On the occult dangers of transhumanism or 'crystallisation' of the soul-spirit
Although there are very conscious attempts to corporealize the soul and spirit, it is also what we are always doing in the name of materialistic reductionist science. We seek to understand what is organic in terms of what is inorganic, what is living in terms of what is dead, what is conscious in terms of what is merely organic, what thinks in terms of what instinctually desires (like Freudian psychology). And whatever transcends thinking itself, i.e. the archetypal world of supra-sensory moral Ideals, is either dismissed as non-existent or reduced to conceptions of things we already sense and know with the corporeal intellect. So the pursuit of 'transhumanism' is simply reductionist thinking taken to its logical extreme. There are plenty of "spiritualists" who also think in reductionist terms, and thereby practically default to materialism in the domain of science. Since Tomberg wrote the passage below, clearly the trend toward 'transhumanism' has only strengthened as people fail to develop living spiritual activity. For ex., I came across the following article recently:
https://interestingengineering.com/inno ... -year-musk
Launched in 2016, Neuralink is yet another moonshot project from Musk, where he wants to link the human brain to a computer. Musk's ideal application for the technology is to enable a paraplegic person to walk again. So far has only demonstrated the technology in monkeys who have been able to play video games.
One cannot help but set that ideal in contrast to the Ideal revealed in scripture:
Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”... So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home.
That is the Ideal of faithful striving through spiritual activity so we are graced with the power to have our sins blotted out, i.e. to karmically compensate for our past deeds that have crippled our psycho-physical organization. It is a striving to
spiritualize (or moralize) the soul and body, rather than to corporealize (or naturalize) the soul and spirit.
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Lastly, physical obstacles exist for Force, i.e. for the radiation of life, only in so far as they are due to morbid processes of crystallisation in living organisms. If we give them a common comprehensive name, it is “sclerosis”; this constitutes the obstacle in general. Sclerosis is the process of gradual alienation of the body from the soul and spirit. A corpse is the limit and end of this, because the corpse is a body completely alienated with regard to the soul and spirit. This is what Dr. Étienne May says in making an assessment from the standpoint of modern day medicine:
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With regard to arterio-sclerosis, it is to a certain extent a natural modification of the arteries with age. And thus, pushing this to an absurd extreme, one could almost say that, all other illnesses being suppressed, sclerosis of the arteries—in the long run obligatory—would alone prevent us from becoming immortal." (Dr. Étienne May, La médecine, son passé, son présent, son avenir, Paris, 1957, p. 341)
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Without doubt you know, dear Unknown Friend, that there are schools—occult or other—which teach and practise crystallisation and that there are other schools which teach and practise radiation, i.e. the complete de-crystallisation of the human being and his transformation into a “sun”, into a centre of radiation. “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew xiii, 43)—this is the practical aim of “schools of radiation”, to which that of Christian Hermeticism belongs. The “schools of crystallisation” are quite numerous and widespread. There are those which are entirely secret, with very serious intentions; there are also those which are known in the guise of almost popular movements for “health, rejuvenation and longevity”.
I have in mind the school of G. I. Gurdjieff, and I am going to cite the work In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky. Now, the following is the teaching of Gurdjieff, such as it has been understood and formulated by Ouspensky, concerning the practical task of survival:
On one occasion, at one of these meetings, someone asked about the possibility of reincarnation, and whether it was possible to believe in cases of communication with the dead. “Many things are possible,” said G. (Gurdjieff). “But it is necessary to understand that man’s being, both in life and after death, if it does exist after death, may be very different in quality. The ‘man-machine’ with whom everything depends upon external influences, with whom everything happens, who is now one, the next moment another, and the next moment a third, has no future of any kind; he is buried and that is all. Dust returns to dust. This applies to him. In order to be able to speak of any kind of future life there must be a certain crystallisation, a certain fusion of man’s inner qualities, a certain independence of external influences. If there is anything in a man able to resist external influences, then this very thing itself may also be able to resist the death of the physical body…But even if something survives, its future can be very varied. In certain cases of fuller crystallisation, what people call ‘reincarnation’ may be possible after death, and, in other cases, what people call ‘existence on the other side’. In both cases it is the continuation of life in the ‘astral body’, or with the help of the ‘astral body’. You know what the expression ‘astral body’ means. But the systems with which you are acquainted and which use this expression state that all men have an ‘astral body’. This is quite wrong. What may be called the ‘astral body’ is obtained by means of fusion, that, is, by means of terribly hard inner work and struggle. Man is not born with it. And only very few men acquire an ‘astral body’. If it is formed it may continue to live after the death of the physical body, and it may be born again in another physical body…Fusion, inner unity, is obtained by means of ‘friction’, by the struggle between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in man. If a man lives without inner struggle, if everything happens in him without opposition, if he goes wherever he is drawn or wherever the wind blows, he will remain such as he is. But if a struggle begins in him, and particularly if there is a definite line in this struggle, then, gradually, permanent traits begin to form themselves, he begins to ‘crystallise’…Crystallisation is possible on any foundations. Take for example a brigand, a really good, genuine brigand. I knew such brigands in the Caucasus. He will stand with a rifle behind a stone by the roadside for eight hours without stirring. Could you do this? All the time, mind you, a struggle is going on in him. He is thirsty and hot, and flies are biting him; but he stands still. Another is a monk; he is afraid of the devil; all night long he beats his head on the floor and prays. Thus crystallisation is achieved…Such people can become immortal.
