Symbolic thinking, Anthroposophy and Transhumanism

[Federica]

I follow the general logic in your post, how we differentiate to reunite, and thanks for recalling that great post by Cleric. On the other hand, I don’t feel that

Our meditation is only possible because we have a physical body, a physical landscape of physical elements, and cultural institutions that provide us with wealth, health, and safety.

My sense is that meditation is possible despite our body, since it is a striving towards dying before death, and after physical death it’s a continual meditation state, as I understand it. Also I don’t see that cultural institutions provide us with health and wealth. At best, they provide us with safety (and even this is very disputable). They certainly do not provide us with health. And when it comes to wealth, for example Scaligero speaks of our cultural institutions and what they provide us with, in the lecture of Dec 9, 1978 I have reported in this thread:

Judas redeemed that betrayal. Judas has been forgiven. However, the betrayal continues, because man is put in a position where he lives only on bread. In other words, he has organized human society [=cultural institutions] on the sole grounds of economic value, when the highest problems are economic problems, the highest theme is money, value. One comes to a state of constant preoccupation about this money, this bread. Such a process has been set up for all people in the world. The most dramatic power now dominating man is indeed this drama of survival, of obtaining the daily bread. Daily bread means job, money, shelter. With the excuse of saving man from the authoritarian powers - for example from capital, from wage - man is relegated to a state of dependency on the most subtle economic processes, that really equal a betrayal of man. It is a new betrayal that really affects man, an everyday betrayal.

[Federica]

I feel that you started this whole discussion on Linnell with an unwarranted presumption. That is, the presumption that I had not worked through many of Linnell's videos already (including all the ones referenced on this thread), noticed all the concerning objections you are raising (so I perfectly understand why they are concerning, especially the way he speaks about it), thought through them in the light of my own intuitive experience and knowledge of spiritual science, and decided there is no fundamental incompatibility with the path of intuitive thinking, and moreover found that my intuitive understanding was illuminated by working through the content. I don't bring this up, however, because I would either like you to work through them in the same way or to at least work your way to a realization that your initial judgments are based on many presumptions and should be put on pause until you can work further through the content, let it sit patiently in your consciousness, view the issues from more angles, consult more writings by Steiner, etc. 

It is actually not exactly as you felt. When you recommended that I watch the first video about mythology, I was thankful and very open to an inspiring experience. I was expecting a great video. It’s only upon actually watching it that my positivity got progressively undermined by various signs, only to plummet completely after researching additional material. The presumption I formed was my way to provide you with an excuse for praising that material. So I didn’t start the whole discussion with that presumption, but I formed it because it didn't make sense to me that you were supporting all that.

That is what you have the most difficult time doing right now, as evidenced on several other threads, and I can offer no apologies for trying to point that out to you. What I can apologize for is the way I tried to point that out to you, which was probably much less than ideal. But the underlying issue remains the same and I suspect it will continue to recur unless it is confronted. It is mostly an expression of intellectual pride and that is something we all have to deal with on the esoteric path, because we are constantly at risk of inflating that pride as we gain new insights and become more familiar with esoteric realities. We feel like it is suddenly easy to know who is on 'our side' and who is working against living thinking. Developing higher cognition does not necessarily make it go away. It is not even a risk so much as a certainty, but we can do our best to remind ourselves of this Luciferic tendency that we lean into on the path of higher thinking and stay on top of it through the power of the humble, faithful, trusting, forgiving, and redemptive Christ impulse. 

I have to point out that I never asked for your apologies for pointing out things to me. In fact, I never asked for your apologies of any kind, neither do I think they were needed. I asked you to stop rewriting my thoughts and feelings, and I asked for a clear explanation of how your statements were not plain contradictory. In general, I don't ask for apologies, because apologies are beneficial for the one who expresses them, not so much for the one who receives them, who should not depend on receiving them in order to feel pacified, or respected, and if excuses are given upon request, they lose almost all of their beneficial value.
Other than that, I think that what you say is correct and relevant. I certainly do not possess the state of inner calm and equanimity that is the mark of mature spiritual development, and I am definitely under the influence of sympathies and antipathies, I clearly know that. Yes, I recognize I have a level of intellectual pride and some identification with my intellectual thoughts as well, plus some other things. Your pointing is helpful, as it prompts me to ponder these issues in a more direct and urgent way. I thank you for that, I do attach a big value to that.

[AshvinP]

I follow the general logic in your post, how we differentiate to reunite, and thanks for recalling that great post by Cleric. On the other hand, I don’t feel that

Our meditation is only possible because we have a physical body, a physical landscape of physical elements, and cultural institutions that provide us with wealth, health, and safety.

My sense is that meditation is possible despite our body, since it is a striving towards dying before death, and after physical death it’s a continual meditation state, as I understand it. Also I don’t see that cultural institutions provide us with health and wealth. At best, they provide us with safety (and even this is very disputable). They certainly do not provide us with health. And when it comes to wealth, for example Scaligero speaks of our cultural institutions and what they provide us with, in the lecture of Dec 9, 1978 I have reported in this thread:

Judas redeemed that betrayal. Judas has been forgiven. However, the betrayal continues, because man is put in a position where he lives only on bread. In other words, he has organized human society [=cultural institutions] on the sole grounds of economic value, when the highest problems are economic problems, the highest theme is money, value. One comes to a state of constant preoccupation about this money, this bread. Such a process has been set up for all people in the world. The most dramatic power now dominating man is indeed this drama of survival, of obtaining the daily bread. Daily bread means job, money, shelter. With the excuse of saving man from the authoritarian powers - for example from capital, from wage - man is relegated to a state of dependency on the most subtle economic processes, that really equal a betrayal of man. It is a new betrayal that really affects man, an everyday betrayal.

Federica,

We need to be clear on the general principle involved i.e. that spiritual activity only becomes progressively conscious of itself by working through the manifest realms that were also woven through spiritual activity. We should get in the habit of sensing how these principles orient us toward the Heliocentric perspective from which all the complexities of the manifest realms can gradually find their proper places. These are inviolable principles that structure reality as we experience it extending through time. Once we work towards a reasoned faith in these principles i.e. an inner certainty that they are the core structure of our evolutionary stream, then our inquiries are much more simplified, so to speak - they are oriented towards getting a better intuitive sense of how the complexities of experience fulfill the intentions of those principles. We are much less tempted to discount or write off any aspect of the manifest realm, such as the physical plane or physical body, or cultural institutions. But instead, any difficulties encountered with such complexities are experienced as being the result of our not having reached the corresponding depth where they are made transparent to us. That really helps avoid premature conclusions that otherwise get in the way of us exploring the depths.

With regard to our cultural institutions, we have to remember that it is our spiritual activity that is embedded in them. So it is all spiritual activity and we shouldn't feel like we are speaking of some external source that provides us health, wealth, safety, and so forth. It is what we thought into existence in prior epochs and centuries in anticipation of the future tasks ahead of us (with feedback from higher initiates and angelic beings). That is even true with regard to the natural kingdoms, but it's much more obvious to our intellect in the domain of culture. Without modern cultural institutions, we wouldn't have the opportunities and professions that we have which allow us to easily acquire the necessities of existence and maintain a certain standard of living by which we can devote our free time to spiritual striving. And without modern technology, we wouldn't have nearly the resources and opportunities for spiritual development that we now have. Modern medicine and rule of law has made it so we are able to live much longer into adulthood than our ancestors as a rule. These are simple facts. Of course, human culture has not arrived at its finished form yet and is in fact in its infancy. The future stages of its life will have to outgrow childish and adolescent selfish tendencies and work towards organizing society in a morally responsible, mutually supportive way. If it doesn't, then over time the institutions will degenerate and act counterproductively as we already see in some domains. It will have to arrive at the following principle of social organization by the 6th post-Atlantean epoch, as Steiner anticipates (and St. Paul anticipated well before Marx and Engels).

