Meditation

[LukeJTM]

Thanks to everyone for the helpful replies. The feedback is helping me see a bigger picture than before.
It is also nice to see that the post is not only benefitting me, it is benefitting everyone else who is active on this forum.

This is unrelated, but does anyone here have experience with Rudolf Steiner's "Eurythmy"? I see instructional videos, DVDs, books, etc for it online, but I have no idea if said instructional resources are any good. Interesting fact about me is that I was taught some Eurythmy in early childhood from a Waldorf school. I had motor skill problems, and I was taught Eurythmy to help me with that (which it did). But I've forgotten it since then because it was so long ago, and my involvement with the Steiner school was only for a couple of a years. I am interested in it trying it again as an adult, and if anyone else here has experience or benefitted from it.

[Güney27]

Hello Cleric,


"So we may soon be going through a very characteristic experience. We maintain our intense concentration as we feel our bodies and our usual conscious patterns fall asleep. This is often accompanied by a buzzing sensation that spreads from the head, fills the body, and then becomes like a boundless space. This may be scary at first because we feel like we are losing our feet, so to speak, but with repeated experiences we get used to it. The most important thing, however, is that we hold on to the sun being. Anyone can attest that even at this point of concentration we can still pray wordlessly for support and guidance. It is a good milestone when we feel how to live in this state of prayer without it breaking our concentration - it even makes it stronger and brighter. This inner connection helps us overcome any anxiety that may arise when we feel our senses dissolving.”
I don't know if it's a universal difficulty or just an individual one, but I find it particularly difficult to hold something in mind when I'm concentrating on mental images. I've tried casually imagining a rose cross in the vowels exercise and holding it around the background of my awareness, but this has only broken my focus and forced me to choose between the two.

Recently I came across an exercise in Steiner's archive in which one should imagine one's higher nature and then say a mantram to it in a prayer-like manner (more radiant than the sun...).
Here I begin to come from the essential path in meditation. I'm thinking, should I pray or meditate as I sense a distinction between the two.
Sometimes I say prayers several times an hour, I meditate once or twice a day. Both practices also feel different to me.

Also, during the meditation mentioned above, I realized that I have no point of reference for my higher nature.
Everything I know consciously says nothing about such a nature.
So I try to imagine a light and worship it because I couldn't cultivate such a sense of a higher nature crystal clear within myself. When I try to worship the sun being in the background of the meditation, alongside my focus on the vowels, I get disconcerted. I begin to imagine something that could correspond to this (e.g. a rose cross as a symbol for Christ) but this makes my meditation difficult because, as mentioned, I have no experience of such an idea. It remains just a symbol, without much content.

I've found it much easier to pray than to meditate these past few days, especially when I'm asked to meditate on certain feelings.
I don't know if there are trivial problems that arise, but it is important to me to improve my meditation skills and I am afraid that I will not be able to do this and not progress.

Hi Guney. Trying to hold several images is bound to be a complex task and is not really the goal of meditation. We have to remember that the spiritual world won't emerge out of the image of concentration like some bifurcating inner phenomenon. This world is all around us all the time. As said to Luke, through concentration we need to lead our soul to a sacred state of receptivity, where our expanded soul becomes the arena of Cosmic happenings. Yet this shouldn't happen like some drunken state where we're swayed by inexplicable phenomena. Our concentrated state becomes the intuitive kernel in respect to which the Cosmic happenings make sense, the story of existence on all levels begins to make sense. The kernel is not the perceptual mental image but the intuition present in our calm lucid state.

