Spiritual science of Martinus

[AshvinP]

Yes, that thinking is "all else" in your ontology reflects your disagreement with Martinus' doubled ontological prime X1-X2. I am not sure whether you should think otherwise and why, but I can refer to the "dispersion of the Godhead'' mentioned above as one possible reason. Regarding your goal of concentration - shutting up known relations, to reveal relations we don't already know: I am not sure, I wonder if Ashvin agrees with this way to put it. I would say, no. It's not that more relations are brought into the cone of awareness through concentration. It's not an expansion of the realm of the One Thought. It's beyond thought. It's no-thought, no thought relations. It requires abandoning the relational mode altogether...

Federica,

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here at the end about 'abandoning the relational mode altogether'.

I do agree with Scott that, through concentration, we reveal subconscious and supra-conscious relations which are the inner side of the outer relations we already know via our concepts. So, in one sense, we already know them dimly via concepts, but for all intents and purposes, the inner perspective of these relations is so vastly unfamiliar, unsuspected, etc. from anything we know outwardly, that they are practically unknown. If we were to experience the inner perspective of all that we perceive-conceive outwardly, like the Sun, Moon, and planets for ex., then we are in the realm of Divine spiritual activity of the highest order. The same is true for the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. And even our soul-life of pleasure-pain, sympathies-antipathies, instincts, habits, character, temperament etc. embeds practically unknown relations of spiritual activity.

I don't think there is any issue saying a vivification-expansion of a single thought-image into the conscious experience of inflowing imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions is expanding the 'realm of the One Thought'. Of course there are a million other different ways we could characterize it as well. But we should emphasize that it is all of Thought-nature, cognitive currents which animate our normal states of being. We only need to remember it is not of the same nature as discursive thinking, which serializes the relations into dim frames of meaning that we try to clumsily patch together. Perhaps that's what you meant above. In my mind, approaches like polar philosophy are exactly what attempt to reveal the limitations of discursive reasoning, from within itself, so we can begin unwinding it from our habits and preparing for new ways of thinking to inflow our consciousness.

[Güney27]

Since several people already share that they find Martinuses spiritual science to be more accessible than the anthroposophical, I would like to point out a fundamental reason for this. Please understand right from the start that this is not some right vs. wrong confrontation. Things are very transparent as soon as we understand what we’re speaking of.

It all boils down to one of the most important questions that contemporary man has to ask himself:

How do I know?

Really, how Martinus knows? He was self-initiated, he experienced oneness and from then on answers began to flow. This is more or less how people envision clairvoyance. One gains access to additional perceptions and sees things there. Or doesn’t see anything but hears the answers ready served, as channelers do.

Habitually, this is also how things are envisioned for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is assumed that the methods of initiation that Steiner disclosed are simply alternative means for achieving what can be also achieved by drinking ayahuasca, having a mystical experience, doing holotropic breathwork, sensory deprivation, OBE, NDE, etc. It is assumed that all that is needed is to achieve some form of non-ordinary state of consciousness and hopefully extract some concepts from the experience.

We can never comprehend the evolutionary place of spiritual science if we don’t feel as an urgent necessity that man needs a way of knowing reality and not simply patching up a metaphysical world conception.

The difference between having a metaphysical conception and approaching the actual states of being

Let’s take something like reincarnation. It makes sense, we can logically reason through it, it feels intuitively right but what would be the kind of experience which presents this as an immediate fact? Believing that we have been Napoleon in our previous incarnation can’t be taken seriously. The only way would be to seek the actual experience of the forms of consciousness in which man exists in the period between death and new birth. This is the key point. A spiritual science that can truly penetrate into reality has no other choice but draws upon the states of consciousness which are like those we go through between death and rebirth.

Even by merely stating this, a large portion of the audience already leaves the hall. It is really nothing but our materialistic heritage which has implanted the deep prejudice that it is fundamentally impossible to know anything about the states of existence through which we go after death (if there’s at all such a thing).

We really need to distinguish between having a metaphysical conception on our side of the veil and seeking the actual experience of reality across the veil. Let’s take the example of spiritual beings. Martinus speaks of them as forming a hierarchical chain. Eugene also speaks of nondual beings with which we live in the nondual worlds. But let’s shake off for a second all the accumulated conceptions and ask ourselves what would be the experience of interacting with these beings in the higher worlds? In our sensory life the only kinds of beings that we know are those that impress themselves into our senses. In a spiritual sense we know only ourselves. But what happens after death when we no longer have any sensory organs? What does it mean in that state to interact with a being? What does it mean to exist in that state? What do we experience?

If we don’t habitually brush off these questions, we’ll quickly realize how great of a void in knowledge we have. Of course, people today are quick to fantasize that after death we’ll feel like an orb of light and then other beings will be found as other orbs floating around. This however is nothing but a fantasy extrapolated from the experiences in the sensory spectrum. It is imagined that we still exist and feel much like in our Earthly ego state. We have our orb of consciousness, we move about, we look outside and perceive other orbs of consciousness, we interact with them, play with them, create with them and so on.

If one feels completely satisfied with such a conception then – and this is what the experiences on the forum show – there’s not much point to try to explain anything more..

The vital need for living knowledge

Life experiences should lead us to a point where we feel that such conceptions are nothing but Maya upon Maya. This should bring about a state of inner desperation where we like Solomon say “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” If we have never been pained by such an experience we simply have no chance to understand the deepest spiritual need that any true spiritual science is supposed to fulfill. If we’re perfectly happy with vain patched up decoration in our soul interior, then it is like spiritual science offers us a kind of food for which we don’t even comprehend that a corresponding hunger may exist.