"But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that there abundance also may be a supply for your want; that there may be equality. As it is written, he that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack." (2 Corinthians 8)

With regard to the physical body, we are again pointing to simple facts of experience. Without a physical body, a brain, and the capacity for mental picturing and verbal concepts, we wouldn't be able to start any meditation and focus on an object-theme. We also wouldn't be able to bring the intuitive experiences of meditation into concrete insights that can illuminate our understanding and be shared with others without returning to the physical plane and utilizing our physical instrument. We wouldn't be able to repeatedly engage in meditations across time, gradually working out our imperfections. We wouldn't be able to engage in deeds of love, compassion, charity, and so forth by which alone the highest spiritual development becomes possible. So we really need to keep all these diverse aspects of our living experiences in mind when trying to attain a holistic orientation toward spiritual evolution. It always helps to keep the central Christ events as a holistic image of the entire course of future Earthly evolution. Most of those events occurred on and through the physical plane. God chose to become human on the physical plane for a reason.

It is true that we are seeking to loosen our thinking capacity from the physical organism during meditation but the function served by the physical plane and organism is being raised to higher bodily levels, I.e. the etheric and astral bodies. The resistance met by our spiritual activity becomes of a higher nature and therefore we are able to remain conscious in the higher worlds and receptive to higher ideations. Nevertheless, the overall context for our evolutionary stage is still the physical plane and that is why we always return to it after meditation, after sleep, and after death. That will continue for some time, precisely until the physical plane is spiritualized through our sacrificial and creative spiritual activity (future Jupiter). Until then, our task is to harmonize our activity across the planes of existence, as Cleric nicely describes in his latest fourfolding illustration post:


viewtopic.php?p=20939#p20939

The stages of higher cognition can be likened to the unfolding of the folds. For example, we attain to the Imaginative stage when we, so to speak, unfold the Earthly convolution and find ourselves in a state similar to the Moon condition. Normally the interference of the Moon sheets are the basis for the Moiré patterns that form our Earthly consciousness. We’re barely conscious of this deeper soul life in the present age. But if we unfold the Earthly folding, then we glimpse at something of our higher being, which has its self-consciousness in the Moon sheets. At that level, spiritual activity weaves in the soul strata as consciously as we do that with our thoughts in the Earth condition. Similarly, unfolding the other foldings leads us to the stages of Inspirative and Intuitive consciousness.

Of course, this unfolding is not yet the true unfolding which will only happen in the long course of evolution. The four folds for our Earthly being are present at all times while we’re in deep meditation. Then how is higher cognition possible? It is possible through harmonizing the spiritual activity at the different folds. In modern man these folds are quite out of tune. They are like independent pendulums, producing the most bizarre Moiré patterns. We think one thing, our heart desires another, our will does third. Higher development consists in the fully conscious and strenuous alignment of these pendulums. Thus we need to bring the fourth fold (in which we’re most conscious) in full attunement to the third such that they move as one so to speak. They are still distinct but are temporarily synchronized. The fourth fold sacrifices itself and allows to be moved by the sheet of the third. This is also what allows for the intellectual self to have consciousness of the higher realms because it is not simply destroyed but it becomes resonantly attuned to the movements of the deeper folds. When we experience these higher movements and corresponding higher intuitions, they evoke images, analogies, metaphors in the intellectual fold. Of course, this process of attunement is not linear. We always have to work on the perfection of all folds simultaneously because they are interdependent. 

Likewise, Steiner speaks of how the whole physical plane and what was experienced there becomes our 'reflecting apparatus' between death and rebirth. We are only able to remain conscious in the highest spheres of that existence to the extent that we have thoroughly worked through the natural and cultural phenomena of the physical plane in a moral and redemptive way. So, in that sense, our physical body which is the instrument for concrete interaction with beings on the physical plane plays a vital role in our capacity for the highest possible evolution between incarnations. The rhythmic interplay of the spiritual and physical poles is always present during the process of Earthly-Cosmic evolution in one form or another. We simply need to expand our intuitive resonance and investigate the living details to gradually unveil the manifold ways in which that is true.

[Federica]

Federica,

We need to be clear on the general principle involved i.e. that spiritual activity only becomes progressively conscious of itself by working through the manifest realms that were also woven through spiritual activity. We should get in the habit of sensing how these principles orient us toward the Heliocentric perspective from which all the complexities of the manifest realms can gradually find their proper places. These are inviolable principles that structure reality as we experience it extending through time. Once we work towards a reasoned faith in these principles i.e. an inner certainty that they are the core structure of our evolutionary stream, then our inquiries are much more simplified, so to speak - they are oriented towards getting a better intuitive sense of how the complexities of experience fulfill the intentions of those principles. We are much less tempted to discount or write off any aspect of the manifest realm, such as the physical plane or physical body, or cultural institutions. But instead, any difficulties encountered with such complexities are experienced as being the result of our not having reached the corresponding depth where they are made transparent to us. That really helps avoid premature conclusions that otherwise get in the way of us exploring the depths.

With regard to our cultural institutions, we have to remember that it is our spiritual activity that is embedded in them. So it is all spiritual activity and we shouldn't feel like we are speaking of some external source that provides us health, wealth, safety, and so forth. It is what we thought into existence in prior epochs and centuries in anticipation of the future tasks ahead of us (with feedback from higher initiates and angelic beings). That is even true with regard to the natural kingdoms, but it's much more obvious to our intellect in the domain of culture. Without modern cultural institutions, we wouldn't have the opportunities and professions that we have which allow us to easily acquire the necessities of existence and maintain a certain standard of living by which we can devote our free time to spiritual striving. And without modern technology, we wouldn't have nearly the resources and opportunities for spiritual development that we now have. Modern medicine and rule of law has made it so we are able to live much longer into adulthood than our ancestors as a rule. These are simple facts. Of course, human culture has not arrived at its finished form yet and is in fact in its infancy. The future stages of its life will have to outgrow childish and adolescent selfish tendencies and work towards organizing society in a morally responsible, mutually supportive way. If it doesn't, then over time the institutions will degenerate and act counterproductively as we already see in some domains. It will have to arrive at the following principle of social organization by the 6th post-Atlantean epoch, as Steiner anticipates (and St. Paul anticipated well before Marx and Engels).

"But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that there abundance also may be a supply for your want; that there may be equality. As it is written, he that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack." (2 Corinthians 8)

With regard to the physical body, we are again pointing to simple facts of experience. Without a physical body, a brain, and the capacity for mental picturing and verbal concepts, we wouldn't be able to start any meditation and focus on an object-theme. We also wouldn't be able to bring the intuitive experiences of meditation into concrete insights that can illuminate our understanding and be shared with others without returning to the physical plane and utilizing our physical instrument. We wouldn't be able to repeatedly engage in meditations across time, gradually working out our imperfections. We wouldn't be able to engage in deeds of love, compassion, charity, and so forth by which alone the highest spiritual development becomes possible. So we really need to keep all these diverse aspects of our living experiences in mind when trying to attain a holistic orientation toward spiritual evolution. It always helps to keep the central Christ events as a holistic image of the entire course of future Earthly evolution. Most of those events occurred on and through the physical plane. God chose to become human on the physical plane for a reason.

