On Symbolic Ordering, Theology, and Hierarchical Mystagogy

[Federica]

It was unintentional, but in fact we’ve gone through the lecture in reverse

[AshvinP]

Federica,

Thanks for transcribing that excellent lecture from MS! Yes, I think "Doctor" is clearly Steiner. When he speaks of the beings coming forth and saying "don't do it, distract yourself", that reminded me of something I had been contemplating lately.

In some ways, the secret of the esoteric path is that, through a flash of insight, an entire stream of distracted thought-flow can be illuminated and therefore redeemed to serve higher spiritual purposes. As soon as we come to know that flow inwardly, it no longer oppresses us as an external force of nature but begins to serve the steering of our I-force towards spiritual ideals. That is the main advantage we have over the average person who experiences the same highways and byways of thought-distractions that we do but has no opportunity to redeem them in the normal course of life (and must wait for periods of sleep/death), because they are simply merged into the normal course of thinking. One way I have started to think about these distactions is by looking at where I end up from the distracted flow of thought. In the spiritual world, there is a reversal from the normal course of events insofar as the final cause or telos structures the events that normally we experience as leading up to it in a linear way. That is a part of the reason we do the memory review exercise and that Steiner recommends other exercises that involve thinking through things in reverse, like the acts of a play or chapters of a novel or measures of a musical piece, so that our organism becomes more accustomed to this spiritual ordering of events. 

Meditate everything pictorially. The retrospect last. Look back at every little detail from the end to the beginning. Memory is the bridge on which we're led to the invisible Akashic record. In the retrospect we have streets, fields, flowers, rocks, etc. recalled through memory or we could really look back at them with our eyes. This takes place in the previous time order. But there's also another kind of looking back: as if time periods were in space. So-called memory is lost, but something higher is gained. In higher worlds everything runs from end to beginning; the pupil goes backwards to prepare for this

If we look at where we ended up from a certain flow of feelings and thought, we can get some dim intimation for the soul-entanglements that are structuring our stream of becoming. Did we end up blowing off spiritual exercises? Did we end up convincing ourselves to go to a movie so we can passively absorb sensory impressions and avoid creatively-willed thinking? Did we end up eating ice cream to dull our sense of displeasure with life? Steiner often mentions that we should pay attention to all the things that don't happen in the liminal spaces of our life because we made this or that decision, which is a similar exercise. It is in the liminal (temporal) spaces where the spiritual world is to be found. These are only very loose indicators when we are still thinking through them conceptually, of course, but they may at least start pointing us in the right direction and help prepare our organism for encountering the spiritual world when we have ripened for it. Many of the underlying reasons for distracting entanglements will be common to most modern humans.

- Fear of approaching intimate experience of the spiritual world (and all the rest can be considered a subset of this fear)
- Fear of letting go of certain habitual ways of being conditioned to the physical/social context
- Fear of unmasking the layers of persona that we have accumulated
- A mistrust of the human spiritual capacity and our own spiritual potential
- A sense of powerlessness to change ourselves inwardly and meet certain weighty responsibilities
- A desire to be outwardly perceived in a certain positive light
- A feeling that we need to grasp the mysteries of existence quickly.
Etc.

These are all certainly working beneath the surface of our normal conscious activity and each individual should work out in what constellation and measures they are pushing and pulling on their spiritual activity. One thing I noticed is how everything becomes less serious when intuitive realities are condensed into inner or outer speech. There is a concrete sense that everything then takes on an air of playing at a game or merely acting out a role, such as the role of "esotericist". It's like we are trying to talk ourselves into being humble, loving, noble, spiritual people. And we end up with exactly what MS speaks of in terms of trivial and transient feelings for the Divine. Then we also get a feeling of having truly understood whatever we are contemplating through the relative transparency of our concepts. When I was reading the paragraph that he wrote on the Guardian, for example, I started feeling, "yes, I know exactly what he is talking about", but I must remember that feeling is Maya. After we get a living feel for this continual masking activity of the intellect, we confront how far away we have managed to place ourselves from the genuine experience of the Divine. Then we really know why St. Paul wrote, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"

I love the phrase "the free activity of the real experimenter's spirit" and again "the forces of the knowledge that allow science to exist are experimentable". In my experience, along with humble faith in the mysteriously immanent Spirit, and a sense of loving duty towards our neighbors, that is also the courageous inner attitude that allows us to take our intuitive stream of becoming more seriously while also maintaining its sense of charm and wonder. We don't need to abandon the conceptual voice, but rather to fulfill its telos by consciously sacrificing it in healthy dosages. Through concentration and meditation, we can dwell in a more intimate communion with the Divine within us, relatively unmediated by the senses and normal conceptual activity. Then the sublimely moral impulses we draw from those liminal spaces can flow back out into our normal conceptual life, making it into a more solemn and redemptive affair.

When you, my sisters and brothers, let the spiritual life that streams into your soul live in you so that it reverberates in your meditations, you then have the right fruit. You should let what's received echo in your meditations. While you do that the spiritual powers of the world stream into you. The world is always flowed through by spiritual streams that proceed from the great masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings. The masters continuously pour streams of love and wisdom over humanity, but men's souls aren't always ready and open to receive them. But meditation words are magic words that open soul portals so that divine life can move in. That's why one shouldn't speculate with one's intellect about meditation words, but should open the soul for forces that are higher than merely intellectual ones. If one speculates about them with one's intellect then only forces that are already in one become active. But higher forces are supposed to awaken. One shouldn't want to solve riddles in one's meditation words, one should let them solve riddles, for they're much wiser than the intellect can ever be. That's why one should let them work on one and take in what they permit to flow into one's soul, let them live completely in one's soul.

Meditation words were born from the laws of the spiritual world and didn't arise through speculation. Something special lives in every vowel. Each of the vowels has a different sound value. And just as the soul feels the effect of sounds, so it should devote itself to the pictures that the words mediate to it. In meditation one should try to think as concretely as possible, and to be as far away as possible from abstract ideation.

Thanks for sharing some of your tips, Ashvin. Your way of processing distractive thoughts is making me realize that simply discarding those thoughts, the moment we become aware of them, is not ideal. Currently I feel I have become somewhat more able to detect these intrusions, and when I notice them, I simply discard them. Well, sometimes, after noticing them, I keep running the thoughts in parallel. I say to myself “Ok I will entertain this just a tiny bit longer, before I get back on track”, which is worse, I know. It’s probably exactly what MS is talking about. At best, I immediately discard them, but even better would be to call them out, not only discard them, but freeze them, and maybe highlight them in pictorial form, before tracing them back, so that they are redeemed and not pushed back into unconsciousness, to fatten the bulk of stuff left to transform. This is easier said than done.

But all this is helpful. I realize, very concretely, that counter-influences are there, and I have to manifest more 'grit' in these inner domains. Also not to externalize the fault, putting it on the back of external counter-forces. A little fact that happened yesterday made me think more actively about these influences, this time in relation to the exercise of will. I have recently resumed the basic exercise of control of will. I don't rely on an alarm for it, but I give myself the instruction to perform a small act that brings change within a habitual chain of action. For example, I have ended up having a very standardized chain of actions, that I execute almost automatically, every time I come back home from the gym. So yesterday I said to myself, that this time, immediately upon closing the door behind me, before doing anything else, I would put some oil in the diffuser in the entrance, and I really spent some time trying to consolidate the instruction in my mind. I didn’t want to risk failure with the exercise. I attached a big importance to the exercise, I wanted to be a good student. Later in the day, I was finished at the gym, collecting my things before leaving. I suddenly realized my mobile phone was not where I always put it. So I started to wonder, did I put it elsewhere this time? Did someone pick it? Did I forget it at home? So I hurried back home, trying to remember what to do in case the phone was lost. Closed the door behind me, found the phone (next to the diffuser) checked the messages, got into the usual chain of action, and only sometime later I suddenly recalled the will exercise…. When something similar happens again, I will try to trace it back to the origin of distraction. Maybe, as you say, from the shape of that path of distraction, I will get some insights on relevant soul entanglements, because, after all, I am the one who forgot the phone at home and sabotaged the will exercise, by setting up a special diversion, a diversion up to the “task”.