So this is a kind of point of departure. When we hear something like angel, archangel, archai, we should observe what we’re doing with our thinking when we conceive of these beings. Interaction with a human being is something completely experiential. We can describe in the greatest details how they feel to the touch, to the sight, to the taste, how our thoughts and feelings are stirred when we interact with them. But what does it mean to interact with an angel? Obviously we can’t touch and see it. Maybe we can see a dreamlike image of a winged creature but is this the angel or is it the impression that our soul constructs for something which is not sense perceptible at all?

We can only understand the evolutionary place of athroposophically oriented spiritual science if we have reached the point to feel the vital need to understand such things. It is anthropo- (related to the human being) because this knowledge grows together with self-knowledge. By understanding what we are, we also understand the world and vice versa.

Spiritual science is not a concrete teaching but the living reality that can meet our vital need

Please try to decouple this from the persona of Steiner. The need to have real experience and understanding of our states of existence beyond the threshold of death is something that a soul can feel vital need of even if it has never heard about Steiner. If we don’t understand what spiritual science brings into the world we’ll inevitably see it only as another cosmology. Then we have Martinuses cosmology, Steiner’s cosmology, Seth’s cosmology and so on. But in the case of spiritual science the primary aspect is the scientific method, the path of inner transformation of the soul. It starts with PoF and then goes on towards the experiences across the threshold. Then the cosmology is the result of these experiences.

We have to distinguish what our soul needs for its development from what the intellect desires for its own satisfaction

This has to be borne in mind. When we say that we find X’s cosmology more accessible it should be clear that it is more accessible to our intellect, it forms a more convenient picture that we can hold and contemplate in our mind. The reason spiritual science feels to be less accessible is because it is not so comfortable for the intellect and this was never the goal! We only have to remind what was said before: imagine a state where we lose all our senses, and the support of the brain. There’s no way on Earth this could be comfortable and accessible for the intellect! In fact, the intellect is no more in that state. Yet it is the only way we can gain true knowledge of reality.

We have to be perfectly clear for the difference between thinking metaphysically and having actual experiences in the higher worlds. The former is a great lure because we soon get the impression that just because we think about the foundational secrets of the Cosmos we are already there. This is especially true when we think about something like the Trinity. There's difference from the Earth to Heaven between thinking of X1,2,3 and the experiences in the spiritual world for which the concepts are only the dimmest pointers.

I hope this can be understood. Otherwise it’s like saying: “Spiritual science is overly complicated. I find the description of an angel as a luminous winged creature to be much more accessible. Steiner simply lacks the pedagogical skills and he overintellectualizes things. He speaks about an angel in the most complicated and confusing ways instead of simply drawing a picture of a winged being.” Alas, with such an attitude we ensure that we can never pierce the veil of Maya. What feels convenient and accessible is such only because it nicely fits our sensory habits. And this wouldn’t be so bad if these habits were not arbitrarily extrapolated beyond the threshold. In the Imaginative state it is still possible to experience an impression of an angelic being in the form of a winged creature but with the great difference that (if properly developed) we in no way mistake that image for the reality of the being. Instead, we’re fully conscious that this is an impression within our own etheric body of the supersensible interaction with a spiritual being.

Higher consciousness can only be developed on Earth

When things like these are taken into account it becomes transparently obvious that we can never pierce the veil of Maya by clinging to our comfortable sensory and intellectual habits. Neither does it helps to say “Well, there’s no need to strain. After death when the veil falls I’ll behold the spiritual beings in their true reality. On Earth I’m completely satisfied to have only an approximate dream picture.” Alas, as we have spoken so many times, this position rests on a specific over self-confidence. We believe that we already have the needed organization which makes it possible to be conscious of the spiritual beings after death. This however is by no means the case. It is like someone who can do calculations only by using pen and paper. He says “I don’t need to develop the forces which allow me to do calculations in my mind. I’ll do that after I lose the paper.” But just as little we’ll be magically able to do calculations in our mind if we suddenly lose the paper, so we find ourselves severely lacking in the spiritual world if we have never tried to conceive of an angel as anything more than a picture of a winged creature. Such pictures are nowhere to be found not long after death. Then what remains is utter confusion because we simply can’t recognize the reality of the angel. We can perceive that reality only if on Earth we have understood how the angel manifests in us.

Spiritual science can only be understood if we seek the states of consciousness from whence the descriptions proceed

This is what I wanted to point out. Spiritual science is difficult because we have to build intuition of the states of being that we exist in after death. This has to be borne in mind at all times when we read an anthroposophical work. The conceptions, if taken in isolation as a picture, are only secondary. When we read we have to always feel the vital question “What is the state of existence from whence these things can be perceived as facts?” A question that receives its answer not in abstract words but as an actual inner movement, as if we try to co-experience the facts together with the clairvoyant. And this is what distinguishes spiritual science because everything communicated is inseparable from the path that reaches these states.

It's not about right vs. wrong but about whether we feel the vital need

Now all this will probably once again provoke outrage and accusations of superiority. But before that I would invite anyone to ask themselves: “Do I really want to approach the experiences between death and rebirth in the most real way?” Please don’t answer hastily. We should be clear that many people are curious to hear something about the afterlife but in no way would try to seek the first-person experiences of these states (except in the most naive way by fantasizing blissfully floating orbs in Heaven). And this is somewhat understandable as it requires to voluntarily approach the experience of death and go through it while still on Earth.

