Pictorial Thinking

[Güney27]

This expectation for the image itself to be the source of more exoteric perceptions and deeper insights could be heightened if we have a rich visualization capacity to begin with. In that case, we may more easily lose sight of the intuitive gestures that are made in the process of concentration, the delicate sensitivity of our concentrated activity to the nudges of the various soul grooves in which it flows. In that way, 'visualize' is more about intuitively sensing the ideas and feelings associated with our concentrated state than it is about focusing on vivid perceptual details. If we start out with a weak visualization capacity to begin with, the etheric layer of holistic imaginations we eventually reach may be all the more richer and meaningful since we have grown sensitive to the fine intuitive gestures of our soul life.

I'm surprised by this take, since for concentration it's nonetheless necessary to be able to create and hold a mental image. Even more so for the first of Steiner's subsidiary exercises, or the ones in the Seer's Handbook. If the inability is as stated - that is a complete impossibility to create or recreate a picture in one's mind's eye - I would see it as a definitive obstacle to spiritual development. (As I said, I know that people tend to be sentimentally attached to their diagnoses, and I am skeptical that the impossibility to visualize is really as categorical as described).

It occurred to me that probably we can get a good idea of the purpose of meditation by thinking about a letter . We can imagine this very vividly. We can write down on a sheet of paper certain ideas, even some intimate things from our feeling life. Then we put the paper in an envelope and seal it. Now we can place this letter somewhere and anytime our gaze glances over it, it acts as a rich symbol that anchors everything that we have expressed there. We should really try to feel how practically nothing of these things can be seen by just staring at the sealed letter. This is precisely the healthy mood in meditation.

We can really use this symbol in meditation. We can imagine how we put there everything we have read here or in all books. This is a tremendous amount of text but we can magically fit it in the envelope. Yet all this text only serves a purpose if it connects with our living experience, just like the words through which we have laid down our feelings, connect to our soul life. Then we can go even further and imagine that there's much more text that takes form inside the letter as our consciousness expands into the Cosmos.

From this perspective it should be easier to see how the vividness in which we imagine the envelope in meditation is completely secondary. Even if we can visualize it in photorealistic vividness, we still can't see anything of what is written inside. What's inside comes from the opposite direction, so to speak.

For example, we may struggle with some deep question. We can imagine that the answer is already in the envelope but it will become apparent to us only if it descends from the periphery, through us, toward the center where the image is (Inspiration). In this sense, the answers arrive in a way similar to the way we know the ideas that are expressed in the sealed letter that we wrote. In Imagination this process is still not that direct. Here the images still meet us as envelopes that we behold mainly in their imaginative content without much awareness of the intuitive intents that inspire the forms (actually in much of what we behold in Imagination our Angel is the creative force).

The key is that the vividness of imagination will come naturally in time. This is the same topic as the 'three kinds of clairvoyance'. If we set it as our goal, we can most easily achieve gut clairvoyance, which is astonishingly vivid and colorful. It's the same with psychedelics. Yet all these experiences are sealed envelopes. And as explained, the intuition of the hidden text doesn't come by imaginatively opening the letters (crack opening the visions) and reading there, but by aligning with the Inspired intuitions that give meaning to the sealed letters, even though they are not opened (just like we know the meaning of our sealed letter).

Our whole phenomenological experience is one such envelope. The secrets of the living Universe are concealed in it. They are written and continue to be written by all the hierarchies. Thus when we concentrate on it can become the center of the Cosmic Mandala that will receive its meaning from the opposite direction, by Inspiration and Intuition, by resonating with the meaningful ideal ensembles of the hierarchies.

Hi Cleric,

would you say that when I take the concept, let's say the concept of freedom, and try to get from the
word-perception into the meaning which is anchored, it can be called meditation too?

Maybe the concept can be experienced in vivid pictures which embodies the meaning.

[Lou Gold]

I'm surprised by this take, since for concentration it's nonetheless necessary to be able to create and hold a mental image. Even more so for the first of Steiner's subsidiary exercises, or the ones in the Seer's Handbook. If the inability is as stated - that is a complete impossibility to create or recreate a picture in one's mind's eye - I would see it as a definitive obstacle to spiritual development. (As I said, I know that people tend to be sentimentally attached to their diagnoses, and I am skeptical that the impossibility to visualize is really as categorical as described).

