Massimo Scaligero
Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2023 12:08 am
We have often referred to Scaligero's ideas as complement to various discussions. In this thread, they can be collected as discussion starters, or as simple references. Here is a translation I’ve just jotted down of an article [1] written in 1980.
INITIATIC SYNTHESIS BASED ON SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
Habitual thinking is the passive instrument of the world of senses, emotions, desires and memories. By freeing thinking from this passivity, the force of thinking is realized in the head as part of the etheric organism.
For this purpose, thinking has to transform from the goal of the life of soul terminating in itself, into the instrument of the spirit, the carrier of the spirit. While, on the physical plane, man has to continually form opinions - by thinking about things, about events, about his human relationships - along the initiatic path man has to come to the realization of the uselessness and insignificance of all opinions, of all his thoughts, even the sharpest ones, and feel, by contrast, the pure value of the force of thinking.
It’s about liberating thinking from the distorting influence of the thoughts. “Eliminate the thoughts as dead ash”, says Chuang-Tze.
Then, it is realized that, as physical life is perceived with normal immediacy by the physical senses, so the force of thinking is perceived with even deeper immediacy - once it is liberated from the thoughts - by the individual I, by the being who is found at the center of all perceptions.
Then, I nearly have the experience of the spiritual who thinks in me.
Then, I experience thinking before the thoughts. It expresses itself in me as life of the thinking fabric of the universe, message of Michael, direction in me of the heavenly intelligence (the only force able to win over the current telluric intelligence and redeem the world).
As soon as the etheric brain is felt, the way to the etheric heart is opened (foundation for the announced possibility to encounter the etheric Christ) and the way to feel the thinking of the Macrocosm (Hierarchies) - that operates in us, sustaining all our organic life - is also opened. (Macrocosm = universal shakti; central etheric current = fire of kundalini. Hence, a possibility to understand the metaphysics of Tantra and Aurobindo).
Such organic life is continually disturbed and consumed by the narcissistic life of thoughts, sentiments and instincts, and above all by thought of Luciferic type (intellectualism, abstractism, rationalism). In essence, through the lower life of the ego, although we possess the precondition of I-consciousness, we obstruct the work of the spirit and the Hierarchies in us. This is why the East recommends the separation of Purusha from Prakrti.
Through mind silence, I establish calmness in the world of feelings and instincts also. Then, I-Purusha witness the establishment of metaphysical order in my individuality. This means that my astral, given back to its pure quietness of conscious silence, does not disturb the constructive work of the etheric, thus I can come to perceive the etheric, and through the etheric, the corresponding cosmos.
Thinking consumes cerebral energies that during sleep are given back through the work of the etheric (the Hierarchies, shakti, work in the etheric). The initiatic task is to disconnect thinking from the physical brain, hence to perceive it as disconnected from physical brain - in other words, to perceive the etheric - and let it operate. In essence, it is about letting the brain be in accord with the spiritual ordering that has originally built it.
By insisting in such exercise, at a certain point I realize myself as I. That is, I grasp the author of the activity, because my consciousness is no longer tied to the central nervous system, I self-perceive myself. The I, the Sat-Purusha, emerges. It is like a sun that blossoms in mental silence, a sun that illuminates the plant… Under different conditions, sleep would result. In essence, it is about bringing about those conditions in which the brain rests, like during sleep, while the I is nonetheless present to consciousness.
When the freed force of thinking begins to flow in me, the possibility is given to me to make it encounter the pure perceptions of the sensible world: then, its mystery is revealed.
The knowledge that guides towards the achievement of this clear consciousness and towards the liberation of the etheric from the physical is the knowledge of Michael. When this path is walked, the true magic-solar impulse of time is followed; therefore, one is in communion with Michael. This deeply engages one, it assigns an out-and-out mission in this time, among these people: a mission that results as revolutionary against all the old world that today, in disguise, wants to appear as new.
The plane of normal thought is the plane of the world of the senses (sphere of Ahriman), or of the abstract transcription of this world (sphere of Lucifer). The carrier of conscious thinking leads outside of the luciferic-ahrimanic domain, towards metaphysical freedom (path of Michael, towards the Christ).
In essence, in the experience of conscious thinking, the pure element of will begins to operate: a will exclusively willed by the pure I begins, which is therefore the expression of a world of freedom that is my freedom.
The path of Michael is then the path of pure will, which means conscious. It establishes the germ of action, the secret of action. It’s the beginning of the possibility to operate in the world of instincts and to solve them, up to sexuality. It’s the beginning of the possibility to operate with detachment in the external world, according to the mode of the Bhagavad-Gita.