So if we are to ever reach agreement on these topics we have to be clear what we’re comparing. It doesn’t take much to see that Martinus presents a cosmology, a testament. But we won’t find there the science of initiation. We won’t find the knowledge of how to be lifted from the senses and brain, then even from the etheric body and experience what it means to exist in a spiritual world where all reality consists of spiritual beings. If we snap back to imagine these beings as floating winged creatures and we don’t even sense that this is only a higher form of Maya, then we don’t yet understand what problem spiritual science gives the methods of solving. It will always feel that things are only unnecessarily complicated and could be depicted in a much more accessible way. We can complain about complicatedness only if we have never tried to approach the state we would find ourselves in once we detach from the support of the physical and etheric bodies. If we reflect on this even for a while we’ll be convinced how utterly different that state should be. Eugene would say that it is completely orthogonal. And in a sense this is true but it is not absolutely orthogonal. We simply need quite different skills if we are to move in and out of that state and be able to express in concepts and images the unique conditions there.

This is not said as a criticism of Martinus cosmology. There is a place for such pedagogy too. But if we’re speaking of spiritual science we need to understand that we’re dealing with different problems. If we don’t feel the deep need to know in the most real first-person way something of the kind of existence we lead between death and rebirth, this whole most important aspect of spiritual science will be simply missed and what remains would be an overly complicated cosmology which will be blamed on poor pedagogical skills.

HI Cleric,

I find the symbols he uses helpful.
Martinus uses these symbols like a map, which make the spiritual laws tangible.
It is true that it is understood by the intellect, this is also the case with Steiner.
I'm re-reading his book theosophy, and I'm at the part where steiner talks about the organization of the bodies. In order to understand Steiner's explanation, I also visualize how the sentient soul is interwoven with the intellectual soul. I am aware that I do not have a true perception of this reality, but it is natural in my current state of consciousness to comprehend things like this.
I think every teaching can also be done intellectually or as a living experience.
Contrary to Steiner, however, Martinus seems to believe that one should not meditate in order to enter the spiritual world, as this could be dangerous.
He says that one will come into the spirit world when one is full of love, then one will be initiated quite naturally. To avoid risks, he recommends practicing the Lord's Prayer as meditation.
This should help us on the way to development.
I don't know if he specifies other exercises.
Here I see a contrast to steiner.
He himself was a spiritual researcher, and I think that when you study his work, you also have to look for the living reality that is the basis for the symbols.
The main reason I can understand him more easily than steiner is because of his symbols. Isn't the true purpose of art to express spiritual realities?
In that sense he is a full artist.
What would happen if we focused on one thought long enough and then entered imaginative states when we harbored a great deal of hate and selfishness, as many people do?

[Güney27]

Since several people already share that they find Martinuses spiritual science to be more accessible than the anthroposophical, I would like to point out a fundamental reason for this. Please understand right from the start that this is not some right vs. wrong confrontation. Things are very transparent as soon as we understand what we’re speaking of.

It all boils down to one of the most important questions that contemporary man has to ask himself:

How do I know?

Really, how Martinus knows? He was self-initiated, he experienced oneness and from then on answers began to flow. This is more or less how people envision clairvoyance. One gains access to additional perceptions and sees things there. Or doesn’t see anything but hears the answers ready served, as channelers do.

Habitually, this is also how things are envisioned for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is assumed that the methods of initiation that Steiner disclosed are simply alternative means for achieving what can be also achieved by drinking ayahuasca, having a mystical experience, doing holotropic breathwork, sensory deprivation, OBE, NDE, etc. It is assumed that all that is needed is to achieve some form of non-ordinary state of consciousness and hopefully extract some concepts from the experience.

We can never comprehend the evolutionary place of spiritual science if we don’t feel as an urgent necessity that man needs a way of knowing reality and not simply patching up a metaphysical world conception.

The difference between having a metaphysical conception and approaching the actual states of being

Let’s take something like reincarnation. It makes sense, we can logically reason through it, it feels intuitively right but what would be the kind of experience which presents this as an immediate fact? Believing that we have been Napoleon in our previous incarnation can’t be taken seriously. The only way would be to seek the actual experience of the forms of consciousness in which man exists in the period between death and new birth. This is the key point. A spiritual science that can truly penetrate into reality has no other choice but draws upon the states of consciousness which are like those we go through between death and rebirth.

Even by merely stating this, a large portion of the audience already leaves the hall. It is really nothing but our materialistic heritage which has implanted the deep prejudice that it is fundamentally impossible to know anything about the states of existence through which we go after death (if there’s at all such a thing).

We really need to distinguish between having a metaphysical conception on our side of the veil and seeking the actual experience of reality across the veil. Let’s take the example of spiritual beings. Martinus speaks of them as forming a hierarchical chain. Eugene also speaks of nondual beings with which we live in the nondual worlds. But let’s shake off for a second all the accumulated conceptions and ask ourselves what would be the experience of interacting with these beings in the higher worlds? In our sensory life the only kinds of beings that we know are those that impress themselves into our senses. In a spiritual sense we know only ourselves. But what happens after death when we no longer have any sensory organs? What does it mean in that state to interact with a being? What does it mean to exist in that state? What do we experience?

If we don’t habitually brush off these questions, we’ll quickly realize how great of a void in knowledge we have. Of course, people today are quick to fantasize that after death we’ll feel like an orb of light and then other beings will be found as other orbs floating around. This however is nothing but a fantasy extrapolated from the experiences in the sensory spectrum. It is imagined that we still exist and feel much like in our Earthly ego state. We have our orb of consciousness, we move about, we look outside and perceive other orbs of consciousness, we interact with them, play with them, create with them and so on.