It is true that we are seeking to loosen our thinking capacity from the physical organism during meditation but the function served by the physical plane and organism is being raised to higher bodily levels, I.e. the etheric and astral bodies. The resistance met by our spiritual activity becomes of a higher nature and therefore we are able to remain conscious in the higher worlds and receptive to higher ideations. Nevertheless, the overall context for our evolutionary stage is still the physical plane and that is why we always return to it after meditation, after sleep, and after death. That will continue for some time, precisely until the physical plane is spiritualized through our sacrificial and creative spiritual activity (future Jupiter). Until then, our task is to harmonize our activity across the planes of existence, as Cleric nicely describes in his latest fourfolding illustration post:


viewtopic.php?p=20939#p20939

The stages of higher cognition can be likened to the unfolding of the folds. For example, we attain to the Imaginative stage when we, so to speak, unfold the Earthly convolution and find ourselves in a state similar to the Moon condition. Normally the interference of the Moon sheets are the basis for the Moiré patterns that form our Earthly consciousness. We’re barely conscious of this deeper soul life in the present age. But if we unfold the Earthly folding, then we glimpse at something of our higher being, which has its self-consciousness in the Moon sheets. At that level, spiritual activity weaves in the soul strata as consciously as we do that with our thoughts in the Earth condition. Similarly, unfolding the other foldings leads us to the stages of Inspirative and Intuitive consciousness.

Of course, this unfolding is not yet the true unfolding which will only happen in the long course of evolution. The four folds for our Earthly being are present at all times while we’re in deep meditation. Then how is higher cognition possible? It is possible through harmonizing the spiritual activity at the different folds. In modern man these folds are quite out of tune. They are like independent pendulums, producing the most bizarre Moiré patterns. We think one thing, our heart desires another, our will does third. Higher development consists in the fully conscious and strenuous alignment of these pendulums. Thus we need to bring the fourth fold (in which we’re most conscious) in full attunement to the third such that they move as one so to speak. They are still distinct but are temporarily synchronized. The fourth fold sacrifices itself and allows to be moved by the sheet of the third. This is also what allows for the intellectual self to have consciousness of the higher realms because it is not simply destroyed but it becomes resonantly attuned to the movements of the deeper folds. When we experience these higher movements and corresponding higher intuitions, they evoke images, analogies, metaphors in the intellectual fold. Of course, this process of attunement is not linear. We always have to work on the perfection of all folds simultaneously because they are interdependent. 

Likewise, Steiner speaks of how the whole physical plane and what was experienced there becomes our 'reflecting apparatus' between death and rebirth. We are only able to remain conscious in the highest spheres of that existence to the extent that we have thoroughly worked through the natural and cultural phenomena of the physical plane in a moral and redemptive way. So, in that sense, our physical body which is the instrument for concrete interaction with beings on the physical plane plays a vital role in our capacity for the highest possible evolution between incarnations. The rhythmic interplay of the spiritual and physical poles is always present during the process of Earthly-Cosmic evolution in one form or another. We simply need to expand our intuitive resonance and investigate the living details to gradually unveil the manifold ways in which that is true.

Aaashvin

Let me say that I highly appreciate the way you describe these foundational principles. This post is helpful to consolidate understanding, and I am sure, not only for me. However, I have to add that I don’t find anything new, anything that was not understood, in these elaborations, and have a few small remarks to make. I have been reminded today, by listening to the latest reading from Steiner Audio Press, that our spiritual development is highly individual, as also Cleric has regularly hinted to - that we all have a unique perspective due to our unique ‘position’ in the network of cosmic interrelations. Sometimes I receive the impression that you are not very open to allow for that leeway and that angle.

So we are clear on the general principles involved, and that we cannot “write off” physical body and cultural institutions. I don’t write them off. Certainly in the future they will provide us with wealth and health, as prefigured by Steiner, Beinsa Douno, Saint Paul, and many other higher individualities. But this is simply not the case today. This is the simple fact of reality, and you cannot just think our cultural institutions redeemed, by the act of your spiritual activity.
It is simply not true that cultural institutions today “allow us to easily acquire the necessities of existence and maintain a certain standard of living”. You can’t write off the fact that for 99% of humanity today this task is absolutely not easy, which is a burning societal and spiritual problem of our current civilization, as pointed out by Scaligero in the quote I shared, that you have ignored by the way.

This is not to say that I forget that our spiritual activity is embedded in the context of our institutions. I know that, and not only in a theoretical way. Also, there is no need to bash again about technology and how it gives us unprecedented access to opportunities for spiritual development. Nobody is challenging that. As I recognized a long time ago:

I should clarify here that I personally don’t have any negative orientation to digital technology. I know it’s here to stay and that it’s not to be eliminated, and I am actually immensely grateful for digital technology. I am every day of the week well aware that without digital technology I simply wouldn’t have had access to the vast majority of the knowledge and information I have been able to access. I couldn’t be on this forum without it. I couldn’t do my job without it. I couldn’t communicate with others across space the way I do. I couldn’t have explored and learned even the tenth of what I have been lucky to explore and discover and learn, without digital technology.

So I wonder, isn’t this rebuking a bit too inflexible? Regarding the physical body, I think what we are saying is not incompatible. I do recognize all that you point out about meditation, but things can be observed from slightly different angles and expressed in accord with that.

[AshvinP]

Federica,

We need to be clear on the general principle involved i.e. that spiritual activity only becomes progressively conscious of itself by working through the manifest realms that were also woven through spiritual activity. We should get in the habit of sensing how these principles orient us toward the Heliocentric perspective from which all the complexities of the manifest realms can gradually find their proper places. These are inviolable principles that structure reality as we experience it extending through time. Once we work towards a reasoned faith in these principles i.e. an inner certainty that they are the core structure of our evolutionary stream, then our inquiries are much more simplified, so to speak - they are oriented towards getting a better intuitive sense of how the complexities of experience fulfill the intentions of those principles. We are much less tempted to discount or write off any aspect of the manifest realm, such as the physical plane or physical body, or cultural institutions. But instead, any difficulties encountered with such complexities are experienced as being the result of our not having reached the corresponding depth where they are made transparent to us. That really helps avoid premature conclusions that otherwise get in the way of us exploring the depths.

With regard to our cultural institutions, we have to remember that it is our spiritual activity that is embedded in them. So it is all spiritual activity and we shouldn't feel like we are speaking of some external source that provides us health, wealth, safety, and so forth. It is what we thought into existence in prior epochs and centuries in anticipation of the future tasks ahead of us (with feedback from higher initiates and angelic beings). That is even true with regard to the natural kingdoms, but it's much more obvious to our intellect in the domain of culture. Without modern cultural institutions, we wouldn't have the opportunities and professions that we have which allow us to easily acquire the necessities of existence and maintain a certain standard of living by which we can devote our free time to spiritual striving. And without modern technology, we wouldn't have nearly the resources and opportunities for spiritual development that we now have. Modern medicine and rule of law has made it so we are able to live much longer into adulthood than our ancestors as a rule. These are simple facts. Of course, human culture has not arrived at its finished form yet and is in fact in its infancy. The future stages of its life will have to outgrow childish and adolescent selfish tendencies and work towards organizing society in a morally responsible, mutually supportive way. If it doesn't, then over time the institutions will degenerate and act counterproductively as we already see in some domains. It will have to arrive at the following principle of social organization by the 6th post-Atlantean epoch, as Steiner anticipates (and St. Paul anticipated well before Marx and Engels).

