,,So in this analogy, our liberated thinking gestures correspond to the sound. We understand that soul space is real, that it is animated by the thinking gestures of the most varied Intelligences, yet besides the most immediate effects, we don’t intuit any deeper intents. For example, in Imagination we can unite with the thinking gestures that work in our blood flow. This is not the same as simply having a bodily sensation of blood moving, in the sense that we can feel warm water sipping down our throat when drinking it but instead we find that there’s something akin to will impulses that live in the rhythms of our circulation. In Imagination we can find these blood forces as facts of experience but only in Inspiration we can understand their wider significance, how through them the whole evolutionary journey of man is intended."Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2023 8:37 pmLuke, I would like to attempt to give a picture of the stages of consciousness, using the pond image given in Zajonc's meditation that Ashin quoted here. I’m not sure if Zajonc has the stages of consciousness in mind in that meditation but I surely find the image suitable. In that sense, please don’t try to map directly what I say to what Zajonc describes.LukeJTM wrote: ↑Wed Oct 04, 2023 9:02 am I believe the Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition stages (as defined by Rudolf Steiner) is describing that process. If I understand so far, the Imagination stage is where one can start seeing spiritual imagery (which might be symbolic images for example?), or maybe seeing the forms that underlie the physical objects (i.e. the etheric world). The Inspiration and Intuition, I think, is where one can start seeing much subtler worlds than the etheric, and can also perceive higher beings and communicate with them directly or consciously, and experience their perspective as your own. Could you maybe comment on how accurate this short summary is, and help me correct errors or misunderstandings?
Preconditions – soul space – the pond
The first step would be to understand what the pond symbolizes. It is really the space of our inner experience. There’s no need to fantasize this space in some way. What we need is to simply feel the actual contents of our soul space, our perceptions, thought images, feelings and so on. This space is really the only space we ever know. Even when we imagine large things, like a planet or the whole Cosmos, it is still based on the sense of space we’re familiar with through our bodily sensations. In a certain sense, we can only know a large space when we imagine our imaginary hands spreading out so far that we can encompass it. In other words, all space that we know is inner space. This inner space and all its contents can be symbolized with the pond (and of course we shouldn't try to imagine that this inner space is somehow placed within the 'real' outer physical space).
Ordinary consciousness – lost in the patterns of the pond
At the first stage, this pond is criss-crossed with sensations in the most complicated ways. These patterns form our familiar bodily sensations. Normally our thinking is so sucked into these sensations that we feel that we live in their movements, our whole soul life is subordinate to their unfoldments. This is what we call the world of Maya.
Here we should make an important distinction. Maya doesn’t mean that the World is simply a thin dream image before our soul’s gaze, which has no substantiality. The World is real. It’s just that our familiar sensory experience of it is a secondary pattern. By secondary I mean something analogous to the way how the pixels of a screen are primary while the image is a new level of interpretation.
Imagination – consciousness of the pond
With all this in mind it should be easy to understand the first of the higher forms of consciousness – Imaginative. While in our ordinary consciousness we live entirely in the patterns in soul space and their secondary interpretation, when through concentration we manage to extricate our spiritual activity from the suction of the patterns, the pond metaphor becomes a reality. Now we really feel our inner space as an infinite pond, filled with the most complicated phenomena, patterns, ripples, waves. We understand directly how so far we have been mesmerized by the patterns. Of course, when speaking of patterns and ripples this shouldn’t be taken in the mechanical sense. These movements are not something that we simply see but something that our whole soul state metamorphoses through. It’s like the difference between only seeing a gymnastic exercise and actually performing.
This is the first important distinction. We see into soul space not simply by having an additional layer of visual sensations but by moving together with the driving forces behind phenomena. If it is only the former, the experience would never lead us to any certainty. It could be just a sensory hallucination. But when our thinking activity is liberated from the slots of the brain and begins to flow in novel ways, this can never be doubted – simply because it cannot be imagined through our old thinking patterns. We can be mistaken when we try to understand these movements and their relations but not about the fact that our spirit has lifted itself from the physical slots and wills its transformation in soul space.