It occurred to me that probably we can get a good idea of the purpose of meditation by thinking about a letter . We can imagine this very vividly. We can write down on a sheet of paper certain ideas, even some intimate things from our feeling life. Then we put the paper in an envelope and seal it. Now we can place this letter somewhere and anytime our gaze glances over it, it acts as a rich symbol that anchors everything that we have expressed there. We should really try to feel how practically nothing of these things can be seen by just staring at the sealed letter. This is precisely the healthy mood in meditation.

We can really use this symbol in meditation. We can imagine how we put there everything we have read here or in all books. This is a tremendous amount of text but we can magically fit it in the envelope. Yet all this text only serves a purpose if it connects with our living experience, just like the words through which we have laid down our feelings, connect to our soul life. Then we can go even further and imagine that there's much more text that takes form inside the letter as our consciousness expands into the Cosmos.

From this perspective it should be easier to see how the vividness in which we imagine the envelope in meditation is completely secondary. Even if we can visualize it in photorealistic vividness, we still can't see anything of what is written inside. What's inside comes from the opposite direction, so to speak.

For example, we may struggle with some deep question. We can imagine that the answer is already in the envelope but it will become apparent to us only if it descends from the periphery, through us, toward the center where the image is (Inspiration). In this sense, the answers arrive in a way similar to the way we know the ideas that are expressed in the sealed letter that we wrote. In Imagination this process is still not that direct. Here the images still meet us as envelopes that we behold mainly in their imaginative content without much awareness of the intuitive intents that inspire the forms (actually in much of what we behold in Imagination our Angel is the creative force).

The key is that the vividness of imagination will come naturally in time. This is the same topic as the 'three kinds of clairvoyance'. If we set it as our goal, we can most easily achieve gut clairvoyance, which is astonishingly vivid and colorful. It's the same with psychedelics. Yet all these experiences are sealed envelopes. And as explained, the intuition of the hidden text doesn't come by imaginatively opening the letters (crack opening the visions) and reading there, but by aligning with the Inspired intuitions that give meaning to the sealed letters, even though they are not opened (just like we know the meaning of our sealed letter).

Our whole phenomenological experience is one such envelope. The secrets of the living Universe are concealed in it. They are written and continue to be written by all the hierarchies. Thus when we concentrate on it can become the center of the Cosmic Mandala that will receive its meaning from the opposite direction, by Inspiration and Intuition, by resonating with the meaningful ideal ensembles of the hierarchies.

Hi Cleric,

would you say that when I take the concept, let's say the concept of freedom, and try to get from the
word-perception into the meaning which is anchored, it can be called meditation too?

Maybe the concept can be experienced in vivid pictures which embodies the meaning.

In my non-philosophical view the meaning is revealed one's performance.

[Cleric K]

Hi Cleric,

would you say that when I take the concept, let's say the concept of freedom, and try to get from the
word-perception into the meaning which is anchored, it can be called meditation too?

Maybe the concept can be experienced in vivid pictures which embodies the meaning.

Yes. Let's not forget that 'The word meditation comes from the Latin word meditatum, which means to "concentrate" or "to ponder"'. It is unfortunate that today's popular understanding of meditation is associated with complete diffusion into nothingness. It's completely missed that in meditation the spirit is active, it solves certain mysteries, and this requires focus, energy, and determination.

When we place a concept at the center of our consciousness, we have a letter. For example, one way to ponder on freedom is to picture scenes that exemplify our understanding of freedom. Not having some theoretical definition but having living experience, as if we need to write a novel on freedom and put it in the envelope.

Master Beinsa Douno has regularly given homework to the students. Usually it was a topic put in a few words. Here are some examples: "The small light and the small warmth", "Strong and weak thoughts", "The causes of mistakes", "Properties of straight and curved lines".

At first sight, such topics seem quite strange. One probably thinks "What can I possibly write about this?" The Master was very clear that it's not about writing something 'right', as if these topics expect some specific answer. He wanted to stimulate the students to see how one such topic can become a seed for reflection.

In our context, a topic is like something written on the envelope but with no contents yet. In our inner meditation, as we ponder on the topic we write the letter.