"But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that there abundance also may be a supply for your want; that there may be equality. As it is written, he that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack." (2 Corinthians 8)

With regard to the physical body, we are again pointing to simple facts of experience. Without a physical body, a brain, and the capacity for mental picturing and verbal concepts, we wouldn't be able to start any meditation and focus on an object-theme. We also wouldn't be able to bring the intuitive experiences of meditation into concrete insights that can illuminate our understanding and be shared with others without returning to the physical plane and utilizing our physical instrument. We wouldn't be able to repeatedly engage in meditations across time, gradually working out our imperfections. We wouldn't be able to engage in deeds of love, compassion, charity, and so forth by which alone the highest spiritual development becomes possible. So we really need to keep all these diverse aspects of our living experiences in mind when trying to attain a holistic orientation toward spiritual evolution. It always helps to keep the central Christ events as a holistic image of the entire course of future Earthly evolution. Most of those events occurred on and through the physical plane. God chose to become human on the physical plane for a reason.

It is true that we are seeking to loosen our thinking capacity from the physical organism during meditation but the function served by the physical plane and organism is being raised to higher bodily levels, I.e. the etheric and astral bodies. The resistance met by our spiritual activity becomes of a higher nature and therefore we are able to remain conscious in the higher worlds and receptive to higher ideations. Nevertheless, the overall context for our evolutionary stage is still the physical plane and that is why we always return to it after meditation, after sleep, and after death. That will continue for some time, precisely until the physical plane is spiritualized through our sacrificial and creative spiritual activity (future Jupiter). Until then, our task is to harmonize our activity across the planes of existence, as Cleric nicely describes in his latest fourfolding illustration post:


viewtopic.php?p=20939#p20939

The stages of higher cognition can be likened to the unfolding of the folds. For example, we attain to the Imaginative stage when we, so to speak, unfold the Earthly convolution and find ourselves in a state similar to the Moon condition. Normally the interference of the Moon sheets are the basis for the Moiré patterns that form our Earthly consciousness. We’re barely conscious of this deeper soul life in the present age. But if we unfold the Earthly folding, then we glimpse at something of our higher being, which has its self-consciousness in the Moon sheets. At that level, spiritual activity weaves in the soul strata as consciously as we do that with our thoughts in the Earth condition. Similarly, unfolding the other foldings leads us to the stages of Inspirative and Intuitive consciousness.

Of course, this unfolding is not yet the true unfolding which will only happen in the long course of evolution. The four folds for our Earthly being are present at all times while we’re in deep meditation. Then how is higher cognition possible? It is possible through harmonizing the spiritual activity at the different folds. In modern man these folds are quite out of tune. They are like independent pendulums, producing the most bizarre Moiré patterns. We think one thing, our heart desires another, our will does third. Higher development consists in the fully conscious and strenuous alignment of these pendulums. Thus we need to bring the fourth fold (in which we’re most conscious) in full attunement to the third such that they move as one so to speak. They are still distinct but are temporarily synchronized. The fourth fold sacrifices itself and allows to be moved by the sheet of the third. This is also what allows for the intellectual self to have consciousness of the higher realms because it is not simply destroyed but it becomes resonantly attuned to the movements of the deeper folds. When we experience these higher movements and corresponding higher intuitions, they evoke images, analogies, metaphors in the intellectual fold. Of course, this process of attunement is not linear. We always have to work on the perfection of all folds simultaneously because they are interdependent. 

Likewise, Steiner speaks of how the whole physical plane and what was experienced there becomes our 'reflecting apparatus' between death and rebirth. We are only able to remain conscious in the highest spheres of that existence to the extent that we have thoroughly worked through the natural and cultural phenomena of the physical plane in a moral and redemptive way. So, in that sense, our physical body which is the instrument for concrete interaction with beings on the physical plane plays a vital role in our capacity for the highest possible evolution between incarnations. The rhythmic interplay of the spiritual and physical poles is always present during the process of Earthly-Cosmic evolution in one form or another. We simply need to expand our intuitive resonance and investigate the living details to gradually unveil the manifold ways in which that is true.

Aaashvin

Let me say that I highly appreciate the way you describe these foundational principles. This post is helpful to consolidate understanding, and I am sure, not only for me. However, I have to add that I don’t find anything new, anything that was not understood, in these elaborations, and have a few small remarks to make. I have been reminded today, by listening to the latest reading from Steiner Audio Press, that our spiritual development is highly individual, as also Cleric has regularly hinted to - that we all have a unique perspective due to our unique ‘position’ in the network of cosmic interrelations. Sometimes I receive the impression that you are not very open to allow for that leeway and that angle.

So we are clear on the general principles involved, and that we cannot “write off” physical body and cultural institutions. I don’t write them off. Certainly in the future they will provide us with wealth and health, as prefigured by Steiner, Beinsa Douno, Saint Paul, and many other higher individualities. But this is simply not the case today. This is the simple fact of reality, and you cannot just think our cultural institutions redeemed, by the act of your spiritual activity.
It is simply not true that cultural institutions today “allow us to easily acquire the necessities of existence and maintain a certain standard of living”. You can’t write off the fact that for 99% of humanity today this task is absolutely not easy, which is a burning societal and spiritual problem of our current civilization, as pointed out by Scaligero in the quote I shared, that you have ignored by the way.

This is not to say that I forget that our spiritual activity is embedded in the context of our institutions. I know that, and not only in a theoretical way. Also, there is no need to bash again about technology and how it gives us unprecedented access to opportunities for spiritual development. Nobody is challenging that. As I recognized a long time ago:

I should clarify here that I personally don’t have any negative orientation to digital technology. I know it’s here to stay and that it’s not to be eliminated, and I am actually immensely grateful for digital technology. I am every day of the week well aware that without digital technology I simply wouldn’t have had access to the vast majority of the knowledge and information I have been able to access. I couldn’t be on this forum without it. I couldn’t do my job without it. I couldn’t communicate with others across space the way I do. I couldn’t have explored and learned even the tenth of what I have been lucky to explore and discover and learn, without digital technology.

So I wonder, isn’t this rebuking a bit too inflexible? Regarding the physical body, I think what we are saying is not incompatible. I do recognize all that you point out about meditation, but things can be observed from slightly different angles and expressed in accord with that.

Federica,

What you write about cultural institutions, in the post where you are telling me that you understand the principles and they are nothing new, once again makes me feel like the principles aren't understood in a concrete way. I must have a really difficult time comprehending the meaning of your posts, sort of like Cleric on the thread about spiritual freedom where you were adamant that our ideas could not be reconciled with PoF and Max's essays, because I don't see only slightly different angles on the core principles of physical-cultural-spiritual interplay being expressed, but in some cases diametrically opposed viewpoints. Maybe it's the way you express them, i.e. you are continually overstating and overemphasizing certain perspectives, but I am not sure because the issue keeps coming up across threads. It's as if you are ignoring thousands of years of cultural evolution and how it brought most of us from a state of tribal violence that we hardly imagine now to the relative stability we enjoy every day. These are concrete images of the Spirit at work in Earthly evolution preparing for the development of higher cognition in our own time. I see this as being very much related to your previous adamant critique of Scaligero when he was making the distinction of using man-made objects in concentration (I'm curious, do you still feel he was 'altering Steiner's guidelines'?). That is definitely a question of having a principled understanding of our evolving spiritual structure.

