man if he wrestles his way to realising that truth can be apprehended only by degrees. Or take a genuine, honest, all-round seeker after truth who is called upon to bring forcibly before the world some truth he has discovered. It will be very good if he reminds himself that he has no grounds for pluming himself on this one account. There are no grounds at any time for remaining content with something already known. On the contrary, such knowledge as we have gained from our considerations yesterday and today should lead us to feel that, although the human being must stand firmly on the ground of the truth he has acquired and must be ready to defend it, he must from time to time withdraw into himself, as Goethe did. When he does this, the forces arising from the consciousness of the truth he has gained will endow him with a feeling for the right standards and for the standpoint he should make his own. From the enhanced consciousness of truth we should ever and again withdraw into ourselves and say, with Goethe: Much that we once discovered and took for truth is now only a dream, a dreamlike memory; and what we think today, will not survive when we put it to a deeper test. The words often spoken by Goethe to himself in relation to his own honest search for truth may well be echoed by every man in his solitary hours:

"A poor wight am I
Through and through.
My thoughts miss the mark,
My dreams, they are not true."

If we can feel this, we shall be in the right relationship to our high ideal, Truth.