Probably everyone is familiar with experiences when we become conscious of something as if we see it for the first time. For example, at some point we may notice that people have noses. Of course, that's obvious, we have always known that, but now something made us ponder - what a strange thing this nose is? A lump of flesh protruding from the face. Our life is full of such things that we take for granted. In meditation we gradually begin to rediscover the whole World in a similar way. We see that everything can be pondered on and ultimately everything fits in some way in the Cosmic story - even the nose! There's something that the beings intended by forming it.

Such topics seem quite arbitrary but in the end, as said before, the experience of our evolutionary existence is the letter, or rather the book, that is being written. Our meditation reaches deeper when we no longer seek some knowledge that we add like an attribute to ourselves, but becomes concentric with our evolutionary story. That story is one of the infinite possible scenarios of becoming the Absolute. This whole idea is initially completely abstract, it's just a concept. But when we nourish it, when we grow with it, we align with the creative streams that write our existence, consciousness expands along these directions, and we also take our creative part.

[Federica]

It occurred to me that probably we can get a good idea of the purpose of meditation by thinking about a letter . We can imagine this very vividly. We can write down on a sheet of paper certain ideas, even some intimate things from our feeling life. Then we put the paper in an envelope and seal it. Now we can place this letter somewhere and anytime our gaze glances over it, it acts as a rich symbol that anchors everything that we have expressed there. We should really try to feel how practically nothing of these things can be seen by just staring at the sealed letter. This is precisely the healthy mood in meditation.

We can really use this symbol in meditation. We can imagine how we put there everything we have read here or in all books. This is a tremendous amount of text but we can magically fit it in the envelope. Yet all this text only serves a purpose if it connects with our living experience, just like the words through which we have laid down our feelings, connect to our soul life. Then we can go even further and imagine that there's much more text that takes form inside the letter as our consciousness expands into the Cosmos.

From this perspective it should be easier to see how the vividness in which we imagine the envelope in meditation is completely secondary. Even if we can visualize it in photorealistic vividness, we still can't see anything of what is written inside. What's inside comes from the opposite direction, so to speak.

For example, we may struggle with some deep question. We can imagine that the answer is already in the envelope but it will become apparent to us only if it descends from the periphery, through us, toward the center where the image is (Inspiration). In this sense, the answers arrive in a way similar to the way we know the ideas that are expressed in the sealed letter that we wrote. In Imagination this process is still not that direct. Here the images still meet us as envelopes that we behold mainly in their imaginative content without much awareness of the intuitive intents that inspire the forms (actually in much of what we behold in Imagination our Angel is the creative force).

The key is that the vividness of imagination will come naturally in time. This is the same topic as the 'three kinds of clairvoyance'. If we set it as our goal, we can most easily achieve gut clairvoyance, which is astonishingly vivid and colorful. It's the same with psychedelics. Yet all these experiences are sealed envelopes. And as explained, the intuition of the hidden text doesn't come by imaginatively opening the letters (crack opening the visions) and reading there, but by aligning with the Inspired intuitions that give meaning to the sealed letters, even though they are not opened (just like we know the meaning of our sealed letter).

Our whole phenomenological experience is one such envelope. The secrets of the living Universe are concealed in it. They are written and continue to be written by all the hierarchies. Thus when we concentrate on it can become the center of the Cosmic Mandala that will receive its meaning from the opposite direction, by Inspiration and Intuition, by resonating with the meaningful ideal ensembles of the hierarchies.

Thanks, Cleric, the envelope seems a very conducive symbol. We could imagine to put pictures in the envelope rather than written thoughts, I guess? That would stick even closer to the thought-image 'meditation starter' as it's been alluded to so far.

In a basic concentration exercise and other exercises, though, I understand it's important to strive for a precise visualization. Is this right? So that we can draw the picture, move it, transform it, etcetera. For example, in the lemniscate exercise.

For example, we may struggle with some deep question. We can imagine that the answer is already in the envelope but it will become apparent to us only if it descends from the periphery, through us, toward the center where the image is (Inspiration). In this sense, the answers arrive in a way similar to the way we know the ideas that are expressed in the sealed letter that we wrote. In Imagination this process is still not that direct. Here the images still meet us as envelopes that we behold mainly in their imaginative content without much awareness of the intuitive intents that inspire the forms (actually in much of what we behold in Imagination our Angel is the creative force).