The world of freedom and clear consciousness that I attain in this way is the realization of the Logos in me: Force, Wisdom and Love are its names on this plane (Sat-Cit-Ananda).
(The path of the seekers of power and the false absolute individuals is the path of the weak, who tries a fast track to become strong, or rather to appear strong. They do nothing else than develop a principle of conscious thought and cold detachment and - instead of accomplishing the process, by pursuing it through the elimination of the deepest demands of the ego - they submit the first obtained outcomes to it, feeding them back into the life of the ego. At best, they manage to appear in the world with traits of increased originality. 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. He possesses it because it enables him to make whatever he wants with it: he sacrifices it to the Big Game, for further conquests, for the liberation of other worlds.)
The absolute in freedom can only be an absolute grounding oneself in the spirit that one is, in one's profound essence: thus, at this point, it is natural and spontaneous to consciously and inexhaustibly irradiate what one is, that is, donation without passion, through the overflowing of serenity and strength that is Love. It is the solar nature. It is the way of Christ. Egoistically and egocentrically inhabiting a certain “freedom” is not Freedom; Thus, it is not the way of Christ.
For clear consciousness to be carried into the world of feeling, it is necessary to start by recognizing the unreality of any human tragedy, comedy or charade, freeing what happens around us from our personal feelings, making them flow in us, before us, until feeling presents itself as a new sphere of knowledge, as the carrier of a consciousness of a more subtle and admirable spiritual world.
Until I take malice, low passions and man's frantic attachment to lower Prakrti seriously; until I feel hurt by injustice and untruthfulness, I am in essence in the sphere of Maya, tricked by Maya. My solar task is to perceive the game of the forces behind the passions.
Realizing, with awe and indulgence, how people are immersed in the play of Maya; in conclusion loving them, because, by seeing beyond, I can find the Christ in them, even though by transcending them. By looking at things with different eyes, I sense the vacuity of uncontrolled feelings: every being is what he is, with his path and karma. By complying to the law that rules him, he continually unfolds the possibility of the situation in which he is immersed, according to a phenomenological objectivity not unlike the one of natural laws. His action can harm me or benefit me, but this is not the criterion by which I have to love him or hate him (nevertheless I don’t have to renounce to know what the power of love is, or the power of hatred).
“The wise man is good with the good ones, good with the evil ones”, says Lao-tze.
In this way, the world of feeling, continually distorted by our personal feelings, is freed from the paralyzing impulses of the ego. In this way, the urging forces of soul are not altered, but reawakened to their original state. When they are not relying on anything other than the translucid purity of a being enlightened in his I-consciousness, they will finally blossom in form of magic spontaneity, not as emotions, but as freed manifestations of heavenly hierarchies who operate in me, and know how they have to operate.
The attainment of such a state is naturally dependent on complete mastery of the world of thoughts. Then the experience of one’s thinking changes radically. One realizes that normal consciousness was not expressing objective thoughts, but was receiving and manifesting the rebounds of deeper energies flowing within the organic life. These energies are now perceived directly, from this side of the mediation of the physical brain.
One of the signs of the attainment of such a possibility is the coincidence of the “I am” with the essence of what I know and realize as true: the reason why a judgment is true consists of its arising by means of the objective quality of the Force of thinking - I recognize it as such. If I come to the point when the true essence of a thing arises in me as an idea, I have come to the place of the essential truth that I am. This truth does not require any explanations other than being itself, having grounding only in itself.
In this way, in my soul, the essence of the world identifies with the essence in me. To the extent that I realize that in myself, I establish in myself a world of freedom: the world of pure intuitions. I can free the sphere of my actions, if I can manifest in my will the same inner position that establishes itself in me when I have consciousness of the birth of these essential-solar intuitions.
Freedom in me can become creative will, by disenchanting the states of precipitation in which the powers of my physical life are convoluted.
In the atmic essence of each existence, the will presents itself as an idea to manifest, an idea about to become concrete, about to fully express its original being. But a lunar power enchants it in its tension towards form, and it paralyzes it, by materializing it in the darkness of existential necessity.
Inadequacy in the face of form sinks principle into manifestation, subject into object. In this way, the original essence is consumed in its manifestation and becomes unconscious movement, automatism, instinct, blind force that mechanically looks for itself in its objects. Such is the essence of nature. Nature is the degradation of the essence of existence, the precipitation of heavenly energies in the identification that leads them to mechanically iterate the act that made them blind in the first place. Thus, the supra-sensible world is enchanted and paralyzed in the physicality of creation.