You wrote that meditation is possible despite our body, as if in meditation we are escaping from the body and it no longer serves a critical purpose for higher cognition. We need to remember that every world-outlook that spiritual science critiques is critiqued because it becomes too one-sided, i.e. it deviated from the core principle of spiritual evolution which unfolds through a continual balancing of poles at various scales. And as Steiner often mentions, the Luciferic one-sidedness is especially prevalent on the esoteric path, especially in the initial stages where everything physical and traditional is experienced as a sort of 'reproach' for us. In this respect, I feel that you are projecting human development far out into the future, as you accused me of doing with the redemption of cultural institutions, and using that projection as the basis for various conclusions about what it means to develop higher knowledge. But clearly, our cultural institutions will be redeemed (spiritualized) much sooner than the physical plane and physical body. The former is exactly what Steiner was working on and made concrete progress on, although it could have been even more expansive if nations had adopted the threefolding social order, for example. But if you feel that I am just repeating things to you that you already know and are expressing slightly differently in your own terms and my 'rebuking' is inflexible, I'm not going to bother arguing that point. I'll just wait until the next time this same issue crops up

[Federica]

Federica,

What you write about cultural institutions, in the post where you are telling me that you understand the principles and they are nothing new, once again makes me feel like the principles aren't understood in a concrete way. I must have a really difficult time comprehending the meaning of your posts, sort of like Cleric on the thread about spiritual freedom where you were adamant that our ideas could not be reconciled with PoF and Max's essays, because I don't see only slightly different angles on the core principles of physical-cultural-spiritual interplay being expressed, but in some cases diametrically opposed viewpoints. Maybe it's the way you express them, i.e. you are continually overstating and overemphasizing certain perspectives, but I am not sure because the issue keeps coming up across threads. It's as if you are ignoring thousands of years of cultural evolution and how it brought most of us from a state of tribal violence that we hardly imagine now to the relative stability we enjoy every day. These are concrete images of the Spirit at work in Earthly evolution preparing for the development of higher cognition in our own time. I see this as being very much related to your previous adamant critique of Scaligero when he was making the distinction of using man-made objects in concentration (I'm curious, do you still feel he was 'altering Steiner's guidelines'?). That is definitely a question of having a principled understanding of our evolving spiritual structure.

You wrote that meditation is possible despite our body, as if in meditation we are escaping from the body and it no longer serves a critical purpose for higher cognition. We need to remember that every world-outlook that spiritual science critiques is critiqued because it becomes too one-sided, i.e. it deviated from the core principle of spiritual evolution which unfolds through a continual balancing of poles at various scales. And as Steiner often mentions, the Luciferic one-sidedness is especially prevalent on the esoteric path, especially in the initial stages where everything physical and traditional is experienced as a sort of 'reproach' for us. In this respect, I feel that you are projecting human development far out into the future, as you accused me of doing with the redemption of cultural institutions, and using that projection as the basis for various conclusions about what it means to develop higher knowledge. But clearly, our cultural institutions will be redeemed (spiritualized) much sooner than the physical plane and physical body. The former is exactly what Steiner was working on and made concrete progress on, although it could have been even more expansive if nations had adopted the threefolding social order, for example. But if you feel that I am just repeating things to you that you already know and are expressing slightly differently in your own terms and my 'rebuking' is inflexible, I'm not going to bother arguing that point. I'll just wait until the next time this same issue crops up

Ashvin,

I don’t deny that I have made mistakes (as previously recognized) and also that I am usually quick at forming opinions, while it would be wiser, as you said, to ponder longer and wait until more experience is gained. But this cannot be the primary way to address every new point I make…
Maybe I shall do like Eugene once did, burn out the future-attractive karma of my current alias, and log back in with a brand new one, for a fresh start!
Because digital technology today allows for this level of spiritualized human interconnection, why not leverage it to the benefit of a kind of self-driven digital rebirth?

I see this as being very much related to your previous adamant critique of Scaligero when he was making the distinction of using man-made objects in concentration (I'm curious, do you still feel he was 'altering Steiner's guidelines'?)

Yes, I still feel that Scaligero calls concentration what Steiner calls concentration, and not what Steiner calls Basic Exercise 1, as per my last post on the topic, which you said contained some good points, but all in all, not good enough. However, I am doing what you suggested, I have put the question on hold, waiting until I have better holistic understanding and practice of concentration before returning to it. And I have tried in the meantime to compensate for my certainly overemphasized expressions by paying closer attention to his work.

You wrote that meditation is possible despite our body, as if in meditation we are escaping from the body and it no longer serves a critical purpose for higher cognition.

There is no need to speculate the ‘as-ifs’, since I provided the words for what I meant with that: “My sense is that meditation is possible despite our body, since it is a striving towards dying before death, and after physical death it’s a continual meditation state, as I understand it.”
This is what I meant with “despite our body”. Do you have anything to object to those words? If you do, please tell me what. That would be more helpful to me, rather than speculating on what I may have signified with "despite".

I'll just wait until the next time this same issue crops up

Fair enough, Ashvin. Time will tell!

[AshvinP]

Federica,

What you write about cultural institutions, in the post where you are telling me that you understand the principles and they are nothing new, once again makes me feel like the principles aren't understood in a concrete way. I must have a really difficult time comprehending the meaning of your posts, sort of like Cleric on the thread about spiritual freedom where you were adamant that our ideas could not be reconciled with PoF and Max's essays, because I don't see only slightly different angles on the core principles of physical-cultural-spiritual interplay being expressed, but in some cases diametrically opposed viewpoints. Maybe it's the way you express them, i.e. you are continually overstating and overemphasizing certain perspectives, but I am not sure because the issue keeps coming up across threads. It's as if you are ignoring thousands of years of cultural evolution and how it brought most of us from a state of tribal violence that we hardly imagine now to the relative stability we enjoy every day. These are concrete images of the Spirit at work in Earthly evolution preparing for the development of higher cognition in our own time. I see this as being very much related to your previous adamant critique of Scaligero when he was making the distinction of using man-made objects in concentration (I'm curious, do you still feel he was 'altering Steiner's guidelines'?). That is definitely a question of having a principled understanding of our evolving spiritual structure.

You wrote that meditation is possible despite our body, as if in meditation we are escaping from the body and it no longer serves a critical purpose for higher cognition. We need to remember that every world-outlook that spiritual science critiques is critiqued because it becomes too one-sided, i.e. it deviated from the core principle of spiritual evolution which unfolds through a continual balancing of poles at various scales. And as Steiner often mentions, the Luciferic one-sidedness is especially prevalent on the esoteric path, especially in the initial stages where everything physical and traditional is experienced as a sort of 'reproach' for us. In this respect, I feel that you are projecting human development far out into the future, as you accused me of doing with the redemption of cultural institutions, and using that projection as the basis for various conclusions about what it means to develop higher knowledge. But clearly, our cultural institutions will be redeemed (spiritualized) much sooner than the physical plane and physical body. The former is exactly what Steiner was working on and made concrete progress on, although it could have been even more expansive if nations had adopted the threefolding social order, for example. But if you feel that I am just repeating things to you that you already know and are expressing slightly differently in your own terms and my 'rebuking' is inflexible, I'm not going to bother arguing that point. I'll just wait until the next time this same issue crops up

Ashvin,

I don’t deny that I have made mistakes (as previously recognized) and also that I am usually quick at forming opinions, while it would be wiser, as you said, to ponder longer and wait until more experience is gained. But this cannot be the primary way to address every new point I make…
Maybe I shall do like Eugene once did, burn out the future-attractive karma of my current alias, and log back in with a brand new one, for a fresh start!
Because digital technology today allows for this level of spiritualized human interconnection, why not leverage it to the benefit of a kind of self-driven digital rebirth?