I definitely recognize what you are saying, that “everything becomes less serious when intuitive realities are condensed into inner or outer speech” but especially outer. This happens to me with prayer. I am divided by conflicting calls to action, with prayer, because in a way the words are useful attractors into the activity, like useful handles. But in another way, it would be better to only set free the impulse of prayer once a certain mood is attained, so that we don’t risk falling into role-playing. And I don’t know how to fight role-playing, because the least detection, or even suspicion of it, or check, immediately corrupts all authenticity by becoming an ugly thought-attractor. One solution would be to only rely on unverbalized feeling, but prayer is also formula. So it’s difficult to conform to formulation without spoiling it. This makes it even more clear to me how far I am from the balanced navigation across the seas of our soul currents, between the rational voice on one side and the contemplating and communing one on the other.

But I’m glad you found the lecture an interesting read! Listening to the audio version, it was touching because the lucidity of thought, the calm and generous presence, the very careful choice of words are tangible, but so is the wear and tear of the body, of the voice, at the approach of death, although in much more subdued perception. For completeness, here is the missing lecture opening:
...

Federica,

These aspects of our inner life are really remarkable when we stop to reflect on them. Recently, I've been taking walks while listening to audio chapters of scripture, and often a distracting thought flow will intervene at a specific point in the chapter. It could be some association with a spiritual scientific insight is triggered and then I follow that down all sorts of other avenues of thought, relating it to other insights or posts on this forum and so forth. When I notice it, I will restart the chapter and make a commitment to reach that intervening point again and not to be distracted by such thoughts until it is completely finished. But alas, I flow off again into the same or similar distraction at about the same exact point of the chapter! This may happen 3, 4, or 5 times in a row. It is strangely comforting to become conscious of how feeble our willpower is to confront such intervening flows of thought. In a sense, that indicates to us just how powerful spiritual activity really is in the World, in structuring and shaping its processes and events, and helps experientially confirm everything that we have been learning intellectually through spiritual science. 

What occurs within us microcosmically is also outspread across the higher-order spaces of existence. We could say the entire duration from the Fall to its fulfillment is like a prolonged thought-distraction within the overarching Divine plan, a daydream that enchanted us. And within the epochs of that Divine plan, the ruling Zeitgeist experiences its own thought-distractions in the forms of war, epidemics, economic depressions, and other such deviations from a smooth fulfillment. Without these distracting flows, the Divine plan would be fulfilled unconsciously, which is not really a fulfillment since the creation becoming ever-more conscious is the plan. It is only through the distracting flows that a differentiation is made between the Divine intent and the subject who is executing that intent. That is why St. Paul speaks of the Law, i.e. the moral structure of natural and cultural forms, as being responsible for sin, that is, for giving us the capacity to become conscious of ourselves through the reflections of our sinful nature. Through those outer forms, we become conscious of ourselves and how feeble we are to carry out Divine intents in our slavery to sin. 

However, through the new covenant, we can become conscious of ourselves not only with respect to our sinful nature but also with respect to the Better Angels of our nature. Our lower half comes consciously into contact with our higher half so that something more Whole results as an alchemical reaction. We not only become conscious of ourselves through the reflection of outer forms, but also through the experience of inner spiritual forms i.e. the rhythms of our thinking, feeling, and will. We know ourselves not only through that which is transient but also through that which is eternal. The latter then illuminates the inner essence of the transient forms as well, redeeming them. Through this self-awareness, we gain more and more inner certainty about the fundamental relation between inner activity and outer events, across all scales of existence, and the fact that our only task, albeit one that will require great faith and endurance - Ora et labora (pray and work) - is to adopt more responsibility for the course of our spiritual activity in ever-creative ways.

"For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." (2 Cor. 4)

I also understand completely what you mean in terms of prayer. A part of my approach now is to hold a general devotional intention in the background of consciousness as I go into certain standard formulas and prayers, such as an intent to direct whatever spiritual forces flow into my consciousness towards enduring daily trials so that God's Will be done on Earth as in Heaven. I try to resist the misguided sense of controlling and customizing the particular sections of prayer with my own feelings and thoughts. I simply express the prayer with as much inner gusto as I can manage, launching it off toward the spiritual beings in the higher strata of my "I"-existence. As you point out, and Steiner and Tomberg also emphasize, the formulae itself embed a magical power that we can evoke through a strong, devoted intent. "One shouldn't want to solve riddles in one's meditation words, one should let them solve riddles, for they're much wiser than the intellect can ever be." And the same could be said of prayers drawn from scripture. Above all, we should remember that the work is being accomplished within us, regardless of whether we are conscious of its transformative influences at any given time.  And often our new struggles and obstacles in life (especially those related to normal memory) are the very sign that the work is being accomplished.

When we advance on the path of spiritual discipleship, we ourselves notice very little of this advance. Other people and higher beings notice it, but not we ourselves. We may be well aware of our mistakes and weaknesses, but it is not possible for us to know what we attain in the positive sense. Even the gods had to withdraw from their task and rest on the seventh day so that they could know that the world they had created was good. All the more so are human beings unable to say whether there is progress in their inner spiritual development. There is a sign, however, that does indicate this. It is the fact that one becomes inwardly ever more isolated. At first, one has many companions of the same disposition, awake to the same questions and concerns. Then one discovers with dismay that the circle of people interested in these questions becomes ever narrower. Finally, one finds that there are only two or three others who are still awake in this domain—the others are asleep. At some point a person makes this discovery. Then there comes a moment at which one finds oneself alone between sleeping humanity and the dark, silent heavens. During the hour of the greatest decisions, heaven is silent—that is a law. The spiritual beings do not want to impel a human being to any decision. As human beings, we must decide for ourselves, out of our freedom, everything that determines our destiny, our path. And one can say that this situation—which was experienced to a tremendous degree by Christ Jesus—must be suffered through in some form or other by everyone on the path of spiritual discipleship.

Tomberg, Valentin. Inner Development: 7 lectures, Rotterdam, August 15-22, 1938 . steinerbooks. Kindle Edition.

[AshvinP]

On the question of the distinctions between thinking directed towards different domains of experience, which is a very important question, the following from Steiner might also be helpful to consider. It's interesting how, through culture, the mathematical element meets the natural element. We don't really find pure forms of squares, triangles, and such anywhere but in man-made objects. Through culture, the supersensible idealized element meets the natural element and the latter can be increasingly spiritualized while the former can be increasingly concretized and enlivened.

It certainly cannot be denied that light, tones, colors, and sensations of taste are related to us differently from that which we could represent as subject to mathematical-mechanical laws. For it really is a remarkable fact, a fact worthy of our consideration: you know that honey tastes sweet, but to a man with jaundice it tastes bitter — so we can say that we stand in a curious relationship to the qualities within this realm — while on the other hand we could hardly maintain that any normal man would see a triangle as a triangle, but a man with jaundice would see it as a square! Certain differentiations thus do exist, and one must be cognizant of them... 