If one feels completely satisfied with such a conception then – and this is what the experiences on the forum show – there’s not much point to try to explain anything more..

The vital need for living knowledge

Life experiences should lead us to a point where we feel that such conceptions are nothing but Maya upon Maya. This should bring about a state of inner desperation where we like Solomon say “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” If we have never been pained by such an experience we simply have no chance to understand the deepest spiritual need that any true spiritual science is supposed to fulfill. If we’re perfectly happy with vain patched up decoration in our soul interior, then it is like spiritual science offers us a kind of food for which we don’t even comprehend that a corresponding hunger may exist.

So this is a kind of point of departure. When we hear something like angel, archangel, archai, we should observe what we’re doing with our thinking when we conceive of these beings. Interaction with a human being is something completely experiential. We can describe in the greatest details how they feel to the touch, to the sight, to the taste, how our thoughts and feelings are stirred when we interact with them. But what does it mean to interact with an angel? Obviously we can’t touch and see it. Maybe we can see a dreamlike image of a winged creature but is this the angel or is it the impression that our soul constructs for something which is not sense perceptible at all?

We can only understand the evolutionary place of athroposophically oriented spiritual science if we have reached the point to feel the vital need to understand such things. It is anthropo- (related to the human being) because this knowledge grows together with self-knowledge. By understanding what we are, we also understand the world and vice versa.

Spiritual science is not a concrete teaching but the living reality that can meet our vital need

Please try to decouple this from the persona of Steiner. The need to have real experience and understanding of our states of existence beyond the threshold of death is something that a soul can feel vital need of even if it has never heard about Steiner. If we don’t understand what spiritual science brings into the world we’ll inevitably see it only as another cosmology. Then we have Martinuses cosmology, Steiner’s cosmology, Seth’s cosmology and so on. But in the case of spiritual science the primary aspect is the scientific method, the path of inner transformation of the soul. It starts with PoF and then goes on towards the experiences across the threshold. Then the cosmology is the result of these experiences.

We have to distinguish what our soul needs for its development from what the intellect desires for its own satisfaction

This has to be borne in mind. When we say that we find X’s cosmology more accessible it should be clear that it is more accessible to our intellect, it forms a more convenient picture that we can hold and contemplate in our mind. The reason spiritual science feels to be less accessible is because it is not so comfortable for the intellect and this was never the goal! We only have to remind what was said before: imagine a state where we lose all our senses, and the support of the brain. There’s no way on Earth this could be comfortable and accessible for the intellect! In fact, the intellect is no more in that state. Yet it is the only way we can gain true knowledge of reality.

We have to be perfectly clear for the difference between thinking metaphysically and having actual experiences in the higher worlds. The former is a great lure because we soon get the impression that just because we think about the foundational secrets of the Cosmos we are already there. This is especially true when we think about something like the Trinity. There's difference from the Earth to Heaven between thinking of X1,2,3 and the experiences in the spiritual world for which the concepts are only the dimmest pointers.

I hope this can be understood. Otherwise it’s like saying: “Spiritual science is overly complicated. I find the description of an angel as a luminous winged creature to be much more accessible. Steiner simply lacks the pedagogical skills and he overintellectualizes things. He speaks about an angel in the most complicated and confusing ways instead of simply drawing a picture of a winged being.” Alas, with such an attitude we ensure that we can never pierce the veil of Maya. What feels convenient and accessible is such only because it nicely fits our sensory habits. And this wouldn’t be so bad if these habits were not arbitrarily extrapolated beyond the threshold. In the Imaginative state it is still possible to experience an impression of an angelic being in the form of a winged creature but with the great difference that (if properly developed) we in no way mistake that image for the reality of the being. Instead, we’re fully conscious that this is an impression within our own etheric body of the supersensible interaction with a spiritual being.

Higher consciousness can only be developed on Earth

When things like these are taken into account it becomes transparently obvious that we can never pierce the veil of Maya by clinging to our comfortable sensory and intellectual habits. Neither does it helps to say “Well, there’s no need to strain. After death when the veil falls I’ll behold the spiritual beings in their true reality. On Earth I’m completely satisfied to have only an approximate dream picture.” Alas, as we have spoken so many times, this position rests on a specific over self-confidence. We believe that we already have the needed organization which makes it possible to be conscious of the spiritual beings after death. This however is by no means the case. It is like someone who can do calculations only by using pen and paper. He says “I don’t need to develop the forces which allow me to do calculations in my mind. I’ll do that after I lose the paper.” But just as little we’ll be magically able to do calculations in our mind if we suddenly lose the paper, so we find ourselves severely lacking in the spiritual world if we have never tried to conceive of an angel as anything more than a picture of a winged creature. Such pictures are nowhere to be found not long after death. Then what remains is utter confusion because we simply can’t recognize the reality of the angel. We can perceive that reality only if on Earth we have understood how the angel manifests in us.

Spiritual science can only be understood if we seek the states of consciousness from whence the descriptions proceed

This is what I wanted to point out. Spiritual science is difficult because we have to build intuition of the states of being that we exist in after death. This has to be borne in mind at all times when we read an anthroposophical work. The conceptions, if taken in isolation as a picture, are only secondary. When we read we have to always feel the vital question “What is the state of existence from whence these things can be perceived as facts?” A question that receives its answer not in abstract words but as an actual inner movement, as if we try to co-experience the facts together with the clairvoyant. And this is what distinguishes spiritual science because everything communicated is inseparable from the path that reaches these states.