To gain understanding of the higher being it might be useful to reflect on what conscience is. Think about various events in life where you were in front of a moral dilemma and you were leaning to one or another side. Think about the fact that from a certain purer perspective, these dilemmas would be much more transparent. Sometimes we're placed in front of genuinely difficult situations, where it indeed looks like there's no right choice. But more often things are much more prosaic and we're simply not giving up a personal desire. The problem is that we're not always conscious of these things because such desires and tendencies may be so buried in our subconsciousness that we practically feel them as intrinsic part of who we are. We can't even question them because this would require being able to see things from an alternative standpoint. In such cases we can conceive that the force of conscience penetrates into our soul as if dimmed down through layers of smoked glass. Our attitude towards the higher being shouldn't be as towards an idol but towards that being which can inspire the good thoughts, feelings and actions in us, as if filling our soul from the direction of conscience. This doesn't preclude the possibility to symbolize the Divine with the Sun, for example. This is justified because the higher being is infinitely greater than anything we experience in our consciousness at any given moment. So the images of radiance and immensity are adequate. But we have to remember that the worship today happens on the altar of our own soul life. The Sun doesn't need our bows. But we need to make it the inspirer of our life if we desire to be attuned to the lawful Cosmic order and take part in this Grand Work.

Cleric,

,,To gain understanding of the higher being it might be useful to reflect on what conscience is. Think about various events in life where you were in front of a moral dilemma and you were leaning to one or another side. Think about the fact that from a certain pure perspective, these dilemmas would be much more transparent. Sometimes we're placed in front of genuinely difficult situations, where it indeed looks like there's no right choice. But more often things are much more prosaic and we're simply not giving up a personal desire"

Thank you for the explanation.
Before meditating, would it be helpful if I try to create a feeling through thinking that connects me to my higher nature?
E.g. when I think: ,, my higher self is the power in which my conscience lives ........


There is an exercise in which you let your problems, thoughts that often come up, feelings you experience and many other things that concern us live within you, while trying to observe yourself as a stranger. This exercise is practiced, I believe, to awaken one's higher nature within oneself.
When I practice this exercise and try to see from my perspective (the perspective in which I look out of my eyes and perceive my body), I hardly manage not to get emotional and get carried away. When I look at myself from the outside, i.e. a bird's eye view of my body, it's easier to stay neutral.
However, I thought that doing this for too long might be harmful as it could cause mine to lose its body identification point. Then this would be exactly what takes us to the extremes of the y axis, and we would be in forms of meditation practiced in the eastern regions of the world.
Surely that would lead to a state of ego death, or am I wrong?

[AshvinP]

I would like to share a passage from a book I started reading, Meditations on the Tarot, which highlights the central role of concentration as a first step in unveiling the spirit worlds embedded in our thinking. I felt the references made were interesting and helpful. The phrase "concentration without effort" may be misleading, so I would take it to mean without the sort of effort which is experienced with discursive thinking. That is a tense and rigidifying effort, rather than the enlivening effort of imaginative meditation.

***

The first Arcanum—the principle underlying all the other twenty-one Major Arcana of the Tarot—is that of the rapport of personal effort and of spiritual reality. It occupies the first place in the series because if one does not understand it (i.e. take hold of it in cognitive and actual practice), one would not know what to do with all the other Arcana. For it is the Magician who is called to reveal the practical method relating to all the Arcana. He is the “Arcanum of the Arcana”, in the sense that he reveals that which it is necessary to know and to will in order to enter the school of spiritual exercises whose totality comprises the game of Tarot, in order to be able to derive some benefit therefrom. In fact, the first and fundamental principle of esotericism (i.e. of the way of experience of the reality of the spirit) can be rendered by the formula: Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light! This counsel, or command, or even warning, however you wish to take it, is most serious; this is attested by its original source, namely the words of the Master Himself: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew xi, 30). Let us examine in succession the three parts of this formula, in order to penetrate the Arcanum of “active relaxation” or “effort without effort”.

