Federica wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 8:21 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 12:38 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 10:04 pm
I’m confused about the above sentence: “higher up” compared to what?
Here I was referring to the Time-consciousness spectrum. Our fourfolded Earthly convolution has a certain 'time-signature', i.e. a sluggish rhythm by which our states of being transform. But in the emrbyo we are actually still residing mostly within the Moon sphere, which is a gateway from Earth to the Cosmos, with a less sluggish time-signature. That fact should also help us discern why stellar configurations at conception-birth are reflecting to us the archetypal 'frames' by which our incarnate life will unfold. These are all superimposed spheres of activity which we tease apart in our conceptual thinking for convenience.
The concepts reflect a certain intuitive orientation we have towards the lawful transformation of different aspects of our be-ing. So the lawfulness by which the sensory spectrum transforms, we call the physical plane or Earthly sphere, which is lucidly accessible to normal intellectual cognition. The lawfulness by which our etheric life transforms - which generally relates to our deeper imagination, life functions, memories, habits, temperament, sympathies-antipathies - is more related to what we call the Moon sphere, lucidly accessible to imaginative and higher cognition (Powell refers to it as 'lunar consciousness' in the book). These factors play a large role in the structuring of our incarnate destiny at the archetypal level (not necessarily in the particular details, which is where we initially find our degrees of freedom).
The outer conception-perception of the Sun, Moon, planets, Zodiac, are the dim ways we represent these superimposed spheres of intuitive lawfulness during our incarnate life, at our current stage of evolution. Everything we conceive-perceive in the so-called 'present' is actually already accomplished intents. Through imaginative cognition, we come to inwardly awaken to this fact. Previously there were epochs when the outer Cosmos was perceived much more imaginatively, for ex. in the ancient Egyptian civilization, where there could be no doubt that spiritual activity had been at work. Soon we will arrive once again a stage where the imaginative life of the Cosmos becomes impossible to ignore at the cognitive level, although still possible to reject in one's heart if the Christ impulse is neglected.
Federica,
Once again, thanks - it took me a few readings, but now it's kind of coming together. Another small detail: I thought that temperament, likes and dislikes were residing in the astral body, more than in the etheric?
The etheric body is where the principle of repetition holds. When we look at the growing plant, it produces leaf after leaf in orderly succession. Then it drops the seed and produces copies of itself with the same form. So any WFT ways of being which become habitual in us get woven into our etheric memory, mostly before birth or a little bit during life. When they are only in the astral body during life, we can call them likes and dislikes which are more pliable (we should also remember, though, that we normally only
know of the soul-life in so far as it is reflected by the physical-etheric bodies, the latter acting as mirrors). It is easier for us to apply torque to these likes or dislikes and adjust them. But if they become habitual in the etheric body, we are dealing with sympathies and antipathies which are much less pliable and require more torque. I would make a similar distinction between character (more pliable) and temperament (less pliable), the former being our constellation of opinions, beliefs, emotions, qualities, virtues, etc. and the latter being our inner disposition towards the World (choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic).
To be clear, this doesn't mean the etheric body
causes all of these habitual tendencies and dispositions. The ego-astral complex is what allows for us to lucidly experience the World and react to it. It impresses the habitual tendencies we develop into the etheric body, which also impresses it into the physical body to some extent. The physical-etheric serves as a sort of contextual limit on what capacities we can bring to expression during an incarnation unless we are able to also work on them through higher cognitive development. At death, the memories/experiences impressed into the etheric body are imprinted back into the astral body and then back to the ego, where it all continues in seed-form. Then, on our return to incarnation, the ego fashions the new lower vehicles in correspondence with that imprint. A similar cycle occurs each night with sleep, but to a lesser extent. All of this occurs with feedback from the higher hierarchies on what needs to be further perfected to become proper citizens of the Cosmos.
With reference to the soon-to-come heightened sense of living Cosmos that humanity is about to gain, an interesting exercise (for those who have created enough leeway for it) could be to try to imagine or forsee what form, domain, or event will manifest and lead the development of the new imaginative awareness you speak of. For my part, I am really wondering, but I wouldn't know where to start. Like, I have no clue about continuity of consciousness, but hey I do have pretty solid continuity of wondering
I would say it's basically what we are doing here, through a spiritual scientific consciousness and diligent exploration of the living details to build a gradient to the 6th epoch. It will be the elaboration of what Steiner and other streams have already inaugurated. For ex. Powell (and his teacher before him, Willi Sucher) is building off of Steiner's 'Cosmosophy' to more precisely develop 'Astrosophy'. Endeavors like that can shepherd the imaginative inflow into constructive channels for the benefit of all. That's the positive side of it, but as you know there is also the negative side of heightened imaginative awareness without a corresponding moral development through the Christ impulse. The contours between these two sides will become sharper and sharper as this epoch continues to unfold.