I understand this, except the relationship with imagination and intuition. I understood that, at first, answers would not come as inspirations (as meaning) but as imaginations. Then why would one imagine that the answer will become apparent as meaning? And also: why the imaginative answers would "meet us as envelopes" and not as the enveloped pictorial content?

[AshvinP]

I will do a post à la Lou here and pin an article on aphantasia, the inability to think pictorially. My impression is that it's a gradient that can be developed, and I have a hard time conceiving that for some this faculty is entirely missing with no chance to be awakened. I may be wrong. In any case, I'll link this description for future reference:





https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/20 ... tasia-like

It's interesting because the Aphantasia issue can actually become an advantage in concentration. I think we are all familiar with the inner stance that Cleric described in Part 2:

What mental image should we use for our meditative concentration? The image itself is not of prime importance (although it may have an impact if it is emotionally charged, thus initially more neutral images are preferable). What counts is that the image should anchor our more encompassing intuition about what the whole purpose of the meditation is, and it should rest in a fruitful feeling context. Even the puzzle piece that we use for illustration can be used as a mental image for meditation. The important thing is not the concrete perceptual details of the image but that it is imbued with the intuition that we developed above. We should try to feel how because of everything we said so far, this puzzle piece holds for us a quite different meaning than it would for a random person to whom we say: “Imagine a puzzle piece.” They would immediately imagine one, yet almost certainly the meaning that they will experience would be one of a “small colorful object that fits in a bigger picture.” Try to appreciate how different the meaning is if we concentrate on such a mental image when it is grasped in the context of what we’re discussing.

If we understand this, we should also understand that there’s no need to stare into the mental image as if we expect it to crack open and see some more exotic perceptions fly out from it. We also shouldn’t expect that some ground-breaking insights will emerge from this simple concentration. What happens is usually much more trivial, yet it is precisely in such small steps that we slowly but surely move toward deeper insights.

This expectation for the image itself to be the source of more exoteric perceptions and deeper insights could be heightened if we have a rich visualization capacity to begin with. In that case, we may more easily lose sight of the intuitive gestures that are made in the process of concentration, the delicate sensitivity of our concentrated activity to the nudges of the various soul grooves in which it flows. In that way, 'visualize' is more about intuitively sensing the ideas and feelings associated with our concentrated state than it is about focusing on vivid perceptual details. If we start out with a weak visualization capacity to begin with, the etheric layer of holistic imaginations we eventually reach may be all the more richer and meaningful since we have grown sensitive to the fine intuitive gestures of our soul life.

I'm surprised by this take, since for concentration it's nonetheless necessary to be able to create and hold a mental image. Even more so for the first of Steiner's subsidiary exercises, or the ones in the Seer's Handbook. If the inability is as stated - that is a complete impossibility to create or recreate a picture in one's mind's eye - I would see it as a definitive obstacle to spiritual development. (As I said, I know that people tend to be sentimentally attached to their diagnoses, and I am skeptical that the impossibility to visualize is really as categorical as described).

The way I see it, one should certainly experiment with visual concentration images (and pictorial thinking) if that capacity is there, but it's not at all a prerequisite to make concrete progress on the inner path of concentration. Much of my initial progress came from the vowel exercise and meditation on other mantras/verses. We should remember 'images' don't only need to be visual but can correspond to any of the senses.

I think your intuition is correct that all these things are on a gradient. We all start with a case of aphantasia to the extent we have lost sight of our native image-consciousness and the weaving images have been sucked into the physical form and senses. However there is no such thing as completely losing the image-consciousness because that is the very foundation of our normal sensory existence. It's possible any particular person's individual karma is such that they will not reach this substratum of their existence in a given incarnation, in which case that would be the obstacle to the inner development and the aphantasia may only be a side effect or unrelated.