It's not about right vs. wrong but about whether we feel the vital need

Now all this will probably once again provoke outrage and accusations of superiority. But before that I would invite anyone to ask themselves: “Do I really want to approach the experiences between death and rebirth in the most real way?” Please don’t answer hastily. We should be clear that many people are curious to hear something about the afterlife but in no way would try to seek the first-person experiences of these states (except in the most naive way by fantasizing blissfully floating orbs in Heaven). And this is somewhat understandable as it requires to voluntarily approach the experience of death and go through it while still on Earth.

So if we are to ever reach agreement on these topics we have to be clear what we’re comparing. It doesn’t take much to see that Martinus presents a cosmology, a testament. But we won’t find there the science of initiation. We won’t find the knowledge of how to be lifted from the senses and brain, then even from the etheric body and experience what it means to exist in a spiritual world where all reality consists of spiritual beings. If we snap back to imagine these beings as floating winged creatures and we don’t even sense that this is only a higher form of Maya, then we don’t yet understand what problem spiritual science gives the methods of solving. It will always feel that things are only unnecessarily complicated and could be depicted in a much more accessible way. We can complain about complicatedness only if we have never tried to approach the state we would find ourselves in once we detach from the support of the physical and etheric bodies. If we reflect on this even for a while we’ll be convinced how utterly different that state should be. Eugene would say that it is completely orthogonal. And in a sense this is true but it is not absolutely orthogonal. We simply need quite different skills if we are to move in and out of that state and be able to express in concepts and images the unique conditions there.

This is not said as a criticism of Martinus cosmology. There is a place for such pedagogy too. But if we’re speaking of spiritual science we need to understand that we’re dealing with different problems. If we don’t feel the deep need to know in the most real first-person way something of the kind of existence we lead between death and rebirth, this whole most important aspect of spiritual science will be simply missed and what remains would be an overly complicated cosmology which will be blamed on poor pedagogical skills.

I don't know if that was really the case. As I understand it, after being initiated, he was able to perceive the spiritual world and laws through intuition.

,,In the same way mankind in the future will shudder at the thought of many of our manifestations of today, such as war and bodily injuries, vivisection, the death penalty, meat-eating, hunting and fishing, all of which are most definitely animal-like manifestations which will become more and more impossible for the individual to practise as his faculties of feeling, intelligence and intuition begin to grow and his present latent cosmic organs develop."

Martinus, Livets Bog 1

[Cleric K]

I find the symbols he uses helpful.
Martinus uses these symbols like a map, which make the spiritual laws tangible.

Yes, the important thing is that we also need the knowledge of how the map translates to actual spiritual experience. We're in a very peculiar stage where we have no choice but symbolize even the deepest mysteries, such as the Trinity. We need however knowledge how to use them. Because if we meditate in such a way that we expect to see the reality of the Trinity as three orbs or whatever in front of us, this actually paralyzes us.

Contrary to Steiner, however, Martinus seems to believe that one should not meditate in order to enter the spiritual world, as this could be dangerous.
He says that one will come into the spirit world when one is full of love, then one will be initiated quite naturally. To avoid risks, he recommends practicing the Lord's Prayer as meditation.

Martinus is right that focusing on just meditation without the aura of Love for the Divine could be dangerous. It is also true that we can enter the spiritual world through the Lord's Prayer when it transforms into meditation. This however doesn't in itself give us the means to understand what we experience. We might be able to describe only the Loving but dazzling Light of the Divine that fills the Cosmos.

The main reason I can understand him more easily than steiner is because of his symbols. Isn't the true purpose of art to express spiritual realities?

Indeed it is.

What would happen if we focused on one thought long enough and then entered imaginative states when we harbored a great deal of hate and selfishness, as many people do?

It depends on many factors. Most importantly - to what extent the person is ready to recognize these qualities within himself. If he's not ready, most probably as he approaches the experience of the Guardian, instead of recognizing the imaginative experience of his own soul forces as such, the images will be taken for external realities which quickly assume nightmarish beast-like forms that pounce at him.

[Federica]

Yes, that thinking is "all else" in your ontology reflects your disagreement with Martinus' doubled ontological prime X1-X2. I am not sure whether you should think otherwise and why, but I can refer to the "dispersion of the Godhead'' mentioned above as one possible reason. Regarding your goal of concentration - shutting up known relations, to reveal relations we don't already know: I am not sure, I wonder if Ashvin agrees with this way to put it. I would say, no. It's not that more relations are brought into the cone of awareness through concentration. It's not an expansion of the realm of the One Thought. It's beyond thought. It's no-thought, no thought relations. It requires abandoning the relational mode altogether...

Federica,

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here at the end about 'abandoning the relational mode altogether'.

I do agree with Scott that, through concentration, we reveal subconscious and supra-conscious relations which are the inner side of the outer relations we already know via our concepts. So, in one sense, we already know them dimly via concepts, but for all intents and purposes, the inner perspective of these relations is so vastly unfamiliar, unsuspected, etc. from anything we know outwardly, that they are practically unknown. If we were to experience the inner perspective of all that we perceive-conceive outwardly, like the Sun, Moon, and planets for ex., then we are in the realm of Divine spiritual activity of the highest order. The same is true for the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. And even our soul-life of pleasure-pain, sympathies-antipathies, instincts, habits, character, temperament etc. embeds practically unknown relations of spiritual activity.