This physicality is perceived by us as a “become”. We only see it in the last and inexplicable phase of its drama. For us it’s only exterior matter. The heroic task is to release it, to free it. This is dependent on the birth of freedom in me (because it releases conscious will).
By initiating liberation in me, by disentangling myself from the desire that has dominated my thinking-feeling-will so far, I disenchant the etheric in me, down to the depths of will. Then I reconnect with the etheric, and I perceive the world around me in living pictures, that resurrect from the grave of their physicality.
I can then glimpse at how desire arises in me. I realize my corporeal being as a fabric of desire. Going to the origin of this deep flowing of desires, I discover that, in its pure state, it is will. Will itself created the world. To the extent that now I am the one who wills the will, I can find my realization as I, conscious center of my being and my existence.
For this ascent, I do not have to oppose anything with my will. Rather, I have to recognize each of its contingent modifications (desires) in relation to objects. Then, only pure will is acting in me. Pure will is that from which the I is woven. Will with an object, with a content of desire, is ultimately attachment, dispersive fixation. Will without object is free from desire, it stands as self-will. It is initiated through thinking ascesis and feeling ascesis. It is deepened through this self-will, that radically solves every desire, and rediscovers them in their true essence, that is, pure will. From here, the overcoming of sexuality can also originate, as radical reabsorption of what sexuality is as a creative force. It is the desire that substantiates my being born as a physical creature.
Realizing the pure will, I am at the threshold of initiation.
I exist, not because I now want it, but because I wanted it in a state that transcends this one in which I exist. The true force of will, to which I can say I am a stranger, is that which asserts itself at the origin of my corporeal being, expressing itself through all the organic processes in which my consciousness is sleeping.
Ultimately, the task is to find again the origin of this will. Firstly through the search of the profound energies of thinking, and then by establishing oneself in the will, so as to extract it from the sphere of desire. In this way the origin of will can express its true nature, its divine nature, in me, revealing itself as the power of Logos in me. To this end, it is necessary that the normal ego is completely under control, if not yet resolved in me.
The process can be said to be complete when I can affirm: “Not me, but Christ in me!”
Now I will the will at its origin - the will that previously willed me, deviating in blind impulses and contradictions in every aspect of my physical being. In this way, the will becomes force of my self-perceiving and self-realizing as a spiritual being in a reality that is no longer only physical.
***
[1] Thanks to Piero Cammerinesi for making the original document freely available to the public at Libero Pensare.
.
INITIATIC SYNTHESIS BASED ON SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
Habitual thinking is the passive instrument of the world of senses, emotions, desires and memories. By freeing thinking from this passivity, the force of thinking is realized in the head as part of the etheric organism.
For this purpose, thinking has to transform from the goal of the life of soul terminating in itself, into the instrument of the spirit, the carrier of the spirit. While, on the physical plane, man has to continually form opinions - by thinking about things, about events, about his human relationships - along the initiatic path man has to come to the realization of the uselessness and insignificance of all opinions, of all his thoughts, even the sharpest ones, and feel, by contrast, the pure value of the force of thinking.
It’s about liberating thinking from the distorting influence of the thoughts. “Eliminate the thoughts as dead ash”, says Chuang-Tze.
Then, it is realized that, as physical life is perceived with normal immediacy by the physical senses, so the force of thinking is perceived with even deeper immediacy - once it is liberated from the thoughts - by the individual I, by the being who is found at the center of all perceptions.
Then, I nearly have the experience of the spiritual who thinks in me.
Then, I experience thinking before the thoughts. It expresses itself in me as life of the thinking fabric of the universe, message of Michael, direction in me of the heavenly intelligence (the only force able to win over the current telluric intelligence and redeem the world).
As soon as the etheric brain is felt, the way to the etheric heart is opened (foundation for the announced possibility to encounter the etheric Christ) and the way to feel the thinking of the Macrocosm (Hierarchies) - that operates in us, sustaining all our organic life - is also opened. (Macrocosm = universal shakti; central etheric current = fire of kundalini. Hence, a possibility to understand the metaphysics of Tantra and Aurobindo).
Such organic life is continually disturbed and consumed by the narcissistic life of thoughts, sentiments and instincts, and above all by thought of Luciferic type (intellectualism, abstractism, rationalism). In essence, through the lower life of the ego, although we possess the precondition of I-consciousness, we obstruct the work of the spirit and the Hierarchies in us. This is why the East recommends the separation of Purusha from Prakrti.
