Thank you Ashvin.AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2023 4:26 pm
Yes, it can lead to the development of higher faculties of inner perception. At some point, though, the logical thinking faculty also needs to be developed for the redemption of humanity, since it is through this faculty that the existing domains of culture - the philosophies, sciences, arts, etc. - will be spiritualized. That gradient needs to be formed between the conceptual intellect and the higher faculties so there is continuous interaction between them. I think it is likely that those who pursue an intense religious path in one incarnation will then have the basis for developing their thinking faculty in the next incarnation, and vice versa. The rhythms of incarnation generally make us more well-rounded beings as they provide the basis for integrating the capacities and qualities that are currently spread throughout humanity, assuming we take a self-conscious and devotional stance towards them. There is nothing that prevents us, in principle, from pursuing both paths within a single incarnation, especially when all thought becomes devotional and devotion becomes thought, and I would say Steiner is a great example of that, but for many people, it will be unrealistic at this stage.
What do you think is the meaning of the Bible, why is there even a book like this, in which God becomes man and dies on a cross?
The very interesting thing is, that the Bible ( if we interpret it symbolically) has overlaps to PoF.
If the trend of symbolism succeed, then this would be a good milestone, because many people would recognize thinking activity.
And symbolic thinking helps to get from a third-person view, back to our real experience of the world.
I find its a very powerful thing, if we stay open to the possibility that there is much deeper meaning, that we can't understand right now, but which will be revealed trough time.
In a certain sense, all writings simply act as a bridge between the loss of ancient clairvoyance and the regaining of modern clairvoyance. Before the former, there was not much need for writing because clairvoyance into the spiritual fabric of reality necessarily entails remembrance of all that has happened to bring the current state about. For ex., after the "I" incarnated during the Atlantean epoch, it still knew itself in relation to its entire ancestry for some time. A person who said "I" was not only referring to his experiences over a few decades of life, but to the experiences of many ancestors as well. An echo of this is reflected in the first few chapters of Genesis when the genealogies are listed and a certain person is recorded as having lived for many hundreds of years - that person's name actually stands in for a whole line of ancestry that was woven into the "I" experience. We can sense how such a consciousness must remain instinctive and dim if the person is also to remain functional in society. In order for consciousness to grow intentional and lucid, it had to be narrowed down to fragmented states of being and limited memory.
Every concept-perception, whether a natural object or cultural object such as text, can be understood as an anchor point, a point of balance, for a totality of ideal relations that are implicit in its presentment to consciousness. So yes, they are all symbols in that sense. For ex., if an alien came to Earth and carefully observed a single flowering plant over its life cycle, it would be able to infer many things about the surrounding environment - the soil quality, the atmospheric content, the light distribution, the fauna of the region, etc. In a sense, that surrounding context which eventually expands to encompass the entire Cosmos is the reality of the concept-perception of 'flowering plant'. Yet we can't encompass this totality in each act of conception, so most of it remains as an intuitive context while our thinking finds a resting place in the concept. From that point of rest, it can begin freely working back towards the ideal relations that comprise the total intuitive context.
Eventually, once enough souls regain the clairvoyant capacity in a fully lucid form, there will no longer be any need for writing. There is still quite some way to go for this to come about, and even longer before verbal speech as we experience it today is no longer needed.
The question of why the contents of the Bible arose, i.e. the story of God becoming man, dying, and resurrecting, is of course a much deeper one that is fundamental to our whole Earthly evolution. It is great that you connected the PoF principles to this fundamental story. Indeed, it is the story of how the most coherent Cosmic Idea penetrated the most fragmented Earthly perceptual context and rendered it a sensible Unity for the rest of our evolution. Our remaining evolution is the process of working out the stages of that coherence. The events of the 1st century provide a condensed image of our entire Earthly evolution. God prepared the soil into which his Divine seed could incarnate - the physical, etheric, and astral sheaths - and then purified those sheaths as an example for the rest of humanity to follow over the course of many centuries and millennia to come. He provides both the means to follow that example and the inspiration to freely adopt those means. We can illustrate this crudely with the following graph of wave functions:
The blue wave is our meaningful spiritual activity (not visible), the red wave is our reflected perceptions/experience, and the black wave is the "I" that mediates between them. It was Christ in his 'pre-earthly deeds' that graced us with the capacity to stand upright, speak, and think. He brought the physical, etheric, and astral bodies into a certain coherence so the "I" could use them as instruments for spiritual activity in the manifest world. We can represent that as when the blue and red waves are aligned from peak to trough and the black standing wave is in a line. At the MoG, the link of "I" was fully incarnated and now thinking can become active in each individual for bringing that work of coherence to completion. That is represented by the wave function curves overlapping and their peaks aligning. That is when the perceptual world will be a perfect reflection of our meaningful spiritual activity, like it is currently only within the domain of pure sense-free thinking, at the tip of our stream of becoming where unmanifest meaning implodes into manifest perception.