I don't think there is any issue saying a vivification-expansion of a single thought-image into the conscious experience of inflowing imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions is expanding the 'realm of the One Thought'. Of course there are a million other different ways we could characterize it as well. But we should emphasize that it is all of Thought-nature, cognitive currents which animate our normal states of being. We only need to remember it is not of the same nature as discursive thinking, which serializes the relations into dim frames of meaning that we try to clumsily patch together. Perhaps that's what you meant above. In my mind, approaches like polar philosophy are exactly what attempt to reveal the limitations of discursive reasoning, from within itself, so we can begin unwinding it from our habits and preparing for new ways of thinking to inflow our consciousness.

Yes. In more details, I was intending that based on my very limited view I don’t understand concentration as a trade-off between the relations we already know - because we make them in our thoughts - and the ones we don’t already know. This shutting up of the known relations to open the space to new ones is what we do when, for example, reading a chapter of PoF with great focus, or ideally (although it’s more difficult) when listening intently to someone speaking, with the determination to devote oneself completely to the unfolding flow of meaning. We shut up the known thought relations, we plunge into new ones, we take part in them. By concentration I understand a different experience. It’s not about putting my dog on a leash to go for a walk with yours. It’s about putting my dog on a leash to put on hold dog walking (or being walked by the dog) altogether. But you are saying, I believe, that what is then experienced is in direct relation to the particular thought-image that is used, it’s on the inner side of that image. If so, then such a relation is probably what Scott was speaking of, and that relation I don’t know anything of. Thank you for all the help, Ashvin.

[ScottRoberts]

OK, from "supra-logical" perspective that's a possibility, I get it. However, if we look at our direct experience, we see that thinking creates/causes thoughts into existence, but not the other way around: thoughts do not cause thinking into existence. Thinking is always there available, lucidity of experiencing never changes, but thoughts are impermanent and always come and go, and in lucid deep sleep or deep meditation we can experience an absence of thoughts (at least locally in our individual conscious stream stream) while thinking and experiencing are still present. So, this polarity is not equal, it is significantly "skewed" towards thinking: thinking, as it is experienced, is causally and temporally more "fundamental" with respect to thoughts. And I would think this is what Steiner meant in this phrase "Thinking must precede ideas" - he just reflected upon a simple phenomenologically experiential observation without making any ontological statements. This experiential observation is the basis for the panentheistic paradigms where the "source" (Thinking) is prioritized with respect to the forms/ideas (Thought).

Since thinking is the creation of thoughts, no one has ever experienced thinking without thoughts. One can experience an absence of one's conscious, concept-like thoughts, but if thinking/experience is always present then thoughts are always present, just not always ones one is aware of. The thoughts that are my heart beating, for example.

As for thoughts being impermanent, as I said, that just means they go in and out of our conscious experience, not that they dissolve into nothing. You are thinking of thoughts in aggregate as a dead heap, while I am suggesting they all belong to an ever-evolving organism.

In the Christian theology the Trinity is an inseparable unity, however the poles are not equal: both the Son and the Holy Spirit are "sourced" from the Father (the Son is "begotten" from the Father and the Holy spirit "proceeds" from the Father), and in Catholic Church they even consider the Holy Spirit proceeding for the Son as well (which is the main split between the Orthodox and Catholic church). So, the Christian theology is clearly panentheistic, and that view is rooted in Gospels:

"When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, [that is] the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me" (John 15:26)

If one can debate the filioque, might one not also debate claims like 'begotten' and 'proceeds from'. Sounds to me you are just reciting a particular dogma, or a particular biblical interpretation.

But anyway, even if we accept Ashvin's scheme of the Trinity of Thinking-I-Though where all these aspects are existentially equal, there is still oneness of the "I" in this Trinity (because there is only one I in the whole reality) , and it is inseparable and unavoidable pole/aspect of reality. So, either way, we arrive at oneness which is inseparable from the manyness and not prioritized over it.

Isn't that what I have been saying?

[Stranger]

But anyway, even if we accept Ashvin's scheme of the Trinity of Thinking-I-Though where all these aspects are existentially equal, there is still oneness of the "I" in this Trinity (because there is only one I in the whole reality) , and it is inseparable and unavoidable pole/aspect of reality. So, either way, we arrive at oneness which is inseparable from the manyness and not prioritized over it.

Isn't that what I have been saying?

Yes, it is, so we agree here.

It actually aligns well with the idea of the nature of reality as Trikaya (Dharmata) in late Buddhism as inseparability of emptiness-suchness (nirmanakaya), lucidity of experience (sambhogakaya) and creativity/thinking together with the universe of forms/thoughts (nirmanakaya), and neither of them is prior to others. So, it is like a tri-polar reality. But in Advaita they claim that Sat-Chit (Being-awareness = Brahman) is existentially prior to the Cosmos (Maya), and that's one of the key differences between these traditions. Being a fan of both of these traditions I've been indecisive about this discrepancy, but now I gravitate closer to your view (which is also close to the Buddhis one). Thanks.

[AshvinP]

Yes, that thinking is "all else" in your ontology reflects your disagreement with Martinus' doubled ontological prime X1-X2. I am not sure whether you should think otherwise and why, but I can refer to the "dispersion of the Godhead'' mentioned above as one possible reason. Regarding your goal of concentration - shutting up known relations, to reveal relations we don't already know: I am not sure, I wonder if Ashvin agrees with this way to put it. I would say, no. It's not that more relations are brought into the cone of awareness through concentration. It's not an expansion of the realm of the One Thought. It's beyond thought. It's no-thought, no thought relations. It requires abandoning the relational mode altogether...