Through mind silence, I establish calmness in the world of feelings and instincts also. Then, I-Purusha witness the establishment of metaphysical order in my individuality. This means that my astral, given back to its pure quietness of conscious silence, does not disturb the constructive work of the etheric, thus I can come to perceive the etheric, and through the etheric, the corresponding cosmos.
Thinking consumes cerebral energies that during sleep are given back through the work of the etheric (the Hierarchies, shakti, work in the etheric). The initiatic task is to disconnect thinking from the physical brain, hence to perceive it as disconnected from physical brain - in other words, to perceive the etheric - and let it operate. In essence, it is about letting the brain be in accord with the spiritual ordering that has originally built it.
By insisting in such exercise, at a certain point I realize myself as I. That is, I grasp the author of the activity, because my consciousness is no longer tied to the central nervous system, I self-perceive myself. The I, the Sat-Purusha, emerges. It is like a sun that blossoms in mental silence, a sun that illuminates the plant… Under different conditions, sleep would result. In essence, it is about bringing about those conditions in which the brain rests, like during sleep, while the I is nonetheless present to consciousness.
When the freed force of thinking begins to flow in me, the possibility is given to me to make it encounter the pure perceptions of the sensible world: then, its mystery is revealed.
The knowledge that guides towards the achievement of this clear consciousness and towards the liberation of the etheric from the physical is the knowledge of Michael. When this path is walked, the true magic-solar impulse of time is followed; therefore, one is in communion with Michael. This deeply engages one, it assigns an out-and-out mission in this time, among these people: a mission that results as revolutionary against all the old world that today, in disguise, wants to appear as new.
The plane of normal thought is the plane of the world of the senses (sphere of Ahriman), or of the abstract transcription of this world (sphere of Lucifer). The carrier of conscious thinking leads outside of the luciferic-ahrimanic domain, towards metaphysical freedom (path of Michael, towards the Christ).
In essence, in the experience of conscious thinking, the pure element of will begins to operate: a will exclusively willed by the pure I begins, which is therefore the expression of a world of freedom that is my freedom.
The path of Michael is then the path of pure will, which means conscious. It establishes the germ of action, the secret of action. It’s the beginning of the possibility to operate in the world of instincts and to solve them, up to sexuality. It’s the beginning of the possibility to operate with detachment in the external world, according to the mode of the Bhagavad-Gita.
The world of freedom and clear consciousness that I attain in this way is the realization of the Logos in me: Force, Wisdom and Love are its names on this plane (Sat-Cit-Ananda).
(The path of the seekers of power and the false absolute individuals is the path of the weak, who tries a fast track to become strong, or rather to appear strong. They do nothing else than develop a principle of conscious thought and cold detachment and - instead of accomplishing the process, by pursuing it through the elimination of the deepest demands of the ego - they submit the first obtained outcomes to it, feeding them back into the life of the ego. At best, they manage to appear in the world with traits of increased originality. 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. He possesses it because it enables him to make whatever he wants with it: he sacrifices it to the Big Game, for further conquests, for the liberation of other worlds.)
The absolute in freedom can only be an absolute grounding oneself in the spirit that one is, in one's profound essence: thus, at this point, it is natural and spontaneous to consciously and inexhaustibly irradiate what one is, that is, donation without passion, through the overflowing of serenity and strength that is Love. It is the solar nature. It is the way of Christ. Egoistically and egocentrically inhabiting a certain “freedom” is not Freedom; Thus, it is not the way of Christ.
For clear consciousness to be carried into the world of feeling, it is necessary to start by recognizing the unreality of any human tragedy, comedy or charade, freeing what happens around us from our personal feelings, making them flow in us, before us, until feeling presents itself as a new sphere of knowledge, as the carrier of a consciousness of a more subtle and admirable spiritual world.
Until I take malice, low passions and man's frantic attachment to lower Prakrti seriously; until I feel hurt by injustice and untruthfulness, I am in essence in the sphere of Maya, tricked by Maya. My solar task is to perceive the game of the forces behind the passions.
Realizing, with awe and indulgence, how people are immersed in the play of Maya; in conclusion loving them, because, by seeing beyond, I can find the Christ in them, even though by transcending them. By looking at things with different eyes, I sense the vacuity of uncontrolled feelings: every being is what he is, with his path and karma. By complying to the law that rules him, he continually unfolds the possibility of the situation in which he is immersed, according to a phenomenological objectivity not unlike the one of natural laws. His action can harm me or benefit me, but this is not the criterion by which I have to love him or hate him (nevertheless I don’t have to renounce to know what the power of love is, or the power of hatred).
“The wise man is good with the good ones, good with the evil ones”, says Lao-tze.