For that, you see, is one of the basic differences between the so-called subjective qualities of tone, color, warmth, as well as the different qualities of touch, and that which confronts us in the mechanical-mathematical view of the world. That is the basic difference: tone and color leave us outside of ourselves; we must first take them in; we must first perceive them. As human beings we stand outside tone, color, warmth, etc. This is not entirely the case as regards warmth — I shall discuss that tomorrow — but to a certain extent this is true even of warmth. These qualities leave us initially outside ourselves, and we must perceive them. In formal, spatial, and temporal relationships and regarding weight this is not the case. We perceive objects in space but stand ourselves within the same space and the same lawfulness as the objects external to us. We stand within time just as do the external objects. Our physical existence begins and ends at a definite point in time. We stand within space and time in such a way that these things permeate us without our first perceiving them. The other things we must first perceive. Regarding weight, well, ladies and gentlemen, you will readily admit that this has little to do with perception, which is somewhat open to arbitrariness: otherwise many people who attain an undesired corpulence would be able to avoid this by perception alone, merely by having the faculty of perception. No, ladies and gentlemen, regarding weight we are bound up with the world entirely objectively, and the organization by means of which we stand within color, tone, warmth, etc. is powerless against that objectivity.

...Now one stands before this phenomenon of mathematics as such. We comprehend mathematical truths. We proceed from mathematical phenomena to certain axioms. We weave the fabric of mathematics out of these axioms and then stand before an architectonic whole apprehended by the mind's eye [im inneren Anschauen]. If we are able by means of energetic thinking to differentiate sharply this inner apprehension from anything that can be experienced outwardly, we must see in this fabric of mathematics something that arises through an activity of soul entirely different from that which underlies our experience of the outer objects of sensation. Whether or not we arrive at a satisfactory comprehension of the world depends to a tremendous extent on our being able to make this clear distinction out of inner experience. 

Ashvin,

I don't really understand the distinction made between weight, that we don't have to perceive, and other qualities of material objects. I thought that weight was perceived through the sense of touch, like colors are perceived through sight. Could you please give another example of weight, and why it doesn't leave us outside of ourselves?

Federica,

These are really fruitful topics to explore, since the hierarchical structuring of our senses gives much insight into our evolving relations with spiritual reality. I can't say that it is very intuitively clear for me right now, only a hazy picture.

From a rudimentary phenomenological assessment, it appears the sense of touch/weight resides at the threshold of outer and inner experience, somewhat more attenuated to inner experience and the life of will. Unlike the sense of sight, which can relate our thinking to activity quite far out beyond our personal soul-life, the sense of touch mostly refers us back to the dim feeling of "me" in contrast to the 'outer world'. Even the senses of smell and taste appear to take us further out than touch. The latter is more like the inner sense of balance or movement in that respect. (as an aside, it's interesting to note the correspondence between the sense of balance and the mathematical thinking capacity, which are both connected to the inner ear orientation). We can also notice how the sense of touch is much more indistinct than the outer senses, i.e. it doesn't give as much analytical information about what we are coming into contact with.

We can explore this experientially through the hysteresis process as well. When our attention is merged into the sensory spectrum through the sense of sight, it is much easier to make the distinction between that merging and the oscillation back to contemplating the meaning of what was perceived. Through the sense of touch, however, the two poles of the rhythm seem to be much more unified. We can try to test that out by closing our eyes in a quiet space and simply experiencing our attentional activity through the sense of touch. There is really not much of an experiential rhythm as far as I can tell. The meaning perceived through the touch sense is not very differentiated and there is little for us to contemplate, except for hard/soft and rough/smooth (the sense of warmth/cold is considered separate from touch).

Steiner also has a great lecture on the 12 senses that relates the phenomenological experience to the more esoteric understanding of how they are structured - https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA199/En ... 08p01.html

When do we enter the most into ourselves? When, within the general feeling of life, we perceive what we always have as our consciousness in the waking condition; when we perceive that we are; when we experience ourselves inwardly; when we sense that we are we. All this is mediated by the life sense.

Here I have written down for you the twelve senses that constitute the complete sensory system. You can readily see from this that a certain number of our senses are directed more toward the outside, adapted more for penetrating the outer world. When we consider this circle (see drawing) the extent of our sense world, we can say: Ego sense, sense of thinking, word sense, sense of hearing, sense of warmth, sense of sight and sense of taste are the outwardly directed senses. On the other hand, where we predominantly perceive ourselves through the things and where we perceive more the effects of things in us, we have the remaining senses: Life sense, sense of movement, sense of balance, and the senses of touch and smell. They form more the sphere of man's inner being. They are senses that open themselves in an inward direction and, through perception of what is within, transmit to us our relationship to the cosmos (see dark blue area in drawing). Thus, when we have the complete system of the senses we can say: We have seven senses that are directed more toward the outside. The seventh sense is already doubtful — the sense of taste that stands right on the boundary between what refers to the external bodies and what they exercise upon us as an effect. The other five senses are senses that show us completely inward processes taking place within us, which are, however, effects of the external world upon us. Today, I should like to add the following to this systematic arrangement of the senses which is familiar to most of you.

...Just as we penetrate outward through the outer senses, what happens when we now penetrate into our inner nature through the inner senses, the life sense, the sense of movement, of balance, of touch and smell? Here, the matter is very different. Let us write down these inner senses once again: Sense of smell, touch, balance, movement and life. In everyday life, we do not actually perceive what occurs in the realm of these senses; it remains subconscious. What we do perceive with these senses is already radiated upward into the soul.

...Still less do we perceive the inner processes of the sense of touch which, in fact, we project entirely to the outside. We can sense whether bodies are hard or soft, rough or smooth, made of silk or wool. We project the experiences of touch entirely into external space. What we have in the sense of touch is actually an inner experience, but what takes place within remains completely in the subconscious. Only a shadow of it is present in the properties of the sense of touch ascribed to the objects. The organ of the sense of touch, however, causes us to feel whether the things are silken or woolen, hard or soft, rough or smooth. This, too, sends it effects within. It radiates into the soul, but the human being is not aware of the connection of his soul experiences with what the sense of touch attains in touching, because the two aspects are greatly differentiated — namely, what streams to the soul within and what is experienced on the surface outside. What does, however, stream into the soul is nothing else but being permeated with the feeling of God. Without the sense of touch, man would have no feeling for God. What is felt by the sense of touch as roughness and smoothness, hardness and softness, is the element streaming outward. What is turned back as a soul phenomenon is the condition of permeation with universal cosmic substance, with being as such. It is precisely through the sense of touch that we ascertain the existence of the outer world. When we see something, we do not immediately believe that it is indeed present in space; we are convinced of its spatial existence when the sense of touch can grasp it. What permeates all things and penetrates into us also, what holds and bears all of you — this all-pervading substance of God — enters consciousness and is the inwardly reflected experience of the sense of touch.