In a sense, Christ is the one having this discussion, because neither you nor I would be able to direct our thinking at will (in freedom) towards supersensible realities and communicate them to each other without what he accomplished. Through the Divine "I", our thinking has been brought almost in-phase with perception. In our thought-forms, we have an almost perfect reflection of the meaningful Idea we live in, however it is not a perfect reflection because our thinking still unfolds within the deeper layers of our being that are not yet in-phase. The meaningful activity of archetypal feeling and willing, in which our thinking unfolds, still reflects itself as the 'outer world' mostly independent of our activity. So, as a general principle, through the faculty of Divine thinking, we first cohere the soul forms (processes) of the astral body (via imagination at the border of thinking and feeling), then the life forms of the etheric body (via inspiration at the border of feeling and willing), and then the physical forms (via intuition, pure willing). In this way, the coherence we currently find in our living thinking acts as a seed point that radiates out into all the layers of our intuitive context. It resurrects the deadened layers of our soul, organic, and physical life. Idea and Perception progressively become One, completely in-phase, across all domains - there is no remaining separation of 'inner' and 'outer', 'subjective' and 'objective'.
Can you explain this last paragraph in more detail?In a sense, Christ is the one having this discussion, because neither you nor I would be able to direct our thinking at will (in freedom) towards supersensible realities and communicate them to each other without what he accomplished. Through the Divine "I", our thinking has been brought almost in-phase with perception. In our thought-forms, we have an almost perfect reflection of the meaningful Idea we live in, however it is not a perfect reflection because our thinking still unfolds within the deeper layers of our being that are not yet in-phase. The meaningful activity of archetypal feeling and willing, in which our thinking unfolds, still reflects itself as the 'outer world' mostly independent of our activity. So, as a general principle, through the faculty of Divine thinking, we first cohere the soul forms (processes) of the astral body (via imagination at the border of thinking and feeling), then the life forms of the etheric body (via inspiration at the border of feeling and willing), and then the physical forms (via intuition, pure willing). In this way, the coherence we currently find in our living thinking acts as a seed point that radiates out into all the layers of our intuitive context. It resurrects the deadened layers of our soul, organic, and physical life. Idea and Perception progressively become One, completely in-phase, across all domains - there is no remaining separation of 'inner' and 'outer', 'subjective' and 'objective'.
Remind yourself of the intuitive context you live in right now.
You may in a room, you know where you at and in what situation.
You know what you are doing in that room and know the objects you can interact with.
You now that you live in the U.S and that your a human being ........
That knowledge is implicit, but structure or stream of experience.
Your next thought is maybe something like:,, I should start the computer and work."
That thought comes because your are in your work room.
This is something everyone can experience, If one thinks in that direction.
It's perfectly understandable.
But what do you mean with:
The MoG is the event which incarnated the "I" for all human beings?The meaningful activity of archetypal feeling and willing, in which our thinking unfolds, still reflects itself as the 'outer world' mostly independent of our activity. So, as a general principle, through the faculty of Divine thinking, we first cohere the soul forms (processes) of the astral body (via imagination at the border of thinking and feeling), then the life forms of the etheric body (via inspiration at the border of feeling and willing), and then the physical forms (via intuition, pure willing). In this way, the coherence we currently find in our living thinking acts as a seed point that radiates out into all the layers of our intuitive context.
Do you think there is only on "I"?
It's seems to me that you think of the outer world as a reflection of our inner being, is this right?
What does the sun reflect?
If I say our inner being, it would probably be wrong if we think of it, as we are some top level observer, there are probably many beings involved.
Is there only one "inner being"?
To come back to Christ.
What is the sense of God becoming man?
If one reads only the Bible, would that be enough, to evolve oneself?
It seems like that one need more like a understanding of esoteric knowledge, concentration and the intuitive context text.
Each post from you or Cleric you helps a lot, but gives me some more questions to wrestle with.
Thank you for the effort and time you spent in those post.
You really helped me a lot.