I see this as being very much related to your previous adamant critique of Scaligero when he was making the distinction of using man-made objects in concentration (I'm curious, do you still feel he was 'altering Steiner's guidelines'?)

Yes, I still feel that Scaligero calls concentration what Steiner calls concentration, and not what Steiner calls Basic Exercise 1, as per my last post on the topic, which you said contained some good points, but all in all, not good enough. However, I am doing what you suggested, I have put the question on hold, waiting until I have better holistic understanding and practice of concentration before returning to it. And I have tried in the meantime to compensate for my certainly overemphasized expressions by paying closer attention to his work.

Fair enough, Federica! In that case, I think the issues will certainly resolve themselves over time and it is probably unwise and a bit prideful for me to think I can 'force it' along. You are right that we're all on an individual path as well as a collective one and our karmic destiny, shaped by the higher self, wisely puts certain obstacles in our way to work out that may be different in their manifestations, intensity, and so forth from those of other people, even if the archetypal structure of walking the temptational and tribulational path of Christ is the same.

By the way, I came across an interesting snippet from Steiner that clairvoyantly locates this distinction between natural and man-made in the spiritual worlds as well:

An object in the physical world is found in Devachan as a vacuum corresponding to the space occupied by the object in the physical world, and a void, a nothing in the physical world is found in Devachan as something resplendent, radiant and resounding. We may compare this with the photographic negative. The physical object would exactly fit into the vacuum. It is however strange that this only applies to objects of Nature, whereas artificial forms made by man appear in Devachan as a positive.

You wrote that meditation is possible despite our body, as if in meditation we are escaping from the body and it no longer serves a critical purpose for higher cognition.

There is no need to speculate the ‘as-ifs’, since I provided the words for what I meant with that: “My sense is that meditation is possible despite our body, since it is a striving towards dying before death, and after physical death it’s a continual meditation state, as I understand it.”
This is what I meant with “despite our body”. Do you have anything to object to those words? If you do, please tell me what. That would be more helpful to me, rather than speculating on what I may have signified with "despite".

I felt that I addressed this somewhat with the post from Cleric and the paragraph on how we remain conscious between death and rebirth. The question is, what is the 'continual meditation state' across the threshold? Clearly, that question gets into the complexities of spiritual science, although our core principles can give us a solid intuitive orientation to those complexities and what they signify. One such principle is that there is always something serving the function that our physical body does for our I-consciousness on the physical plane. And we have to remember that all the lower bodily members of our being are reflections of the higher spiritual members of our being. In a sense, the physical body and the physical plane as a whole is what our highest spiritual member i.e. Spirit-Man or Atma, looks like to our decohered cognition. That is the true nature of our "I", which is reflected to us through the physical plane when we first awaken to our essential being. All our other members, all the other spiritual forces, are embedded within this physical body-plane (and that's why we can differentiate between the physical forms of minerals, plants, animals, and humans). That's why Steiner often speaks of the physical body as the most perfect member of our organization. 

The wording of your post is not the issue, but I bring these things up because you were using that as a response to my original point:

Our meditation is only possible because we have a physical body, a physical landscape of physical elements, and cultural institutions that provide us with wealth, health, and safety. All those elements provide the basis for the brain and intellect/imagination that is capable of cultivating certain soul qualities/capacities that allow for spiritual striving, learning about meditation, and then willing certain exercises. And after we have exercised our thinking-will during meditation, we must plunge back into the physical spectrum with our spiritual activity to elaborate the inner forces that were seeded. Scaligero speaks about that in his book on meditation.

Would our meditation be possible without the physical body or, even in future stages of evolution, something serving the function of that body? Quite simply, no. We are always going to be halfway between the manifest/known and the unmanifest/unknown, and our spiritual evolution comes through our activity streaming in from the latter and meeting the former to work through it and recover its inner essence. That is what we must do at the individual and collective scales. I came across the following passage from Steiner recently.

There was a moment in evolution when what we today call magnetic and electric forces established themselves within the human being. For magnetic and electric forces live in us in a mysterious manner. Before this time, human beings lived on earth without the magnetic and electric forces that have developed ever since on a spiritual level between the workings of the nerves and the blood. They were incorporated into the human being at that time. The forces of magnetism we will leave out of consideration, also some forms of the forces of electricity. But the forces which I will distinguish as the electric forces in galvanism, voltaism, etc., forces that have taken deep hold in the culture and civilization of our time, these forces entered the human organism in that far-off time and combined with human life; and this very fact made it possible for them to remain for a long time unknown to human consciousness...

After humankind had passed the moment in the Lemurian age when it had implanted into it the forces that pass through the wire today as electricity and work in an invisible manner in the human being himself, after this time had passed, electricity existed inside the human being. Evolution never proceeds in the simple straightforward way in which people are inclined to picture it. They imagine that time goes ever forward on and on to infinity. That is an altogether abstract conception. The truth is that time moves and turns in such a way that evolution is constantly reversed and runs back on itself. It is not only in space that we find movements in curves, such as in lemniscates, but also in time. 

During the Lemurian epoch human beings were at the crossing point of the lemniscate and that was the time when they implanted into themselves the principle of electrical force. They traversed the return path in the Atlantean period and, in respect of certain forces, in the post-Atlantean period, and at about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century arrived exactly at the point in the evolution of the cosmos at which they were in the old Lemurian age when they implanted into themselves from the cosmos the principle of electricity. There you have the explanation of how it came about that Galvani discovered electricity at that particular time. Human beings always go back again in later times to what they experienced at an earlier stage. Life takes its course in cycles, in rhythms. In the middle of the materialistic age which had been developing since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, humankind was standing at that point in the cosmos through which it had passed long ago in the Lemurian epoch. And humankind as a whole at that point remembered the entry of electricity into the human being and as a result of this memory endowed the whole of civilization with electricity. The soul and spirit in the human being rediscovered what it had once experienced long ago. Truths like this must be clearly seen again, for it is only with truths like this that we shall escape decadence in the future.

Steiner, Rudolf. A Road to Sacred Creation: Rudolf Steiner's Perspectives on Technology (pp. 73-74). SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition. 

So as we ascend into our supernature i.e. the light-filled etheric world of moral impulses, we are simultaneously descending into our subnature (layers of being woven in past ages) which consists in decaying light i.e. electricity which bears immoral impulses (as is pretty obvious when we consider how our electronic devices can now distract immensely from the task of inner perfection of soul forces, IF we remain experientially unconscious of their spiritual influences). Our spiritual future is made possible by reencountering past 'self-similar' stages of soul experience which were instrumental to our development in prior epochs of existence, but now need to be infused with the higher Light of spiritual consciousness. That is why we discovered electricity at the time we did. We should understand that one process is always accompanied by the other and only both together can be understood as "spiritual evolution". The risk is not in the fact that subnatural processes are being revealed, because that must happen for spiritual evolution to unfold, but that we remain unconscious of why it is occurring and therefore cannot find creative pathways of redeeming that subnature, i.e. redirecting its forces towards spiritual ideals. It is the exact same process that happens in our individual striving as well, as we work through the lower soul and bodily nature to ascend into higher spheres of moral imagination, inspiration, and intuition.