[Federica]

...
What occurs within us microcosmically is also outspread across the higher-order spaces of existence. We could say the entire duration from the Fall to its fulfillment is like a prolonged thought-distraction within the overarching Divine plan, a daydream that enchanted us. And within the epochs of that Divine plan, the ruling Zeitgeist experiences its own thought-distractions in the forms of war, epidemics, economic depressions, and other such deviations from a smooth fulfillment. Without these distracting flows, the Divine plan would be fulfilled unconsciously, which is not really a fulfillment since the creation becoming ever-more conscious is the plan. It is only through the distracting flows that a differentiation is made between the Divine intent and the subject who is executing that intent. That is why St. Paul speaks of the Law, i.e. the moral structure of natural and cultural forms, as being responsible for sin, that is, for giving us the capacity to become conscious of ourselves through the reflections of our sinful nature. Through those outer forms, we become conscious of ourselves and how feeble we are to carry out Divine intents in our slavery to sin. 
...

Ashvin,

When you zoom out in this way, towards the overarching Divine plan, and I follow your thoughts, inevitably, the excruciating question arises: what is that fulfillment made of, once it’s fulfilled? Why the plan to take the enormous thought-distraction detour that evolution consists of? Why was it needed to disturb the original perfection, through the inception of Time, through Fall, all throughout this agitated path of fulfillment, and back to original perfection again? Not a new question, I know. It seems inseparable from the tension between heights and abyss that is discerned when I try to gain some sense of "overarching Divine plan".

But regarding our human journey towards more consciousness of creation, the blue is echoed in a lively elaboration by MS on the birth of free thinking, that I listened to yesterday. It provides some level of zoom out, in which Ahriman is interestingly depicted in slightly different terms from what I have encountered so far. From the recording of a lecture given on November 28, 1978:


Let’s move on to [reading] “The liberation of thinking as a form of victory on death that petrifies. Thinking, freed from the nervous system, also frees the etheric sphere from the power that furthers its petrification”.
Very powerful, absolutely. The liberation of thinking is an expression we have been using for a long time. Thinking is the free self. Now, it’s all about setting in motion the real thinking, that is, making sure that thinking reveals what it is, that it appears as it truly is. Then, it appears that it’s a free element. In other words, it is that in which spirit realizes itself. Why? Because the spirit - let’s even say the I - only lives through mediations - conscious mediations. When the I finds the exclusively physical mediation, it’s forced to live physically. Behind that, the spirit is pressing. The spirit presses with thought, but thought is bound to the physical, therefore it doesn’t give us spirit. Hence, there has been a long epoch during which - while there was such reflected thought, or dead thought, or thought deprived of life - the memory of spirit was urging, it was pressing. Therefore, everything we find even in spiritual philosophy, was not the conquest of thought connected to the physical, because that one wasn’t mediating anything any longer. It didn’t give anything. Look at the Thomists, look at the Realists. Those philosophers were using thought, but in thought they were inserting a content that was dependent on their ability to still perceive the inner forces of things. Thus, they were using thought, but not as a new way towards the spirit, rather as a form that had to serve the expression of an ancient connection with the spirit that was still preserved in them - because they were more spiritual. Notice, this lasted until modern times, until the limits of the Middle Age.

It’s only when thinking became able to finally make itself independent from the ancient spiritual impulses, that thinking could become an instrument of the I (here, as you know, we should always remember Galileo and all his friends and companions). From that point the possibility emerges that thinking finally reveals itself as that in which the spirit ceases to be bound to the world of senses. Notice, that’s exactly how science was born. When science, for instance, develops in certain forms that start to overcome naive realism, it’s already on a trajectory to overcome the deceit of senses. Then it doesn’t bring it further, because it lacks awareness of what it’s doing. But let’s come back to free thinking.

When this thinking finally begins to acquire autonomy, in order to reveal what it is, then the I finally starts to manifest in another domain. Then it starts to be free, because previously it was imprisoned in the world of senses, which is what we experience on a daily basis. We are continually assaulted, continually conditioned by sensory perceptions, thus we need to meditate in order to have those moments of liberation of thinking. In other words, the I - not anymore the ancient spirit propelled by the memories of the spiritual world - has to form as a spiritual entity in the world, and it starts from the lowest level - the sensory world - in which its self-consciousness awakens. However, it has to realize that the sensory world comes to it through an inner experience of which it has to become conscious. If it does become conscious, then it ranks up. The first step is indeed the step of free thinking, of thinking that sets itself free. That’s when the I begins to live its free being.

This is not our invention. In fact, the spirit is free in the physical world, but it doesn’t realize it. It only realizes it when man finally accomplishes an act that expresses the spirit, because he’s free, because he has initiative. But look what a great detour the I had to take. Because if this I had followed the ancient religious world, the mystical world, let’s say the spiritual world, it would never have had the possibility of a free act. Who gave man the possibility of a free act? Ahriman! Because in Ahriman’s sphere, any possible spiritual handhold is over. It’s gone, materialism has begun. And that’s when man has ceased to submit himself to the suggestions of the memory of the spirit. Until that moment, he had lived on nothing else than memories, and - on the esoteric level - on ancient rites, pentacles, Eliphas Levi... whining, moaning, continual jumps back… then came the Masters of Tradition and that was even worse, because then thinking served the revival of all that is ancient, the return to the Middle Ages,.... and those poor guys, they were all grumbling and moaning, criticizing modern man, etcetera, but they actually didn’t know that it’s exactly through that one has to pass in order to rediscover the spirit.

So we can see that, in the sphere of Ahriman, man finally becomes independent from Lucifer. However, woe betide man if he doesn’t realize what has happened. In which case man becomes the prey of Ahriman, that is: from bad to worse. Still, that was the beginning of the possibility for man of a free act. Why free? Because the act is not anymore suggested by Lucifer, but by Ahriman, the one who tells man “Mess everything up! Wreck it!”. And in the beginning our Doctor speaks positively of this turning everything upside down: Stirner, Nietzsche, Haeckel, the positive element he found in all that evolutionary enquiry is: it’s an act of freedom. And that’s how we come to Goethe. Goethe is great because he's free. He is a scientist and he is a poet. He doesn’t follow the traditional frameworks of science.

So you see, the way is long, but we are getting there. With the Ahrimanic act, human freedom begins. I would say, that was an act of courage of a lower type, nonetheless it's an important courage, because man started to be the examiner of his own inner position. And here comes the Philosophy of Freedom. The Philosophy of Freedom begins exactly at that level, there are no discontinuities, no transcendences. It starts exactly from that Ahrimanic level, and then you see how we ascend. That's how thinking has been set free. Yes… and this is only the very beginning.

[AshvinP]

...
What occurs within us microcosmically is also outspread across the higher-order spaces of existence. We could say the entire duration from the Fall to its fulfillment is like a prolonged thought-distraction within the overarching Divine plan, a daydream that enchanted us. And within the epochs of that Divine plan, the ruling Zeitgeist experiences its own thought-distractions in the forms of war, epidemics, economic depressions, and other such deviations from a smooth fulfillment. Without these distracting flows, the Divine plan would be fulfilled unconsciously, which is not really a fulfillment since the creation becoming ever-more conscious is the plan. It is only through the distracting flows that a differentiation is made between the Divine intent and the subject who is executing that intent. That is why St. Paul speaks of the Law, i.e. the moral structure of natural and cultural forms, as being responsible for sin, that is, for giving us the capacity to become conscious of ourselves through the reflections of our sinful nature. Through those outer forms, we become conscious of ourselves and how feeble we are to carry out Divine intents in our slavery to sin. 
...