Firstly—learn at first concentration without effort—what is this in a practical and theoretical sense? Concentration, as the faculty of fixing maximum attention on a minimum amount of space (Schiller said that he who wants to complete something of worth and of skill, “der sammle still und unerschlafft, im kleinsten Punkt die grösste Kraft”, i.e. that “quietly and unceasingly he directs the greatest force upon the smallest point”), is the practical key to all success in every domain. Modern pedagogy and psychotherapy, the schools of prayer and spiritual exercises—Franciscan, Carmelite, Dominican and Jesuit—occult schools of every type and, lastly, ancient Hindu yoga, all approaches are in agreement about this. Patanjali, in his classic work on yoga, formulates in his first sentence the practical and theoretical essence of yoga—the “first arcanum” or the key of yoga—as follows: Yoga citta vritti nirodha (Yoga is the suppression of the oscillations of the mental substance, Yoga Sutras 1.2) —or, in other terms, the art of concentration. For the “oscillations” (vritti) of the “mental substance” (citta) take place automatically. This automatism in the movements of thought and imagination is the opposite of concentration. Now, concentration is only possible in a condition of calm and silence, at the expense of the automatism of thought and imagination.
...
Concentration without effort is the transposition of the directing centre of the brain to the rhythmic system—from the domain of the mind and imagination to that of morality and the will. The great hat in the form of a lemniscate which the Magician wears, like his attitude of perfect ease, indicates this transposition. For the lemniscate (the horizontal eight; ∞) is not only the symbol of infinity, but also that of rhythm, of the respiration and circulation—it is the symbol of eternal rhythm or the eternity of rhythm. The Magician therefore represents the state of concentration without effort, i.e. the state of consciousness where the centre directing the will has “descended” (in reality it is elevated) from the brain to the rhythmic system, where the “oscillations of the mental substance” are reduced to silence and to rest, no longer hindering concentration. Concentration without effort—that is to say where there is nothing to suppress and where contemplation becomes as natural as breathing and the beating of the heart—is the state of consciousness (i.e. thought, imagination, feeling and will) of perfect calm, accompanied by the complete relaxation of the nerves and the muscles of the body. It is the profound silence of desires, of preoccupations, of the imagination, of the memory and of discursive thought. One may say that the entire being becomes like the surface of calm water, reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its indescribable harmony. And the waters are deep, they are so deep! And the silence grows, ever increasing…what silence! Its growth takes place through regular waves which pass, one after the other, through your being; one wave of silence followed by another wave of more profound silence, then again a wave of still more profound silence…Have you ever drunk silence? If in the affirmative, you know what concentration without effort is.

[Cleric K]

Thank you for the explanation.
Before meditating, would it be helpful if I try to create a feeling through thinking that connects me to my higher nature?

Of course. Actually, in my experience the best meditations happen as transformed prayer. We can start with this humbling surrender towards the Intelligence that is all around us and within us. This Intelligence is the Cosmic harmony, the musical flow of the Spirit. We're always submerged in this Harmony. Our physical and psychic organization is like a tuning fork that can be set in motion by waves. Alas, our tuning fork doesn't have perfect geometry (and we know that the frequency of a tuning fork depends on its geometry) thus it can't ring in musical resonance. In prayer it is like we want the Sunlight of Divine Intelligence to warm our being and make it softer, more pliable so that it can be shaped by the vibrations of the Spirit. Then our thinking, feeling and willing in the sensory world can be much more attuned to the flow of the World Symphony.

We can do that prayer with words and then remain silent. The words are like handles (they are more than that actually) that help us orient our whole soul disposition but then we can put the words aside and remain in silence, in the glow of our soul state thus prepared. This silencing is a natural way for reaching the concentration of the mind - much in the spirit of Ashvin's post above. In that state we feel as if our soul is surrendered in the hands of a master physician that we trust infinitely. We need this trust because we don't entrust only our body but also our whole inner world. The concentration consists in the supporting of this state where we're open for the spiritual world to impress in our intuitive 'substance'.

Very soon we'll feel as if within our peripheral vision there's movement of inner phenomena. This is the critical point where we have to resist laying our ordinary thinking on that phenomena. In doing this we immediately kill them, so to speak. They turn to stone. Conversely, the more we resist formatting the experience with our ordinary thinking habits, the more it grows, the more real it gets.

Btw, with risk of being accused once again by Lou for not respecting entheogens, it has to be said that it is precisely this critically important skill - of not touching the inner world with our crude Earthly thinking-patterns - that is severely hindered in the entheogenic state. The reason is simple: the movements of our inner world are forced upon us. We still continually kill them (even without knowing) with our ordinary consciousness but they nevertheless force their movements. I believe I have used this analogy before:



Our ordinary conscious habits act like the water the cools the lava and turns it into stone while it pushes from the inside. In our normal consciousness our cooling power is dominating and all our intellectual thoughts are felt as lifeless mineral.