This leads us also to another distinction. When we flow together with the transformations in soul space it becomes clear that they result from spiritual activity similar to our own. Just like our ordinary thinking activity stirs sounds, words, images in soul space, so on a greater scale our soul space is part of the World soul space and the most varied activities stir its forms. At this stage we understand very little of the nature of the various Intelligences, the spiritual beings who will the activities but it is clear that the contents of the soul space are impressions of their deeds. What we experience in soul space as contents and movements is not the beings themselves but only their effects, just like we don’t see our ego as a finished perception in front of us but we perceive its effects, for example, as the sound perception of our thinking voice.
Inspiration – resonating with the intents of the beings
While in Imagination we’re lifted from suction of the pond patterns and begin to cognize the impressions of the activities of the Cosmic Intelligences (symbolized by the stars, mountains, etc. reflected in the pond) we still don’t have particularly clear idea of what and why they act in such ways. This is what we approach in Inspirative consciousness. Probably the best analogy for this is reading or the difference between hearing sounds and understanding them as words.
Of course, these are only sensory analogies. To understand this, in our ordinary cognition we have first to make very clear the distinction between the perceptual element of thoughts (for example the sounds of our thinking voice) and the inner activity that we perform in order to impress these sounds. In other places we have called these ‘thinking gestures’. Just like we can distinguish between the perceptions of our hand and the willing efforts to move it, so we should try to do the same for our thinking. This is of course much more challenging because we need special effort to observe our thinking process. In any case, it can be said that in the Imaginative state we live not only in the thinking gestures that we consider our own but we allow our thinking gestures to move together with the gestures in the environment. These of course, just like our ordinary thoughts, have their perceptual counterpart – encompassing images, weaved of color, sound and so on. Yet, these perceptual elements are not the essential thing. It is only because our transformed thinking gestures merge with those which fill the whole of Cosmic soul space, that we understand the perceptual counterpart as images of higher order reality.
So in this analogy, our liberated thinking gestures correspond to the sound. We understand that soul space is real, that it is animated by the thinking gestures of the most varied Intelligences, yet besides the most immediate effects, we don’t intuit any deeper intents. For example, in Imagination we can unite with the thinking gestures that work in our blood flow. This is not the same as simply having a bodily sensation of blood moving, in the sense that we can feel warm water sipping down our throat when drinking it but instead we find that there’s something akin to will impulses that live in the rhythms of our circulation. In Imagination we can find these blood forces as facts of experience but only in Inspiration we can understand their wider significance, how through them the whole evolutionary journey of man is intended.
Intuition – resonating with the perspectives of the beings
Finally, in Intuition the intents that we come to know in Inspiration are experienced in an even deeper way, in the context of the individual beings.
Probably it would be easier with another analogy. Let’s suppose we see a man walking. On the lowest level we see transformations of patterns of perceptions. We can study them as a scientist would. We can analyze them, quantify them and even discover some mathematical ‘laws of nature’ that seem to match what we see. At the second stage we recognize that this walking man is perceived as such only because certain will impulses work in him. Note that the only reason we can understand this is because we know from our own experience what it is to will the movements of our feet. Similarly, to know the deeds of the Cosmos in soul space, our thinking-will must be able to transform into the corresponding forms. At the third stage we can understand something of the intents of the movement. For example, we may find out that the person is going to see a friend. Now we have not only the will but also the idea that guides it through time. Finally, the fourth stage would be analogous to understanding the individual perspective of the person. In the previous stage we understand his movement according to our perspective. We understand what it means to us. But now we understand what it means to the I-experience of the person, how that movement fits in the unique story of his life.
In a similar way. Intuitive cognition leads to concentric experiences of the spiritual beings. We now grasp something of the transformations of soul space in the context of evolution of these perspectives.
Is the blood I can see in the sensory world, something like a crystallization of the will impulse, that comes from spiritual beings?
The manifested impuls so to say?