Ashvin,

When you zoom out in this way, towards the overarching Divine plan, and I follow your thoughts, inevitably, the excruciating question arises: what is that fulfillment made of, once it’s fulfilled? Why the plan to take the enormous thought-distraction detour that evolution consists of? Why was it needed to disturb the original perfection, through the inception of Time, through Fall, all throughout this agitated path of fulfillment, and back to original perfection again? Not a new question, I know. It seems inseparable from the tension between heights and abyss that is discerned when I try to gain some sense of "overarching Divine plan".

But regarding our human journey towards more consciousness of creation, the blue is echoed in a lively elaboration by MS on the birth of free thinking, that I listened to yesterday. It provides some level of zoom out, in which Ahriman is interestingly depicted in slightly different terms from what I have encountered so far. From the recording of a lecture given on November 28, 1978:
...

Federica,

Indeed that is a central question of our time, which is generally the question of evil. There are many ways to conceptually answer it, and MS points to a lot of them in another great lecture (could you provide the link for those audio lectures?), but as with all questions concerning spiritual reality, the only real and lasting satisfaction arrives through our faith that what comes from fully experiencing the 4th convolution will be more Good, Beautiful, and True than it could possibly be without such experience. It is not 'faith' at the expense of knowledge, but here faith (pistis) means something akin to intuitive certainty that is only possible through knowledge-wisdom. Nevertheless, as we saw in the Tomberg quote, there are periods where the spiritual world remains silent all along this path of knowledge-wisdom, therefore requiring dedicated acts of freely given trust and commitment to our living ideals. The questions concerning the nature of death and evil surrounding us are especially intended to evoke an ascending faith, since it is our lack of faith that maintains evil, and it will only be overcome across the human hierarchy when we all meet 'in the clouds', i.e. in cognitive ascent.

A key consideration is to examine what actually happens when a holistic idea is teased apart into sequential temporal frames and spatial objects. For example, we are only able to speak of cause-and-effect between states of be-ing - thoughts, feelings, desires, perceptions, actions - and their consequences because of our experience of that temporal Maya. We could never develop a genuine moral orientation without that sequential experience because we would have no intuitive sense of how our states influence other states for both ourselves and other beings. Instead, as soon as an intention was willed through us (we would not be willing the intention, but it would be willed through us), that intention would be fulfilled instantaneously. No virtues of humility, meekness, faith, hope, and love could be developed in such a scenario. We also could not build new ideal relationships between the aspects of Be-ing so separated and fixed in spatiotemporal sequence.

It is also important to remember that the pre-Fall state is still with us during the liminal periods of existence that we journey through. Every night and every death-rebirth period we expand into the higher strata of existence untouched by the Fall. Without this experience, we could not actually live and evolve on Earth. Our physical-etheric organism is healed to some extent every night during sleep. Theoretically, if we did not ourselves put up so much resistance to the Divine plan for our lives with our waking consciousness, out of a longing for 'private' experience and 'personal freedom', we could overcome the effects of the Fall in a single incarnation. The fact that this theoretical possibility is never practically realized should be understood as the lawful consequences of our own desires, feelings, and thoughts that continually assert "No" to the question, "Wilt thou be made whole?".

"After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath." (John 5:2)

Jesus' question is, “Do you want to be made whole?”—a passive grammatical construction. Since he knows how long the man has been waiting, it is evident that the question is not about the everyday will, as in, “Would you like to...?” Rather, it is addressed to the primal will of the human being: the decision as to the individual mission with which, and through which, every human being comes to earth. He is saying, “Do you have the primal will that, if it is not lost, admits of no illness?” The word “healthy,” or “well,” or “whole,” means living in the direction of one's primal mission; if you do, no illness can approach you. The answer of the sick man here shows that he does not understand the question; he is speaking out of his everyday consciousness and avoids the question. He neither dares to say, nor can he say, “I will”—not even in terms of everyday consciousness. We have the impression that he actually does not want to alter his situation; he clings to it; the habit-man within him is strong and admits of no change, for every change means risk, and the situation as it has been for 38 years, though painful and unsatisfying, is also familiar and “safe.” If he were to be healed, then his life would be altered in dramatic, unforeseen, risky ways. If we are honest, we would have to answer the Lord's question with a shamefaced but definite “No.”

Kühlewind, Georg. Wilt Thou Be Made Whole? . Lindisfarne Books. Kindle Edition. 

Another consideration is that ideational activity is always begetting more be-ing, life, and form. That is simply the nature of ideational activity, and of course, there is only ideational activity.  When we speak of thought-distractions, unruly passions, compulsions, obsessions, possessions, and such, we are not only speaking of the hierarchies of the 'left', but also streams of beings that we have engendered and have become independent of our I-center to a lesser or greater extent, therefore working at cross-purposes with its higher intents. The be-ings thus created must be given a path of awakening through which they can be raised up to the level of their creators and equally participate in furthering the great chain of Be-ing. All evolution would die out in the lowest common denominator if that were not always happening as well. The Cosmic Organism can ultimately only be as strong as its weakest links. In a similar sense, we can discern that it is not only humans who are being redeemed from the Fall but also humans who are redeeming higher beings from their responsibilities for nurturing and protecting lower beings such as ourselves, which they would otherwise have to continue indefinitely. Without going through the fourth convolution we would remain as wards of the higher worlds, completely dependent on their Love and Grace, incapable of demonstrating our own towards other beings who are in need of it.

But we must not always rely on the Angels to fight for us; they help us only at the beginning, when we ourselves are commencing. With the progress of time, we should arm ourselves for combat. Before we learn to do battle, so that we will consider giving ourselves up to the battles of the Lord, we are succoured by the “princes”, by Angels. Initially, we receive the provision of celestial bread…as long as we are children, we are nourished by milk; when we begin to hold to the word of Christ, we live as children under the authority of tutors and procurators. But when we have tasted the sacraments of celestial militia, when we have nourished ourselves on the bread of life, listen how the apostolic trumpet invites us to combat! It is with a loud voice that Paul cried to us, saying; “Take the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand the wiles of the devil.” He no longer permits us to hide ourselves under the wings of our nurse; he invites us to the fields of battle. “Gird yourself,” he says, “with the breastplate of righteousness, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, and above all the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Ephesians vi, 13-17). (Origen, In libro Judicum, homily vi, 2; ed. Baehrens, pp. 498-500)

Most important is our faith that everything we must endure to reach our consciousness back to the sphere of God was endured by God himself. Nothing becomes manifest within the Earth's organism without first flowing through human I-consciousness, but what was needed to invert the direction of the Fall was entirely beyond human capacity, so God himself became human. All of humanity’s history could then be inwardly known as a preparation for that most mysterious occurrence, and all of humanity's self-conscious future was then made possible by it. And it is only through that future potential of humanity that Christ himself may be redeemed from the sufferings that he voluntarily adopted on our behalf. Since he is now united with our Karma, every painful experience of humanity is now something he must continue to endure until we have been forgiven and freed - which is at the same time a forgiving and freeing of ourselves - from sin. 

[Federica]

Federica,

These are really fruitful topics to explore, since the hierarchical structuring of our senses gives much insight into our evolving relations with spiritual reality. I can't say that it is very intuitively clear for me right now, only a hazy picture.

From a rudimentary phenomenological assessment, it appears the sense of touch/weight resides at the threshold of outer and inner experience, somewhat more attenuated to inner experience and the life of will. Unlike the sense of sight, which can relate our thinking to activity quite far out beyond our personal soul-life, the sense of touch mostly refers us back to the dim feeling of "me" in contrast to the 'outer world'. Even the senses of smell and taste appear to take us further out than touch. The latter is more like the inner sense of balance or movement in that respect. (as an aside, it's interesting to note the correspondence between the sense of balance and the mathematical thinking capacity, which are both connected to the inner ear orientation). We can also notice how the sense of touch is much more indistinct than the outer senses, i.e. it doesn't give as much analytical information about what we are coming into contact with.