In the entheogenic state there's always this opposition between our deadening activity and the mysterious lava forces that seem to work from the other side. This is erroneously considered to be the true experience of the spiritual world, which in reality forever remains behind the veil of the ossifying rock layers.

It is completely wrong to believe that entheogens are just another way to achieve what can be achieved in meditation (in the sense we employ in this thread). Through our concentration we withdraw the mineralizing forces and allow soul life to grow on its own. Our inner ideal, our intuitive focus on all that is good, luminous and beneficial, is what attracts the corresponding forces that begin to fill our soul. So this is by no means simply indiscriminate opening to whatever may flow. Gradually we begin to intuit the movements of the environment even without touching it with our intellect and thus ossify it into sensory-like visions. The intuitive gestures through which we resonate with the soul environment are of different order compared to that which is experienced in the continual solidifying of lava. These gentler spiritual movements in our deeper soul can never be developed when our ordinary consciousness is continually force-fed with phenomena. Not only that we have no stimulus for such development but even if we want to do it, we simply have no way to tackle it. It's like trying to think independently while we're constantly fed with TV images that suck in our attention and practically force us what to think. Only by developing the inner strength to withdraw our ordinary thinking habits through concentrating on a sublime ideal, we have the chance to discover the finer spiritual movements through which we can be conscious in the soul world without turning it into stone.

There is an exercise in which you let your problems, thoughts that often come up, feelings you experience and many other things that concern us live within you, while trying to observe yourself as a stranger. This exercise is practiced, I believe, to awaken one's higher nature within oneself.
When I practice this exercise and try to see from my perspective (the perspective in which I look out of my eyes and perceive my body), I hardly manage not to get emotional and get carried away. When I look at myself from the outside, i.e. a bird's eye view of my body, it's easier to stay neutral.
However, I thought that doing this for too long might be harmful as it could cause mine to lose its body identification point. Then this would be exactly what takes us to the extremes of the y axis, and we would be in forms of meditation practiced in the eastern regions of the world.
Surely that would lead to a state of ego death, or am I wrong?

Yes, you are right. There's a need for a very fine balance and it is by no means easy. We do need to go beyond ourselves. We surely don't need to get emotional about the panorama of our life but being completely unmoved by it is also not right. This would mean that we don't realize that we're continually forging our karma. If we contemplate our failings and this leaves us with the impression "this isn't real, this is just a dream from which I'll wake up eventually", then obviously there's inner denial and refusal to take responsibility for what we continually contribute to the world. So we should step outside our personality but what we thus become conscious of should become a healthy feedback that tells us how to work with our flow such that the riverbed can be augmented.

[AshvinP]

There is an exercise in which you let your problems, thoughts that often come up, feelings you experience and many other things that concern us live within you, while trying to observe yourself as a stranger. This exercise is practiced, I believe, to awaken one's higher nature within oneself.
When I practice this exercise and try to see from my perspective (the perspective in which I look out of my eyes and perceive my body), I hardly manage not to get emotional and get carried away. When I look at myself from the outside, i.e. a bird's eye view of my body, it's easier to stay neutral.
However, I thought that doing this for too long might be harmful as it could cause mine to lose its body identification point. Then this would be exactly what takes us to the extremes of the y axis, and we would be in forms of meditation practiced in the eastern regions of the world.
Surely that would lead to a state of ego death, or am I wrong?

Guney,

With respect to the above, it's also helpful to visit or revisit the following from 'Guidance in Esoteric Training'. It reflects the eightfold path first revealed by the Buddha and also embedded in the Gospels. (their deeper esoteric significance is stimulating the development of our seven lotus flowers or 'chakras', which are connected with spritual impulses of the planetary spheres). I actually forget about these quite often. Although we naturally begin to discern their necessity as we progress on the path, it also helps to keep it explicitly in our consciousness as much as possible throughout the days. Although he gives a specific one for each day, it seems we can work on most of them at any given time we are paying attention inwardly, especially if we are doing it more 'casually'. We will notice some of them seem much more difficult for us than others, and then we should especially focus on cultivating those.