(P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, London, 1969, pp. 31-32)
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The essence of the method of “construction of the tower of Babel” is
inverse crystallisation. Normal crystallisation—the “stone”—is the final state of the process of transition from the gaseous to the liquid state and from the liquid to the solid state. Thus vapour becomes water (liquid) and water becomes ice. Ice is crystallised vapour. Similarly, a general but warm intention becomes a current of discursive thought which, in its turn, results in a well-defined formula. Or in still other terms: the spiritual becomes psychic and the psychic becomes corporeal. The process of normal crystallisation is therefore one of concretisation from above below: The process of crystallisation designated as the “construction of the tower of Babel”, takes place, in contrast, from below above: With regard to this latter process, it is a matter of transformation into “body” of the psychic and spiritual. And it is thus that one can conquer death and realise immortality…
corporeal immortality. For if the spiritual and the psychic, in becoming corporeal, become mortal, would it not be possible that the corporeal, in rising to the psychic and spiritual, becomes immortal?
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Is this scheme realisable or is it simply an illusion, pure and simple? Although this question belongs to the framework of problems of the sixteenth Major Arcanum of the Tarot, and although it will be treated in the sixteenth Letter, let us nonetheless consider some facts with a view to coming to an answer. The facts that I have in mind are those of corporeal survival, i.e. physical manifestations that one attributes—rightly or wrongly—to dead people or to “ghosts”. Ghosts exist. This is not a question of belief; it is a matter of fact. There is an immense literature, without speaking of facts that one can find in the sphere of personal experience, which bears witness to the existence of ghosts. Now it is no longer a matter of believing or denying; now it is a matter only of understanding and explaining. Ghosts exist therefore...
What, then, is a ghost? It is exactly what Gurdjieff teaches concerning the product of psychic crystallisation effected from within the physical body, and which can resist the death of the latter. This is the “astral body” of which Gurdjieff said that, “if it is formed it may continue to live after the death of the physical body…if it is not re-born, then, in the course of time, it also dies; it is not immortal but it can live long after the death of the physical body” (Ouspensky, op. cit, p. 32). Of course, the “astral body” spoken of by Gurdjieff has nothing to do with the “astral body” of Hermeticism, which latter is, truth to tell, simply the totality of the soul’s
psychic memories. A ghost is always constituted as a consequence of crystallisation, i.e. crystallisation of a desire, a passion, or a purpose of great intensity, which produces a complex of energy in the human being. Thus, a “genuine brigand” who stands “with a rifle behind a stone by the roadside for eight hours without stirring” or “a monk…(who) is afraid of the devil (and) all night long he beats his head on the floor and prays” (Ouspensky, op. cit., p. 32) in fact crystallise within them a complex of energy, a psycho-electrical double, which would be able, as a dense complex, to resist death.
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It is therefore not purely and simply a matter of an illusion in the case of the ideal and method of the “construction of the tower of Babel”. Rather, it is a matter of another kind of immortality, notably that which the serpent of Genesis had in mind when he said, “You will not die if you eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”. For the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil produces the inner friction in man of the struggle between “yes” and “no”, and this friction in its turn produces the electrical fire which effects the crystallisation whose product will resist death. This is the meaning of the promise—or rather the programme—of the serpent. This programme underlies the millennial-old method of the “construction of the tower of Babel”, and it constitutes the esoteric kernel or the hidden secret of materialistic science in general.
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We have chosen Gurdjieff (and Ouspensky) to exemplify the ideal and the method of the “construction of the tower of Babel”, but Gurdjieff—being openly materialistic in the true sense of this word, and being deprived of all mystical sense—only spoke on behalf of the multitude. All he did was to give forth clearly what animates and impels—in an unconscious or semi-conscious way—millions and millions of scientists devoted to the cause of longevity, i.e. to the victory over death through human science, without God and without mysticism: the universal cause of the construction of the tower of Babel.
Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 355-356). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.