We can explore this experientially through the hysteresis process as well. When our attention is merged into the sensory spectrum through the sense of sight, it is much easier to make the distinction between that merging and the oscillation back to contemplating the meaning of what was perceived. Through the sense of touch, however, the two poles of the rhythm seem to be much more unified. We can try to test that out by closing our eyes in a quiet space and simply experiencing our attentional activity through the sense of touch. There is really not much of an experiential rhythm as far as I can tell. The meaning perceived through the touch sense is not very differentiated and there is little for us to contemplate, except for hard/soft and rough/smooth (the sense of warmth/cold is considered separate from touch).

Steiner also has a great lecture on the 12 senses that relates the phenomenological experience to the more esoteric understanding of how they are structured - https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA199/En ... 08p01.html

When do we enter the most into ourselves? When, within the general feeling of life, we perceive what we always have as our consciousness in the waking condition; when we perceive that we are; when we experience ourselves inwardly; when we sense that we are we. All this is mediated by the life sense.

Here I have written down for you the twelve senses that constitute the complete sensory system. You can readily see from this that a certain number of our senses are directed more toward the outside, adapted more for penetrating the outer world. When we consider this circle (see drawing) the extent of our sense world, we can say: Ego sense, sense of thinking, word sense, sense of hearing, sense of warmth, sense of sight and sense of taste are the outwardly directed senses. On the other hand, where we predominantly perceive ourselves through the things and where we perceive more the effects of things in us, we have the remaining senses: Life sense, sense of movement, sense of balance, and the senses of touch and smell. They form more the sphere of man's inner being. They are senses that open themselves in an inward direction and, through perception of what is within, transmit to us our relationship to the cosmos (see dark blue area in drawing). Thus, when we have the complete system of the senses we can say: We have seven senses that are directed more toward the outside. The seventh sense is already doubtful — the sense of taste that stands right on the boundary between what refers to the external bodies and what they exercise upon us as an effect. The other five senses are senses that show us completely inward processes taking place within us, which are, however, effects of the external world upon us. Today, I should like to add the following to this systematic arrangement of the senses which is familiar to most of you.

...Just as we penetrate outward through the outer senses, what happens when we now penetrate into our inner nature through the inner senses, the life sense, the sense of movement, of balance, of touch and smell? Here, the matter is very different. Let us write down these inner senses once again: Sense of smell, touch, balance, movement and life. In everyday life, we do not actually perceive what occurs in the realm of these senses; it remains subconscious. What we do perceive with these senses is already radiated upward into the soul.

...Still less do we perceive the inner processes of the sense of touch which, in fact, we project entirely to the outside. We can sense whether bodies are hard or soft, rough or smooth, made of silk or wool. We project the experiences of touch entirely into external space. What we have in the sense of touch is actually an inner experience, but what takes place within remains completely in the subconscious. Only a shadow of it is present in the properties of the sense of touch ascribed to the objects. The organ of the sense of touch, however, causes us to feel whether the things are silken or woolen, hard or soft, rough or smooth. This, too, sends it effects within. It radiates into the soul, but the human being is not aware of the connection of his soul experiences with what the sense of touch attains in touching, because the two aspects are greatly differentiated — namely, what streams to the soul within and what is experienced on the surface outside. What does, however, stream into the soul is nothing else but being permeated with the feeling of God. Without the sense of touch, man would have no feeling for God. What is felt by the sense of touch as roughness and smoothness, hardness and softness, is the element streaming outward. What is turned back as a soul phenomenon is the condition of permeation with universal cosmic substance, with being as such. It is precisely through the sense of touch that we ascertain the existence of the outer world. When we see something, we do not immediately believe that it is indeed present in space; we are convinced of its spatial existence when the sense of touch can grasp it. What permeates all things and penetrates into us also, what holds and bears all of you — this all-pervading substance of God — enters consciousness and is the inwardly reflected experience of the sense of touch.

Ashvin, thanks for elaborating. I found Steiner’s lecture quite difficult. It directly challenges the die-hard understanding that there’s the physical world, and separate 'behind it', there's the spiritual world. It’s difficult for me to realize how these 12 senses, that are perceptual, also send us smoothly across the threshold, in various ways, as explained. This, for instance, is hard to relate to, experientially:

Mediation through the sense of touch is still more inward, already quite separate from the objects, much more so than it is the case with the sense of smell. When you touch objects, you actually perceive only yourself. You touch an object and if it is hard it presses forcibly on you; if it is soft its pressure is only slight. You perceive nothing of the object, however; you sense only the effect upon yourself, the change in yourself. A hard object pushes your organs far back into you. You perceive this resistance as a change in your own organism when you perceive by means of the sense of touch.

I guess it helps to remember the following, from the same lecture:

You see, there are no atoms out there as materialists imagine. Out there is the world of imaginative, inspired and intuitive elements, and as this world affects us, the impressions of it arise in the outward sense perceptions.

In this connection, another part of Scaligero's lecture I quoted yesterday, is about atoms (November 28, 1978):

You see how we are susceptible to deception, for instance in nuclear inquiry. In nuclear inquiry, at some point they have said no to atoms, not to fall back into Greek atomism, that is, limited by an indivisible entity, a sort of minuscule being that is no longer separable. And so they have established the “elementary particles”, in doing so revealing a limitation of thinking, because they have changed the terminology, but the atom is still there, waiting for them to understand what it is. They still don’t know it.

The day they realize the atom is an ideal entity, a thought-out entity, in the same way that you think out the vital force of a plant... And when you do that you are not going outside of scientific rationalism, because that vital force of a plant is deduced when we observe the daily transformations of the plant: the seed, the germ, the stem, the bud, the flower, etcetera. We deduce the plant’s vital force. In the same way we deduce the atom. But is it possible to operate on a deduction? Heck no. Therein lies the rub, because they don’t realize it’s an etheric entity. We can say that it's an etheric entity. Naturally, it’s an etheric entity that stands close to the physical, as you can intuit when you look at a crystal. The crystal is that physical entity whose etheric body really is the negative-positive, it envelops it, it keeps it within the activity. In the plant however, this etheric element is not there, to be incarnated, but when it does incarnate it’s an imprisoned ether, whilst in crystals it is free. This is why, from a hierarchical perspective, the spiritual entity of a crystal is higher than the one of a plant.

Everything that incarnates falls asleep, decades, down to the animal. The animal is an incarnation of forces. Man is an incarnation of forces, and the maximum level of fall into sleep lives in man, which is the most physicalized being. The animal is less physicalized than man, because the I stands higher. This is why the I, in order to be able to freely operate in man’s head, needs a calcareous concretion, which is found by the epiphysis, in the pineal gland. If that wasn’t there, the I wouldn’t have any chance of freedom in the head, because that is the only spot in which the I is not forced to incarnate - really a minuscule spot. Where is it not forced to incarnate? Where man is able to liberate thinking from the cerebral organ in the head, then finally the I manifests its I-ty, so to say: Maybe… in German: “Ichheit”, here we have it - meaning its “egoity” but this word doesn’t render the meaning. It’s its freedom because it finally has an entity that doesn’t force incarnation, because where it incarnates, it goes to sleep. We are awake, because we push the etheric away from the head. We fall asleep because at a certain point, tired, we finally abandon ourselves and the etheric forces of the head regain possession of the brain, and we fall into sleep. What is thinking that sets itself free? It is thinking that begins to live in the etheric sphere without falling asleep. Hence the dynamics of the etheric. If you think about it, we have been saying these things for 40 years, and it’s always the same thing. Still, you see how it’s also always new, An experience that we need to revise every day.