***

The pupil must pay careful attention to certain activities in the life of soul which in the ordinary way are carried on carelessly and inattentively. There are eight such activities.

It is naturally best to undertake only one exercise at a time, throughout a week or a fortnight, for example, then the second, and so on, then beginning over again. Meanwhile it is best for the eighth exercise to be carried out every day. True self-knowledge is then gradually achieved and any progress made is perceived. Then later on - beginning with Saturday - one exercise lasting for about five minutes may perhaps be added daily to the eighth so that the relevant exercise will occasionally fall on the same day. Thus: Saturday - Thoughts; Sunday - Resolves; Monday - Talking; Tuesday - Actions; Wednesday - Behaviour, and so on.

SATURDAY
To pay attention to one's ideas.

To think only significant thoughts. To learn little by little to separate in one's thoughts the essential from the nonessential, the eternal from the transitory, truth from mere opinion.

In listening to the talk of one's fellow-men, to try and become quite still inwardly, foregoing all assent, and still more all unfavourable judgments (criticism, rejection), even in one's thoughts and feelings.

This may be called: `RIGHT OPINION'.

SUNDAY
To determine on even the most insignificant matter only after fully reasoned deliberation. All unthinking behaviour, all meaningless actions, should be kept far away from the soul. One should always have well- weighed reasons for everything. And one should definitely abstain from doing anything for which there is no significant reason.

Once one is convinced of the rightness of a decision, one must hold fast to it, with inner steadfastness.

This may be called: `RIGHT JUDGMENT' having been formed independently of sympathies and antipathies.

MONDAY
Talking. Only what has sense and meaning should come from the lips of one striving for higher development. All talking for the sake of talking - to kill time - is in this sense harmful.

The usual kind of conversation, a disjointed medley of remarks, should be avoided. This does not mean shutting oneself off from intercourse with one's fellows; it is precisely then that talk should gradually be led to significance. One adopts a thoughtful attitude to every speech and answer taking all aspects into account. Never talk without cause - be gladly silent. One tries not to talk too much or too little. First listen quietly; then reflect on what has been said.

This exercise may be called: `RIGHT WORD'.

TUESDAY
External actions. These should not be disturbing for our fellow-men. Where an occasion calls for action out of one's inner being, deliberate carefully how one can best meet the occasion - for the good of the whole, the lasting happiness of man, the eternal.

Where one does things of one's own accord, out of one's own initiative: consider most thoroughly beforehand the effect of one's actions.

This is called: `RIGHT DEED'.

WEDNESDAY
The ordering of life. To live in accordance with Nature and Spirit. Not to be swamped by the external trivialities of life. To avoid all that brings unrest and haste into life. To hurry over nothing, but also not to be indolent. To look on life as a means for working towards higher development and to behave accordingly.

One speaks in this connection of `RIGHT STANDPOINT'.

THURSDAY
Human Endeavour. One should take care to do nothing that lies beyond one's powers - but also to leave nothing undone which lies within them.

To look beyond the everyday, the momentary, and to set oneself aims and ideals connected with the highest duties of a human being. For instance, in the sense of the prescribed exercises, to try to develop oneself so that afterwards one may be able all the more to help and advise one's fellow- men - though perhaps not in the immediate future.

This can be summed up as: `TO LET ALL THE FOREGOING EXERCISES BECOME A HABIT'.

FRIDAY
The endeavour to learn as much as possible from life.

Nothing goes by us without giving us a chance to gain experiences that are useful for life. If one has done something wrongly or imperfectly, that becomes a motive for doing it rightly or more perfectly, later on.

If one sees others doing something, one observes them with the like end in view (yet not coldly or heartlessly). And one does nothing without looking back to past experiences which can be of assistance in one's decisions and achievements.

One can learn from everyone - even from children if one is attentive.

This exercise is called: `RIGHT MEMORY'. (Remembering what has been learnt from experiences).

SUMMARY
To turn one's gaze inwards from time to time, even if only for five minutes daily at the same time. In so doing one should sink down into oneself, carefully take counsel with oneself, test and form one's principles of life, run through in thought one's knowledge - or lack of it - weigh up one's duties, think over the contents and true purpose of life, feel genuinely pained by one's own errors and imperfections. In a word: labour to discover the essential, the enduring, and earnestly aim at goals in accord with it: for instance, virtues to be acquired. (Not to fall into the mistake of thinking that one has done something well, but to strive ever further towards the highest standards.)