Federica,

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here at the end about 'abandoning the relational mode altogether'.

I do agree with Scott that, through concentration, we reveal subconscious and supra-conscious relations which are the inner side of the outer relations we already know via our concepts. So, in one sense, we already know them dimly via concepts, but for all intents and purposes, the inner perspective of these relations is so vastly unfamiliar, unsuspected, etc. from anything we know outwardly, that they are practically unknown. If we were to experience the inner perspective of all that we perceive-conceive outwardly, like the Sun, Moon, and planets for ex., then we are in the realm of Divine spiritual activity of the highest order. The same is true for the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. And even our soul-life of pleasure-pain, sympathies-antipathies, instincts, habits, character, temperament etc. embeds practically unknown relations of spiritual activity.

I don't think there is any issue saying a vivification-expansion of a single thought-image into the conscious experience of inflowing imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions is expanding the 'realm of the One Thought'. Of course there are a million other different ways we could characterize it as well. But we should emphasize that it is all of Thought-nature, cognitive currents which animate our normal states of being. We only need to remember it is not of the same nature as discursive thinking, which serializes the relations into dim frames of meaning that we try to clumsily patch together. Perhaps that's what you meant above. In my mind, approaches like polar philosophy are exactly what attempt to reveal the limitations of discursive reasoning, from within itself, so we can begin unwinding it from our habits and preparing for new ways of thinking to inflow our consciousness.

Yes. In more details, I was intending that based on my very limited view I don’t understand concentration as a trade-off between the relations we already know - because we make them in our thoughts - and the ones we don’t already know. This shutting up of the known relations to open the space to new ones is what we do when, for example, reading a chapter of PoF with great focus, or ideally (although it’s more difficult) when listening intently to someone speaking, with the determination to devote oneself completely to the unfolding flow of meaning. We shut up the known thought relations, we plunge into new ones, we take part in them. By concentration I understand a different experience. It’s not about putting my dog on a leash to go for a walk with yours. It’s about putting my dog on a leash to put on hold dog walking (or being walked by the dog) altogether. But you are saying, I believe, that what is then experienced is in direct relation to the particular thought-image that is used, it’s on the inner side of that image. If so, then such a relation is probably what Scott was speaking of, and that relation I don’t know anything of. Thank you for all the help, Ashvin.

Federica,

To clarify, I didn't necessarily mean we experience the inner side of the particular image used in concentration, which would be different from that of another image that may have been used. The image used, no matter what its particular content, is the tip of our temporally extended soul-life. So what we unveil is the inner side of our soul constellation through which we are concentrating on an image. Basically as Cleric described on the recent post to Anthony on the other thread. Perhaps it is more like putting your dog on a leash to start walking the dog in reverse. From the outer perspective we would simply conjure up dim and decaying memories of the path we traveled to get to that point of putting the dog on a leash. Through imaginative concentration, we are retracing our steps and re-encountering the living contextual relations which brought us to that point, but now from their inner perspective. The relations of our personal soul life are the most proximate context of our concentration, so we re-encounter those first. Outwardly, we may already have concepts for our likes and dislikes, our habits and character, etc. (which draw us into the Maya of feeling like we already know who we are), but now we inwardly experience the cognitive currents, the spiritual intents, which animate those aspects of our be-ing.

In the context of the ongoing polar discussion on this thread, experiences such as these make much more clear to us how we can only penetrate the deeper, more archetypal layers of Thinking in a way that promotes understanding through the portal of Thought-Perception. It is the same no matter what mode of Thinking we are engaging, intellectual or imaginative or otherwise. We always need a dynamic interplay of two poles for living feedback on how to torque our inner efforts. I want to especially point this out because, when we remain discussing these things only abstractly, it is easy to reach 'consensus' but ignore the implications of what that consensus means for our practical efforts. The polarity concept should be made something serious and living for us, prompting us to loosen the intellectual mask, otherwise it becomes practically the same as dual-aspect monism or some other formal metaphysical system which only reconciles the hard problems in head-knowledge, but not in living experience of growing our Spirit across the threshold.

[Federica]

Through imaginative concentration, we are retracing our steps and re-encountering the living contextual relations which brought us to that point, but now from their inner perspective. The relations of our personal soul life are the most proximate context of our concentration, so we re-encounter those first.

Does one have immediate awareness that this is what's happening? For my part I don't recognize the images I see as the inner side of my outward character or history. It's more similar to dream images that have no immediately clear meaning or relation. It might be for example the image of a beautiful tiny waterfall where the water makes 'unreal' slow-motion curls, similar to how they are pictured in ancient mosaics, or even in a Hokusai painting, and the fall of water produces a mist of tiny sparkles. But I have no clue how this might relate to the inner shape of my soul and how the shape came about. Other times I am involved in the images. But the content remain mysterious, I don't recognize it, I can't read relations.

In the context of the ongoing polar discussion on this thread, experiences such as these make much more clear to us how we can only penetrate the deeper, more archetypal layers of Thinking in a way that promotes understanding through the portal of Thought-Perception. It is the same no matter what mode of Thinking we are engaging, intellectual or imaginative or otherwise. We always need a dynamic interplay of two poles for living feedback on how to torque our inner efforts. I want to especially point this out because, when we remain discussing these things only abstractly, it is easy to reach 'consensus' but ignore the implications of what that consensus means for our practical efforts. The polarity concept should be made something serious and living for us, prompting us to loosen the intellectual mask, otherwise it becomes practically the same as dual-aspect monism or some other formal metaphysical system which only reconciles the hard problems in head-knowledge, but not in living experience of growing our Spirit across the threshold.