Now, we have to understand that, when they say “we have discovered the antiproton”, they don't realize it’s a concept. They do the chemistry of concepts, they take a concept, they unite it with another concept… and what’s the result? Experience is the result! It’s like a child when it discovers that potassium chloride and carbon make a bang. Yes there’s a bang, but the child doesn’t know why. Their ability lies in the fact that from nuclear inquiry they derive instruments to generate energy, and that’s great. However, they still don’t know what they are working on, because they ignore the etheric forces. If we don’t finally come to the understanding, to the hypothesis of these forces, you see, we really are in trouble, because this is applicable to everything, to all science, to psychology… How can we do psychology without understanding that the whole basis of willing feeling and thinking happens in the etheric sphere, it needs the etheric body? And it’s the same thing for economics. Economics, by the way, is an utterly difficult spiritual science that requires a subtle thinking, really etherized up to the highest intuition. The possibility to lead an economic organism can only come from thinking that has reached higher than the etheric sphere, that is, the sphere of inspiration and intuition.

[Federica]

MS points to a lot of them in another great lecture (could you provide the link for those audio lectures?)

Sure, this is the link. It's required to create an account on the site, in order to access the audio files. My experience is that the site is a bit unstable. Once you are logged in and on the page of a specific lecture, an audio reader should appear, however, it sometimes appears and sometimes it doesn't. Then I log out and in, refresh, play around, and then usually it works. At the level of the lecture page (conferenza) it is possible for some (but not for all) to download the mp3, by clicking on the square picture at the bottom right. The last lecture and only that one - Jan 23, 1980 - is also uploaded on Rumble, here.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, thanks for elaborating. I found Steiner’s lecture quite difficult. It directly challenges the die-hard understanding that there’s the physical world, and separate 'behind it', there's the spiritual world. It’s difficult for me to realize how these 12 senses, that are perceptual, also send us smoothly across the threshold, in various ways, as explained. This, for instance, is hard to relate to, experientially:

Mediation through the sense of touch is still more inward, already quite separate from the objects, much more so than it is the case with the sense of smell. When you touch objects, you actually perceive only yourself. You touch an object and if it is hard it presses forcibly on you; if it is soft its pressure is only slight. You perceive nothing of the object, however; you sense only the effect upon yourself, the change in yourself. A hard object pushes your organs far back into you. You perceive this resistance as a change in your own organism when you perceive by means of the sense of touch.

I guess it helps to remember the following, from the same lecture:

You see, there are no atoms out there as materialists imagine. Out there is the world of imaginative, inspired and intuitive elements, and as this world affects us, the impressions of it arise in the outward sense perceptions.

Federica, the way I like to think about it is that the birth of higher meaning always requires a death of form. As we discussed before, when we permeate the objects of our sense perception with our concepts, the former become familiar and uninteresting, i.e. their perceptual structures involute as the conceptual meaning evolves out of them. That is how our normal I-activity mines meaning from the perceptual landscape. On the path of higher development, our superconscious I-activity does a similar thing, not only with outer sense impressions but with the sense organs themselves. Just as outer forms of sense perception must be sacrificed for conceptual meaning to be born and perceived, the outer forms of body-soul structures and even capacities must also be sacrificed for imaginative, inspired, and intuitive meaning to be born and perceived. 

Put another way, we are awakening to the higher currents of ideational activity that went into structuring those body-soul organs and capacities to begin with. The former is normally obscured by the functional utility of those organs and capacities, i.e. it had to die out within the latter for us to make use of it for the Earthly context. If we want to reawaken to the higher activity within the spiritual context, the inverse process needs to take place - we need to 'fall asleep' to its functioning within the Earthly context. 

I am reminded of an allegory Cleric once wrote to me. It is also somewhat difficult to approach with our normal ways of thinking, and I can't say I have a very clear inner understanding of these spiritual processes, but perhaps it will help kindle your intuition for them as it does mine. I think what he is speaking of below can be directly related to the spiritual nature of the touch-sense, i.e. the 'kinesthetic' intuition of the thinking-will force.

If the average person finds himself in a stage where the support of the senses and the imaginative substance is taken away, that would be deep sleep. But a mathematician who has developed such deep experience of mathematical thinking will find that he can be still conscious. He'll recognize his existence precisely in such inner transformation of the shape of our intuitive being. He doesn't imagine fingers to count but lives in the 'kinesthetic' intuition of his thinking-will.

This is not simply an analogy. Doing pure mathematical thinking without the support of reflection indeed already places us in a Devachanic state. The difference with true experience of the spiritual world lies in the following. In this state of pure thinking-will, we need something to anchor our self-consciousness. Without this, the state becomes dreamless sleep. The "I" can find that anchor in the experience of the shape of its thinking-will but in a sense it must will something stationary. Normally our body gives us plenty of anchor points for this but here we must provide that anchor point out of ourselves.

In a strange way we need to sacrifice something of ourselves. Allegorically speaking, we have to sacrifice a leg, scrape off the flesh and take the thighbone to use as a yardstick. Imagine this clearly. We're pure thinking-will within boundless thinking-space. Then we take the bone and begin moving as if with our elementary algebra. We place the bone before us and move to its other side. Then we place the bone in a new way and move again. This is exactly as construction problems in geometry (example), where we have to use only a compass and ruler to draw something with strict rules, where every transformation steps firmly on the previous elements. All these Imaginations need to be stripped of their substance and we should remain only with the experience of the thinking-will. The result is that through such thinking gestures we begin to traverse certain cognitive states. The mathematician could change his cognitive states among the invisible gestures for numbers, geometric forms and so on.

Now the critical thing is that we had to kill something in order to have this stable structure. In the same way we have to kill an animal to study its anatomy, then we can arrange the bones. We find these bones consistently every time we look at them. In the same way, by producing from ourselves something dead, we can arrange the most varied skeletons through which our cognitive activity can move. These skeletons have timeless character - as long as we use the same bones, the cognitive states that we can traverse are the same.

[Federica]

Federica,

Indeed that is a central question of our time, which is generally the question of evil. There are many ways to conceptually answer it, and MS points to a lot of them in another great lecture (could you provide the link for those audio lectures?), but as with all questions concerning spiritual reality, the only real and lasting satisfaction arrives through our faith that what comes from fully experiencing the 4th convolution will be more Good, Beautiful, and True than it could possibly be without such experience. It is not 'faith' at the expense of knowledge, but here faith (pistis) means something akin to intuitive certainty that is only possible through knowledge-wisdom. Nevertheless, as we saw in the Tomberg quote, there are periods where the spiritual world remains silent all along this path of knowledge-wisdom, therefore requiring dedicated acts of freely given trust and commitment to our living ideals. The questions concerning the nature of death and evil surrounding us are especially intended to evoke an ascending faith, since it is our lack of faith that maintains evil, and it will only be overcome across the human hierarchy when we all meet 'in the clouds', i.e. in cognitive ascent.