This exercise is called: `RIGHT EXAMINATION'.

[Cleric K]

The phrase "concentration without effort" may be misleading, so I would take it to mean without the sort of effort which is experienced with discursive thinking. That is a tense and rigidifying effort, rather than the enlivening effort of imaginative meditation.

Indeed! "Effort without effort" sounds a little like the abstract smearing out of contradictions of which people are so fond today. Yet in this particular case we're dealing with something completely concrete. The example with tense and rigidifying effort really points towards the essence. It has been mentioned before but an illustration of all this can be borrowed from the phenomena of superfluidity and superconductivity. As it is known, with the right conditions it is possible for fluid or electric current to flow without friction/resistance. This is much more than an analogy because our intercourse with the sensory spectrum indeed can be likened to friction. In a certain sense the vast majority of our Earthly consciousness builds upon the patterns of such 'heat' resulting from friction.

So on one hand we have the frictious effort, where our spiritual activity continually 'rubs' against the flow of time. On the other, through concentration, we're able to differentiate our brute activity from the more subtle. As an analogy, in superconductivity there's no resistance but there's still electromotive force which drives the current. When we pass through the portal of concentration, we enter the silence but this silence is in no way nothingness. It is silence in the sense that there's no longer the friction of our ordinary spiritual activity but we nevertheless still exist as a spiritual force. Our new state is even more dynamic and richer than our ordinary soul life, yet it also has this character of superfluid flow. Fluidity doesn't mean the all differentiation ceases. Actually, the flows are very differentiated, yet they move against each other without physical friction.

I believe that this is one of the examples where our modern science in roundabout ways arrives at facts and ideas that if made the object of meditation become almost literal reality. Hardly anyone who has experienced this inner silence would deny that this is a perfectly fitting metaphor and in fact it is a great example for the secret connections between inner reality and the flattened projection on our sensory screen (which science investigates).

In our effortful concentration it is almost as if our inner activity turns into a Bose-Einstein condenstate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bose ... sation.ogv

Our point of concentration becomes the center of superconductivity from whence the coherence of the environment integrates and so to speak conquers our ordinary soul experience. As wrote earlier, this doesn't mean that spiritual reality emerges and bifurcates from the point of concentration. It's rather than through intense concentration we're able to create a tiny spot that has the character of frictionless attention. Then, the longer we sustain this effort and surrender the periphery to the Divine, our point of simultaneous attention grows and encompasses the dynamic environment which we realize is always there but normally doesn't register in our crude mental patterns.

So these occult secrets can be expressed in modern language by saying that we use one kind of effort in our concentration - that of the spiritual 'electromotive' force - yet do away with the effort that generates heat through friction. The higher effort feels more 'effortless' because in a sense it doesn't consume 'energy', it can never be exhausted. It is no subject to the heat death of the universe. It can flow eternally and through higher effort explore different configurations.

[AshvinP]

So these occult secrets can be expressed in modern language by saying that we use one kind of effort in our concentration - that of the spiritual 'electromotive' force - yet do away with the effort that generates heat through friction. The higher effort feels more 'effortless' because in a sense it doesn't consume 'energy', it can never be exhausted. It is no subject to the heat death of the universe. It can flow eternally and through higher effort explore different configurations.

Thank you for this helpful analogy, Cleric. I will also add a few more excerpts from that part of the book for more context, which aligns very well with what you have spoken of. Also I am sharing a part on the nature of discerning/using analogy

***

This “zone of silence” being once established, you can draw from it both for rest and for work. Then you will have not only concentration without effort, but also activity without effort. It is precisely this that comes to expression in the second part of our formula; transform work into play The changing of work, which is duty, into play, is effected as a consequence of the presence of the “zone of perpetual silence”, where one draws from a sort of secret and intimate respiration, whose sweetness and freshness accomplishes the anointing of work and transforms it into play. For the “zone of silence” does not only signify that the soul is, fundamentally, at rest, but also, and rather, that there is contact with the heavenly or spiritual world, which works together with the soul. He who finds silence in the solitude of concentration without effort, is never alone. He never bears alone the weights that he has to carry; the forces of heaven, the forces from on high, are there taking part from now on.