In this way, the world of feeling, continually distorted by our personal feelings, is freed from the paralyzing impulses of the ego. In this way, the urging forces of soul are not altered, but reawakened to their original state. When they are not relying on anything other than the translucid purity of a being enlightened in his I-consciousness, they will finally blossom in form of magic spontaneity, not as emotions, but as freed manifestations of heavenly hierarchies who operate in me, and know how they have to operate.
The attainment of such a state is naturally dependent on complete mastery of the world of thoughts. Then the experience of one’s thinking changes radically. One realizes that normal consciousness was not expressing objective thoughts, but was receiving and manifesting the rebounds of deeper energies flowing within the organic life. These energies are now perceived directly, from this side of the mediation of the physical brain.
One of the signs of the attainment of such a possibility is the coincidence of the “I am” with the essence of what I know and realize as true: the reason why a judgment is true consists of its arising by means of the objective quality of the Force of thinking - I recognize it as such. If I come to the point when the true essence of a thing arises in me as an idea, I have come to the place of the essential truth that I am. This truth does not require any explanations other than being itself, having grounding only in itself.
In this way, in my soul, the essence of the world identifies with the essence in me. To the extent that I realize that in myself, I establish in myself a world of freedom: the world of pure intuitions. I can free the sphere of my actions, if I can manifest in my will the same inner position that establishes itself in me when I have consciousness of the birth of these essential-solar intuitions.
Freedom in me can become creative will, by disenchanting the states of precipitation in which the powers of my physical life are convoluted.
In the atmic essence of each existence, the will presents itself as an idea to manifest, an idea about to become concrete, about to fully express its original being. But a lunar power enchants it in its tension towards form, and it paralyzes it, by materializing it in the darkness of existential necessity.
Inadequacy in the face of form sinks principle into manifestation, subject into object. In this way, the original essence is consumed in its manifestation and becomes unconscious movement, automatism, instinct, blind force that mechanically looks for itself in its objects. Such is the essence of nature. Nature is the degradation of the essence of existence, the precipitation of heavenly energies in the identification that leads them to mechanically iterate the act that made them blind in the first place. Thus, the supra-sensible world is enchanted and paralyzed in the physicality of creation.
This physicality is perceived by us as a “become”. We only see it in the last and inexplicable phase of its drama. For us it’s only exterior matter. The heroic task is to release it, to free it. This is dependent on the birth of freedom in me (because it releases conscious will).
By initiating liberation in me, by disentangling myself from the desire that has dominated my thinking-feeling-will so far, I disenchant the etheric in me, down to the depths of will. Then I reconnect with the etheric, and I perceive the world around me in living pictures, that resurrect from the grave of their physicality.
I can then glimpse at how desire arises in me. I realize my corporeal being as a fabric of desire. Going to the origin of this deep flowing of desires, I discover that, in its pure state, it is will. Will itself created the world. To the extent that now I am the one who wills the will, I can find my realization as I, conscious center of my being and my existence.
For this ascent, I do not have to oppose anything with my will. Rather, I have to recognize each of its contingent modifications (desires) in relation to objects. Then, only pure will is acting in me. Pure will is that from which the I is woven. Will with an object, with a content of desire, is ultimately attachment, dispersive fixation. Will without object is free from desire, it stands as self-will. It is initiated through thinking ascesis and feeling ascesis. It is deepened through this self-will, that radically solves every desire, and rediscovers them in their true essence, that is, pure will. From here, the overcoming of sexuality can also originate, as radical reabsorption of what sexuality is as a creative force. It is the desire that substantiates my being born as a physical creature.
Realizing the pure will, I am at the threshold of initiation.
I exist, not because I now want it, but because I wanted it in a state that transcends this one in which I exist. The true force of will, to which I can say I am a stranger, is that which asserts itself at the origin of my corporeal being, expressing itself through all the organic processes in which my consciousness is sleeping.
Ultimately, the task is to find again the origin of this will. Firstly through the search of the profound energies of thinking, and then by establishing oneself in the will, so as to extract it from the sphere of desire. In this way the origin of will can express its true nature, its divine nature, in me, revealing itself as the power of Logos in me. To this end, it is necessary that the normal ego is completely under control, if not yet resolved in me.
The process can be said to be complete when I can affirm: “Not me, but Christ in me!”
Now I will the will at its origin - the will that previously willed me, deviating in blind impulses and contradictions in every aspect of my physical being. In this way, the will becomes force of my self-perceiving and self-realizing as a spiritual being in a reality that is no longer only physical.
***
[1] Thanks to Piero Cammerinesi for making the original document freely available to the public at Libero Pensare.
.