A key consideration is to examine what actually happens when a holistic idea is teased apart into sequential temporal frames and spatial objects. For example, we are only able to speak of cause-and-effect between states of be-ing - thoughts, feelings, desires, perceptions, actions - and their consequences because of our experience of that temporal Maya. We could never develop a genuine moral orientation without that sequential experience because we would have no intuitive sense of how our states influence other states for both ourselves and other beings. Instead, as soon as an intention was willed through us (we would not be willing the intention, but it would be willed through us), that intention would be fulfilled instantaneously. No virtues of humility, meekness, faith, hope, and love could be developed in such a scenario. We also could not build new ideal relationships between the aspects of Be-ing so separated and fixed in spatiotemporal sequence.

It is also important to remember that the pre-Fall state is still with us during the liminal periods of existence that we journey through. Every night and every death-rebirth period we expand into the higher strata of existence untouched by the Fall. Without this experience, we could not actually live and evolve on Earth. Our physical-etheric organism is healed to some extent every night during sleep. Theoretically, if we did not ourselves put up so much resistance to the Divine plan for our lives with our waking consciousness, out of a longing for 'private' experience and 'personal freedom', we could overcome the effects of the Fall in a single incarnation. The fact that this theoretical possibility is never practically realized should be understood as the lawful consequences of our own desires, feelings, and thoughts that continually assert "No" to the question, "Wilt thou be made whole?".

"After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath." (John 5:2)

Jesus' question is, “Do you want to be made whole?”—a passive grammatical construction. Since he knows how long the man has been waiting, it is evident that the question is not about the everyday will, as in, “Would you like to...?” Rather, it is addressed to the primal will of the human being: the decision as to the individual mission with which, and through which, every human being comes to earth. He is saying, “Do you have the primal will that, if it is not lost, admits of no illness?” The word “healthy,” or “well,” or “whole,” means living in the direction of one's primal mission; if you do, no illness can approach you. The answer of the sick man here shows that he does not understand the question; he is speaking out of his everyday consciousness and avoids the question. He neither dares to say, nor can he say, “I will”—not even in terms of everyday consciousness. We have the impression that he actually does not want to alter his situation; he clings to it; the habit-man within him is strong and admits of no change, for every change means risk, and the situation as it has been for 38 years, though painful and unsatisfying, is also familiar and “safe.” If he were to be healed, then his life would be altered in dramatic, unforeseen, risky ways. If we are honest, we would have to answer the Lord's question with a shamefaced but definite “No.”

Kühlewind, Georg. Wilt Thou Be Made Whole? . Lindisfarne Books. Kindle Edition. 

Another consideration is that ideational activity is always begetting more be-ing, life, and form. That is simply the nature of ideational activity, and of course, there is only ideational activity.  When we speak of thought-distractions, unruly passions, compulsions, obsessions, possessions, and such, we are not only speaking of the hierarchies of the 'left', but also streams of beings that we have engendered and have become independent of our I-center to a lesser or greater extent, therefore working at cross-purposes with its higher intents. The be-ings thus created must be given a path of awakening through which they can be raised up to the level of their creators and equally participate in furthering the great chain of Be-ing. All evolution would die out in the lowest common denominator if that were not always happening as well. The Cosmic Organism can ultimately only be as strong as its weakest links. In a similar sense, we can discern that it is not only humans who are being redeemed from the Fall but also humans who are redeeming higher beings from their responsibilities for nurturing and protecting lower beings such as ourselves, which they would otherwise have to continue indefinitely. Without going through the fourth convolution we would remain as wards of the higher worlds, completely dependent on their Love and Grace, incapable of demonstrating our own towards other beings who are in need of it.

But we must not always rely on the Angels to fight for us; they help us only at the beginning, when we ourselves are commencing. With the progress of time, we should arm ourselves for combat. Before we learn to do battle, so that we will consider giving ourselves up to the battles of the Lord, we are succoured by the “princes”, by Angels. Initially, we receive the provision of celestial bread…as long as we are children, we are nourished by milk; when we begin to hold to the word of Christ, we live as children under the authority of tutors and procurators. But when we have tasted the sacraments of celestial militia, when we have nourished ourselves on the bread of life, listen how the apostolic trumpet invites us to combat! It is with a loud voice that Paul cried to us, saying; “Take the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand the wiles of the devil.” He no longer permits us to hide ourselves under the wings of our nurse; he invites us to the fields of battle. “Gird yourself,” he says, “with the breastplate of righteousness, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, and above all the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Ephesians vi, 13-17). (Origen, In libro Judicum, homily vi, 2; ed. Baehrens, pp. 498-500)

Most important is our faith that everything we must endure to reach our consciousness back to the sphere of God was endured by God himself. Nothing becomes manifest within the Earth's organism without first flowing through human I-consciousness, but what was needed to invert the direction of the Fall was entirely beyond human capacity, so God himself became human. All of humanity’s history could then be inwardly known as a preparation for that most mysterious occurrence, and all of humanity's self-conscious future was then made possible by it. And it is only through that future potential of humanity that Christ himself may be redeemed from the sufferings that he voluntarily adopted on our behalf. Since he is now united with our Karma, every painful experience of humanity is now something he must continue to endure until we have been forgiven and freed - which is at the same time a forgiving and freeing of ourselves - from sin. 

Although my question was probably more similar to the question of Telos, not too focused on human destiny this time, your considerations are inspiring, I follow, Ashvin, thanks!

"Wilt thou be made whole?"

I see how we are wired to answer “no” to this question, unless a remarkable amount of intention and work - thinking-will - is put down. The “personal freedom” we tend to fall for reminds me of MS’ words from the other thread:

Whoever conquers freedom to possess it, to identify with it, does not substantially possess it. He can only be free to the extent that he is free from it also, to the extent that he has overcome the condition of attachment to freedom as well. (...) Egoistically and egocentrically inhabiting a certain “freedom” is not Freedom.

Külewind’s psychological interpretation in the passage from the Bible is surprising at first, but I believe I understand how it may come from deeply felt immersion in our human condition of “resistance to the Divine plan”.

streams of beings that we have engendered and have become independent of our I-center to a lesser or greater extent, therefore working at cross-purposes with its higher intents

Yes, I think this is what I was suggesting with the personal example I recently gave, of sabotaging a will exercise.

Most important is our faith that everything we must endure to reach our consciousness back to the sphere of God was endured by God himself. Nothing becomes manifest within the Earth's organism without first flowing through human I-consciousness, but what was needed to invert the direction of the Fall was entirely beyond human capacity, so God himself became human. All of humanity’s history could then be inwardly known as a preparation for that most mysterious occurrence, and all of humanity's self-conscious future was then made possible by it. And it is only through that future potential of humanity that Christ himself may be redeemed from the sufferings that he voluntarily adopted on our behalf. Since he is now united with our Karma, every painful experience of humanity is now something he must continue to endure until we have been forgiven and freed - which is at the same time a forgiving and freeing of ourselves - from sin.

The way you express these thoughts is very encouraging. As you noticed elsewhere, we are so prone to easily forget, and especially in the exact context when we would need to recall certain crucial facts. The words in which these facts are outlined are obviously not neutral, and yours really offer great guidance. Thanks again.

[AshvinP]

Although my question was probably more similar to the question of Telos, not too focused on human destiny this time, your considerations are inspiring, I follow, Ashvin, thanks!

Federica, I'm curious as to how you understand the difference between those - Telos and human destiny? In my mind, they are quite the same, but perhaps I am missing an angle from which to view them as distinguishable.