In this way the truth stated by the third part of the formula: make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light, itself becomes experience. For silence is the sign of real contact with the spiritual world and this contact, in turn, always engenders the influx of forces. This is the foundation of all mysticism, all gnosis, all magic and all practical esotericism in general.

...

The open recognition of the relationship of all things and beings has engendered an exactly corresponding method of knowledge. It is the method generally known under the title THE METHOD OF ANALOGY; its role and its import in so-called “occult” science has been illumined in an admirable way by Papus in his Traité élémentaire de science occulte (Paris, 1888 pp. 28ff). Analogy is not a tenet or postulate—the essential unity of the world is this—but is the first and principal method (the aleph of the alphabet of methods) whose use facilitates the advance of knowledge. It is the first conclusion drawn from the tenet of universal unity. Since at the root of the diversity of phenomena their unity is found, in such a way that they are at one and the same time different and one, they are neither identical nor heterogeneous but are analagous in so far as they manifest their essential kinship. The traditional formula setting forth the method of analogy is well known. It is the second verse of the Emerald Table (Tabula Smaragdina) of Hermes Trismegistus:

Quod superius est sicut quod inferius, et quod inferius est sicut quod est superius, ad perpetranda miracula ret unius. That which is above is like to that which is below and that which is below is like to that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of (the) one thing. (Tabula Smaragdina, 2; trsl. R. Steele and D. W. Singer, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine xxi, 1928, p. 42;

This is the classic formula of analogy for all that exists in space, above and below; the formula of analogy applied in time would be:

Quod fuit est sicut quod erit, et quod erit est sicut quod fuit, ad perpetranda miracula aeternitatis. That which was is as that which will be, and that which will be is as that which was, to accomplish the miracles of eternity.

At this point, a feeling of unease could arise in the conscientious reader: “There are many arguments and authorities cited in support of the method of analogy, but what is there here as an argument against this method, as regarding its weaknesses and dangers?.” Well, it must be acknowledged quite plainly and frankly that the method of analogy presents many negative sides and many dangers, errors and serious illusions. This is because it is entirely founded on experience; and all superficial, incomplete or false experience is bound to give rise to superficial, incomplete and false conclusions, by analogy, in a direction parallel with the experience from which they are the outcome.

It must be concluded, therefore, that the method of analogy on the one hand is in no way infallible but on the other hand it is qualified to lead to the discovery of essential truths. Its effectiveness and value depend on the fullness and exactitude of the experience upon which it is based.

Let us return now to the Arcanum “The Magician”. As concentration without effort finds expression in the whole picture of the Card—as well as in all its details—and thus constitutes the practical Arcanum here, one also finds expressed in it the method of analogy, which constitutes the theoretical Arcanum. For, seen from the level of the intellect, the practice of the method of analogy corresponds completely to the practice of concentration without effort. Also, it appears there not as “work” but rather as “play”. The practice of analogy on the intellectual plane of consciousness does not, in fact, demand any effort; either one perceives (“sees”) analogous correspondences or one does not perceive or “see” them. Just as the magician or juggler has had to train and work for a long time before attaining the ability of concentration without effort, similarly he who makes use of the method of analogy on the intellectual plane must have worked much—i.e. to have acquired long experience and to have accumulated the teachings which it requires—before attaining the faculty of immediate perception of analogous correspondences, before becoming a “magician” or “juggler” who makes use of the analogy of beings and of things without effort as in a game. This faculty constitutes an essential part of the realisation of the task that the Master charged his disciples with: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark x, 15).

The little child does not “work”—he plays. But how serious he is, i.e. concentrated, when he plays! His attention is still complete and undivided, whereas with he who approaches the kingdom of God it becomes again entire and undivided. And this is the Arcanum of intellectual geniality: the vision of the unity of beings and things through the immediate perception of their correspondences—correspondences—through consciousness concentrated without effort. The Master did not want us to become puerile; what he wanted is that we attain the geniality of intelligence and heart which is analogous—not identical—to the attitude of the child, who carries only easy burdens and renders all his yokes light.