Now electrical energy is of such a nature that as a general rule, human beings cannot experience it internally; it remains something external. The nineteenth century achieved a certain greatness, which became even greater than is generally believed, through the rise of electricity. It would be easy to show how infinitely much our present civilization owes to electric power, and how much more it will depend on it in the future, when electric power will be used as it is today without being experienced inwardly. Even more! But it is precisely the power of electricity that has replaced the old, familiar power in the cultural development of humanity, and it is the one through which human beings are intended to mature to a higher level with respect to their moral development. No one using electricity today thinks of it as having any connection with morality. But there is wisdom in the ongoing historical evolution of humanity. People will mature by virtue of the fact that for a time they will be able to bring about even greater harm in the bearer of their lower “I”—their depraved, dissolute egoism—than is already present there in sufficient quantity, as every day now shows us. . . . Electric power, as a cultural force in modern civilization, is the very power that makes this possible.

Steiner, Rudolf. A Road to Sacred Creation: Rudolf Steiner's Perspectives on Technology (pp. 77-78). SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.

[Federica]

I feel it's important at this point to refresh the theme of technology and transhumanism. While applying myself to reading and working through Steiner's Secret Science, I want to connect the impulses and the science there exemplified to the activities - thinking, feeling and willing, human and non human - unfolding in the present moment in time - safe, of course, the freedom to zoom in and out temporally, so as to understand the inner and outer waves of activity in the context of larger, more encompassing waves and/or shorter and more punctual ones, if relevant. In general, I feel this topic has been impending - due - for a long time now, so I am re-launching it here. To be addressed fruitfully, it surely requires some level of courageous humility, which I hope I will be able to develop myself through this exercise and, by the same token, promote.

Needless to say, I want to refrain from addressing technology and transhumanism in their perceptual characters alone. It's their symbolic significance, and their significance as testimonies of the dynamics of the ideal curvatures - that is, as testimonies of the evolution of reality, than requires attention. I also intend to proceed cautiously, keeping in mind some of my own shortcomings and lacks. Out of the many possibilities to revive the topic, I thought I would reconnect with this recent comment:

...
What is the modern technology generated from scientific research except a way of expanding the palette of states into which my 'now' state can transform? Now my state can transform into a state where I am engaged in a video chat with someone across the world, whereas some relatively few years ago that was beyond the palette of transformation. Due to modern medicine, my state can transform through a palette of experiences that last until age 90, whereas that was very unlikely in the 19th century. This is what science/technology is all about - the phenomenology of spiritual activity, i.e. the constraints and possibilities the latter meets when engaging the perceptual landscape. The 'laws' we fashion are nothing other than our intuition for these constraints and how a set of states in transformation can be encompassed as something whole.


It's only because our spiritual activity is normally too weak to alter the 'riverbed' constraints through which it flows (except in pure thinking) that we feel to be a detached spectator of 'external laws' that we model with our thoughts. When we begin to recover the intuition, which was present at the inception of scientific thinking, that perceptions are symbols for the constraints-possibilities of our thinking, feeling, and willing activity, then our activity grows stronger as it works through the perceptual resistance and experiences itself contributing to the alterations of the constraints. The spirit is no longer passively governed by external laws but is awakened to how it actively shapes the laws that reflect the intuition of the palette of 'next states' to which it can transform.


But all of this starts from the humble seed point in thinking, where we have the most creative freedom to expand the palette of our possible states. If we find ourselves imagining how we can transform our state through the roof of a car before we have found the simple degrees of thinking freedom to explore what a 'car' even is and how it came to exist in our experience, then we are surely being led astray. We should thoroughly understand the nature of our current state and its most proximate limitations (related to our psychic space) before we try to shape the nature of the deeper biological and physical spaces that modulate the transformation of our states.

To start with, I would attract attention to the fact that modern technology, rather than a way of expanding our states, is a way of altering them. It restricts them just as much as (if not more than) it expands them. Of course, these states are not only perceptual in the sense of sensory-like, but also intentional, thinking, and feeling states. So I believe an accurate way to look at technology is: a definite quality of curvature reality takes, that can be equally explored in its outer and inner shape. In this large sense it is perceptual.

Incidentally, I would also like to caution against too optimistic an evaluation of cultural institutions such as “modern medicine”. As a matter of perceptual fact, life expectancy - especially in those portions of the world population that have large access to modern medicine - is significantly receding. If this strong trend is maintained, life expectancy will not only never reach 90 or even 80, but it will soon drop back below 70 - unless this is already happening (end of incidental comment).

So, technology’s advancements are one peculiar character of the evolution of the ‘riverbed’ and of our engagement with it. Definitely, if our thinking - the most proximate means of free and effective engagement with the riverbed at our disposal - is weak, that character will shape us, and our world, infinitely more than we ourselves can hope to contribute our footprint to the evolving shape. And we know that impressing our footprint in freedom is life-crucial at this point in time for the survival of our human civilization.

Now, the point I want to end this comment with is this: many are the means by which we fail to strengthen - we weaken - our thinking potential. We do it from the inside out, by lack of understanding of its superordained centrality, by lack of practice of its centrality, even (more and more) by lack of sustained practice of its lower logical and intellectual expressions. In addition to that, our thinking is also weakened from the other edge of the spectrum - from the outside in - through the perceptual spectrum, and through the feeling spectrum. In the world of sensory perceptions, our physical body is exposed in more and more generalized way to interaction with plethora of technologies, including those of modern medicine, that, among other things, threaten the abilities of our mineral brain organ to properly and reliably reflect our thinking activity in the material, no matter how pure and high a degree this activity has attained. At the same time, in the world of feeling, our identity and soul are exposed, through plethora of technologies, to solid elicitation of feelings of anxiety, fear, confusion, inadequacy, submissiveness, and despair.

These two lines of attack are two sides of the same evolutionary trend, two manifestations of the same reality, that need to be kept present for our conscious counter activities at all times, so that the symbolic relevance of our mutating perceptual panorama can be intentionally leveraged to orient our thinking efforts in the most needed directions. In particular the threats to our free activity expressed in the perceptual and feeling spectrums need to be infused with active thinking as purposefully as we only can, so as to compensate for their more solid and seemingly impenetrable nature, so to say (I am referring to the fact that at our stage of evolution, thinking is more free than feeling, which is more free than bodily will.)
We are called to grow these thinking efforts strong enough to impress their footprint in the riverbed, despite the ever more challenging resistance brought forward, in the riverbed, by the ahrimanic forces which, all around and inside us, are methodically working their way toward the destruction of humanity.

[AshvinP]

To start with, I would attract attention to the fact that modern technology, rather than a way of expanding our states, is a way of altering them. It restricts them just as much as (if not more than) it expands them. Of course, these states are not only perceptual in the sense of sensory-like, but also intentional, thinking, and feeling states. So I believe an accurate way to look at technology is: a definite quality of curvature reality takes, that can be equally explored in its outer and inner shape. In this large sense it is perceptual.