That's a useful reminder, because I don't have the concept of polarity close, when trying exercises. It's more like a plunge in one direction, somehow with an implicit sense of straining, which is certainly one of the mistakes.

[AshvinP]

Through imaginative concentration, we are retracing our steps and re-encountering the living contextual relations which brought us to that point, but now from their inner perspective. The relations of our personal soul life are the most proximate context of our concentration, so we re-encounter those first.

Does one have immediate awareness that this is what's happening? For my part I don't recognize the images I see as the inner side of my outward character or history. It's more similar to dream images that have no immediately clear meaning or relation. It might be for example the image of a beautiful tiny waterfall where the water makes 'unreal' slow-motion curls, similar to how they are pictured in ancient mosaics, or even in a Hokusai painting, and the fall of water produces a mist of tiny sparkles. But I have no clue how this might relate to the inner shape of my soul and how the shape came about. Other times I am involved in the images. But the content remain mysterious, I don't recognize it, I can't read relations.

Federica,
I was mostly referring to the underlying principle of meditation which seeks to approach and cross the threshold of death, after which we retrace our steps of life (among other things). This same principle holds good during sleep as well.

Let us think. We have our own daily cycle of life, which we will consider now, not in its correspondence to the Cosmos, but as it presents itself in man, so that we can also include those whose sleeping and waking do not correspond with the alternation of day and night — idlers as well as all those who do not live by rule! Let us consider this daily round of man on the basis already established, that is to say, representing it in thought as a line in which the points of sleeping and waking lie upon one another, as I have pointed out. There are many reasons, but one will suffice for an unprejudiced judgement to understand that we are bound to place the point of waking over that of falling asleep. Consider the remarkable fact that when we look back over our life, it appears to us as an unbroken stream. We do not feel compelled to regard life in such a way as to say: Today I have lived and have been conscious of my environment from the moment of waking; before that all was darkness; before that again, my falling asleep of yesterday was preceded by life, I lived again, back to the moment of waking; but then darkness again. You do not picture the stream of memory like this, you picture it so that the moment of awaking and the moment of falling asleep really unite in your conscious recollection. That is a plain fact. This fact can be expressed in that the curve representing the daily round in man comes out as a spiral, with the point of awaking always crossing the point of falling asleep. If the curve were an ellipse or a circle, then awaking and falling asleep would have to be separate, they could not possibly be joined. In this way alone therefore can we picture the daily round of man.

That is also related to why we do the backward daily review at night - sort of a preparation for what we actually experience during sleep. It does manifest to some extent in my meditative experience, but I imagine the manner of such manifestation can vary quite a bit. I am only at the very first stages and I can't say I have crossed the threshold. I also don't experience such vivid images as you are describing during meditation. Actually I find images are more forthcoming when I am getting sleepy while trying to meditate, bubbling up from my lower regions. That is when I stop, or generally I try to avoid doing meditations when sleepy to begin with. There is a certain mood which streams in through those states which I would call 'oppressive'. It is like my soul-life is being more weighed down by gravity and I am quickly losing consciousness.

For me, when in a wakeful state, it is more like the flashes of intuition that Cleric has described. Sometimes it is accompanied by actual flashes like rapid streaks of inner lightning. This is only after the thought-image expands to fill my inner volume and I manage to hold the concentrated state without grasping at the apple, i.e. analyzing the details of the experience, and thereby collapsing the whole state. There isn't an inner voice or anything which says, 'you have an antipathy for putting effort into your projects'. It is a much more organic and subtle process which carries over into the normal waking state - like seeds which are planted and grow days and weeks later. Perhaps something similar occurs through the images you mention. Through such experiences, I have come to realize that we are not only bringing the waking state into our periods of meditation, but are also bringing the meditative state more into our normal waking periods, i.e. spiraling them together or, conversely, awakening to their superposition. Not that we go around perceiving images or in an altered state of consciousness, but that our inner stream of will, feeling, and thinking is ennobled, strengthened, and enlivened. 

In a general way, I would characterize it as the process of living life more lucidly, effectively, and lovingly. Even if we know nothing of spiritual reality and meditation, we naturally gain these ideal impulses through our cultural inheritance and socialization from parents, teachers, etc. We start to learn how to tame our passions, how to think clearly about problems of life, how to commit to our work, how to establish meaningful relationships, etc. Through the spiritual path, we learn how to discern all the daily opportunities we have to further perfect our latent ideal qualities, talents, capacities, etc. and gain inspiration to actually pursue those opportunities to their completion. We learn that our desires, feelings, and thoughts actually have the most causal power in our evolving experience of the World (within certain higher contextual limits). Memory becomes a tool to not only nostalgically reminisce about past events, but to learn about our core be-ing and thereby participate in manifesting our future. 

So, to generally answer your first question, I would say it becomes immediate awareness that this process is occurring after we are accustomed to the organic rhythms in which these things unfold. But the relevant knowledge isn't immediately manifested in my consciousness at the time of meditation itself, at least not for me. It is a more gradual and organic process which manifests through the flow of life itself. We are not only accumulating knowledge of our soul-structure, but at the same time transforming our inner life to be in greater resonance with higher-order intents which structure our stream of becoming, so we begin to perceive these intents all around us and work with the progressive intents to the best of our ability. That is how we gradually transmute our past into our future, our Karmic destiny into our spiritual freedom.