The Arcanum of “The Magician” is twofold. It has two aspects: he invites us on the path which leads to geniality; and he warns us of the danger of the path which leads to charlatanism. I must add that often—too often, alas!—the teachers of occultism follow the two paths at the same time and that which they teach contains elements of genius mixed with elements of charlatanism. May the first Arcanum of the Tarot be always present before us as a kind of “guardian of the threshold”; may he invite us to cross the threshold of work and effort in order to enter into activity without effort, and knowledge without effort, but may he at the same time warn us that the more we go beyond the threshold, the more work, effort and experience on this side of the threshold will be indispensable for the attainment of real truth. May the Magician say to us, and may he repeat it each day:

"To perceive and to know, to try and to be able to, are all different things. There are mirages above, as there are mirages below; you only know that which is verified by the agreement of all forms of experience in its totality—experience of the senses, moral experience, psychic experience, the collective experience of other seekers for the truth, and finally the experience of those whose knowing merits the title of wisdom and whose striving has been crowned by the title of saint. Academia and the Church stipulate methodical and moral conditions for one who desires to progress. Carry them out strictly, before and after each flight into the region beyond the domain of work and effort. If you do this, you will be a sage and a mage. If you do not do this—you will be only a charlatan!"

Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (p. 12). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[Federica]

Thanks for sharing yet another piece of esoteric wisdom, Ashvin. I don't know that silence, so just couple of practical notes from me:

1. It appears that Meditations on the Tarot is available at archive.org. Also, the linked version seems to be more extensive and slightly different from the Kindle. There is more on analogy for instance.

2. Not to be niggling, but the original Latin for "As above so below" didn't sound right, and indeed there is a typo. As I know some important formulas have a value in themselves, for how they sound, I thought I would report the right one: "Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius (...) ad perpetranda miracula rei unius."

[AshvinP]

Thanks to everyone for the helpful replies. The feedback is helping me see a bigger picture than before.
It is also nice to see that the post is not only benefitting me, it is benefitting everyone else who is active on this forum.

This is unrelated, but does anyone here have experience with Rudolf Steiner's "Eurythmy"? I see instructional videos, DVDs, books, etc for it online, but I have no idea if said instructional resources are any good. Interesting fact about me is that I was taught some Eurythmy in early childhood from a Waldorf school. I had motor skill problems, and I was taught Eurythmy to help me with that (which it did). But I've forgotten it since then because it was so long ago, and my involvement with the Steiner school was only for a couple of a years. I am interested in it trying it again as an adult, and if anyone else here has experience or benefitted from it.

Luke,

I have no practical experience with Eurythmy and am also interested in developing that at some point. I only hear great things, of course.

It's interesting about your Waldorf experience. Do you mind sharing more about that? Were you a student there or just come into contact with it somehow?

[LukeJTM]

Luke,

I have no practical experience with Eurythmy and am also interested in developing that at some point. I only hear great things, of course.

It's interesting about your Waldorf experience. Do you mind sharing more about that? Were you a student there or just come into contact with it somehow?

I was only enrolled in the Waldorf nursery-- not sure what that is called in the USA, maybe the equivalent there is pre-school or kindergarten? Early years education would be a more universal term I suppose. I did not have further experience beyond that, unfortunately.
As far as I recall right now, the Waldorf schools have a gentler or more relaxed atmosphere than mainstream schools. I know that in the nursery we did practical or hands on activities, such as engaging with texture and the senses. Screens (such as TV) was not allowed, unless it served an educational purpose (which still had an allocated time slot). We were served healthy food or drinks for lunch; no fizzy drinks (soda) or junk food were served (which is a good thing).
I also know that Waldorf schools are very accomodating to children with special needs as well. I did have mild special needs in childhood which is why I was in the school for a few years. But some of the kids who go into these schools can have demanding special needs, and mainstream schools are not suited for them at all, so their parents put them into the Waldorf schools instead.