Incidentally, I would also like to caution against too optimistic an evaluation of cultural institutions such as “modern medicine”. As a matter of perceptual fact, life expectancy - especially in those portions of the world population that have large access to modern medicine - is significantly receding. If this strong trend is maintained, life expectancy will not only never reach 90 or even 80, but it will soon drop back below 70 - unless this is already happening (end of incidental comment).

Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Federica. I agree with the overall spirit of your post, but I want to clarify what I meant by 'expanding our states'. A simple question we can ask is, what can't we do now that we could do previously? Does modern technology make it impossible for us to explore more spiritual states of being or does it actually aid that exploration when we use it consciously as a means of gaining intuition of our spiritual depth?

At the very dawn of science in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, there was still some lingering consciousness of the inner depth, the reality that our idea-life is structured by Divine intelligence in some way and for some archetypal purposes. This depth of consciousness rapidly faded away as the inner life became more privatized, more interested in purely localized affairs. We lost consciousness of how the Cosmic influences were working into Earthly life (or this consciousness retreated entirely into esoteric streams). This was necessary for thinking to reach the ground of its freedom, for the human personality to feel completely responsible for the flow of thoughts that find their support resting against the sensory spectrum. These 'dead' thoughts cannot compel us to act, only to contemplate and make informed decisions for ourselves on how to act in the face of objective and evolving circumstances.

Yet this isolated personality still persists today and has become maladaptive. Why? Fundamentally it is an unhealthy soul pattern, an inner configuration that aims to preserve its own wishes and cravings related to merely personal or small group-based interests. To convince ourselves of this (not saying you need this convincing), we simply need to reflect on how ashamed and guilty we would feel if all our thoughts and feelings about others were turned outward and exposed to the sensory world like our countenance is. I would say anyone who denies this fact for themselves is greatly lacking in self-knowledge. We generally live in great antipathy for our fellow beings. This obscures from our consciousness the spiritual intents that drive the metamorphoses of the sensory dreamscape, because we simply cannot resonate with spiritual influences that we feel antipathy for. We instinctively and continually push these influences away from our living consciousness.

It is only this selfish soul tendency that obscures the new thinking degrees of freedom we have attained through the modern era of science and technology. It is simply an objective phenomenological reality that we are transforming our thinking through new novel states that were not available before these developments. By exploring deeply into the elemental spectrum, such as we do for developing new technology and medicine, we have laid a foundation for new intuition of the spiritual flow of existence. Yet at the same time, the purely personalized application of the new developments has obscured the more spiritual (imaginative, inspired, intuitive) thinking states that we used to transform through instinctively, but these are not lost forever, they simply remain dormant beneath the surface of waking consciousness. Our thinking organism always transforms as something whole even if we are not aware of it. The more holistic intuition that we have won in modern times remains as 'potential energy' until we make it kinetic through our self-conscious spiritual activity.

Of course, the environment has been structured by those beholden to this selfish soul tendency (most of us) to reinforce the tendency at every step, extending it even deeper into our life of feeling and will. There is no doubt about that and we need to remain vigilant in the face of these encroaching environmental influences. If we do not remain intensely conscious and vigilant toward these influences, it is conceivable that we will irretrievably lose the degrees of freedom that were gained through the modern era and then some. This can be called the 'unforgivable sin' against the Holy Spirit - we can weaken the strength of our thinking so much that it can no longer leverage its new degrees of freedom to reach back into the creative spiritual layers of its activity. It then becomes entirely beholden to the very technologies that it first created.

But we should be clear that no external power can do this to us, we can only do it to ourselves. If we continue to pray, to meditate, to phenomenologically discuss, and to overall seek the Spirit as it is expressed through our ideal life, then we are untouchable by the forces of hindrance. They can slow us down, frustrate us, make us doubt, etc., but they can't stop our upward progress and even their resistance will be proven to only intensify that progress, like a rubber indentation expanding back in proportion to the strength of forces that were impressed into it. If we unite our TFW soul life with the Christ impulse, then there is truly nothing to fear.

[AshvinP]

I agree with the overall spirit of your post, but I want to clarify what I meant by 'expanding our states'. A simple question we can ask is, what can't we do now that we could do previously? Does modern technology make it impossible for us to explore more spiritual states of being or does it actually aid that exploration when we use it consciously as a means of gaining intuition of our spiritual depth?

I am realizing that I didn't really clarify what was meant in my last post but spoke of some more general trends and principles, so let me add a few thoughts here.

I think it's somewhat difficult for most of us, if we are not engineers or scientists, to appreciate the novel mental states and intuitive terrain that have been explored through modern mathematical science and technology. We are usually only end-users of technology, so it comes readymade to us like the sensory spectrum in general. Yet if we are driving down the highway and suddenly our car grinds to a halt and smoke billows from the hood, we are confronted with just how little we know about the inner workings. It is only when things go wrong that we can appreciate our lack of intuition for mechanical technology, or conversely, the novel paths of mental experience which must have been explored in developing it. 

We can still notice, for example, the sheer diversity of mathematical intuition that has been developed in the modern age, including QM and GR. As we have spoken of before, exploring this intuitive domain even at the intellectual level is not meaningless for higher cognition and spiritual freedom. We are still probing the depths of spiritual reality and building a mental palette of experience into which the higher Spirit can incarnate and find its reflection. It is the same principle with studying the intricate details of the human organism - the chemistry, biology, anatomy, and so forth. Even at the intellectual level, this provides a more expansive 'dataset' for our intuitive being to work with in understanding its archetypal flow of existence.
 
Another way to think about this is to contemplate the core aim of modern philosophy, science, theology, etc. beyond mere technical applications. They all try to answer the question of how reality may be experienced beyond how it is presented to us through the mediation of the senses and the brain. In other words, they try to figure out how we would experience existence after death. All the models, laws, principles, archetypes, doctrines, and so forth are simply ways of abstractly triangulating what these sense-free experiences could be like when the bodily apparatus falls away from consciousness and the Spirit starts to swim in creative ideal currents. Of course, this is exactly what the intuitive thinking path strives to experience while still alive - lucid thinking consciousness independent of the sensory crutches.

The difference is that the abstract thinking pursuits can only result in thoughts about some theoretical sense-free existence until they are permeated with new imaginative life, orienting the thoughts as feedback to the spirit for the intuitive depth of spiritual intents that birthed them. If they simply remain theoretical and externalized, then you are correct, they function as new constraining riverbeds for our spiritual activity that channel our thoughts in horizontal and circular loops. Yet once these theoretical thoughts are resurrected into a new life, they become imaginative symbols that help orient our intuition for the flow of spiritual existence. Think how many technical scientific metaphors have been employed here exactly for that purpose. 

Now if we are speaking about technologies and medicines that are aimed (unconsciously or consciously) at destroying the physical or psychic organism, then of course interacting with them will hardly help us expand our spiritual freedom, since we generally need these support systems to remain in good health (apart from specific karmic opportunities presented by illness). So with 'expanding the palette of states into which my now state can transform', we can focus more on the overall pursuit of knowledge in these domains. I was trying to highlight what we are instinctively doing with our spiritual activity when pursuing such knowledge. I used some specific examples like Zoom, but I acknowledge that not all examples are on equal footing - if a vaccine is developed to incapacitate the soul life, then clearly this particular 'medicine' is not going to help us free our thinking states into broader palettes.