It's interesting because after some time of meditation, the formative forces of the eye organ were unleashed for me, so to speak, so that whenever I close my eyes I begin to perceive weaving light dots and streams. If I am in a dark room, these will be present in my visual field even if my eyes are open. In any default state of inner chaos, it is quite distracting for visual concentration. For ex. if I try to move point of concentration around in a circle or leminscate it is distracting because there are dots and streams everywhere! My attention often gets entrained by one of them. This is why I generally prefer concentrating through vowels or verses. That being said, I also realize that I can gradually instill order into the that etheric chaos by working on my inner life and, in times when I am relatively focused, it is easier to work with visualizations. In fact I can even move some of the light dots in smooth patterns. Ultimately it serves as valuable resistance that my will can work through to attain a deeper level of development.

[Güney27]

It's interesting because the Aphantasia issue can actually become an advantage in concentration. I think we are all familiar with the inner stance that Cleric described in Part 2:





This expectation for the image itself to be the source of more exoteric perceptions and deeper insights could be heightened if we have a rich visualization capacity to begin with. In that case, we may more easily lose sight of the intuitive gestures that are made in the process of concentration, the delicate sensitivity of our concentrated activity to the nudges of the various soul grooves in which it flows. In that way, 'visualize' is more about intuitively sensing the ideas and feelings associated with our concentrated state than it is about focusing on vivid perceptual details. If we start out with a weak visualization capacity to begin with, the etheric layer of holistic imaginations we eventually reach may be all the more richer and meaningful since we have grown sensitive to the fine intuitive gestures of our soul life.

I'm surprised by this take, since for concentration it's nonetheless necessary to be able to create and hold a mental image. Even more so for the first of Steiner's subsidiary exercises, or the ones in the Seer's Handbook. If the inability is as stated - that is a complete impossibility to create or recreate a picture in one's mind's eye - I would see it as a definitive obstacle to spiritual development. (As I said, I know that people tend to be sentimentally attached to their diagnoses, and I am skeptical that the impossibility to visualize is really as categorical as described).

The way I see it, one should certainly experiment with visual concentration images (and pictorial thinking) if that capacity is there, but it's not at all a prerequisite to make concrete progress on the inner path of concentration. Much of my initial progress came from the vowel exercise and meditation on other mantras/verses. We should remember 'images' don't only need to be visual but can correspond to any of the senses.

I think your intuition is correct that all these things are on a gradient. We all start with a case of aphantasia to the extent we have lost sight of our native image-consciousness and the weaving images have been sucked into the physical form and senses. However there is no such thing as completely losing the image-consciousness because that is the very foundation of our normal sensory existence. It's possible any particular person's individual karma is such that they will not reach this substratum of their existence in a given incarnation, in which case that would be the obstacle to the inner development and the aphantasia may only be a side effect or unrelated.

It's interesting because after some time of meditation, the formative forces of the eye organ were unleashed for me, so to speak, so that whenever I close my eyes I begin to perceive weaving light dots and streams. If I am in a dark room, these will be present in my visual field even if my eyes are open. In any default state of inner chaos, it is quite distracting for visual concentration. For ex. if I try to move point of concentration around in a circle or leminscate it is distracting because there are dots and streams everywhere! My attention often gets entrained by one of them. This is why I generally prefer concentrating through vowels or verses. That being said, I also realize that I can gradually instill order into the that etheric chaos by working on my inner life and, in times when I am relatively focused, it is easier to work with visualizations. In fact I can even move some of the light dots in smooth patterns. Ultimately it serves as valuable resistance that my will can work through to attain a deeper level of development.

Ashvin,

I find it very interesting to compare pictorial thinking to the process of painting.
When I'm painting I know where the resources come from that I use to manifest the painting (like the pen, the paper ect.).
I will movements that imprints certain details on the paper and they give me feedback.
When something doesn't harmonize with the idea that I try to imprint, then I have to fix certain details.

When I try to think pictorial about freedom, I take the idea and intent to experience pictures, which express the intuition of the concept.
The intent gets translated immediately I to pictures for which I don't know the detailed process of manifestation.
I don't know why the picture is exactly how it is and trough which resources it is manifested.

There is a big difference between the two.

Do you draw pictures?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I find it very interesting to compare pictorial thinking to the process of painting.
When I'm painting I know where the resources come from that I use to manifest the painting (like the pen, the paper ect.).
I will movements that imprints certain details on the paper and they give me feedback.
When something doesn't harmonize with the idea that I try to imprint, then I have to fix certain details.

When I try to think pictorial about freedom, I take the idea and intent to experience pictures, which express the intuition of the concept.
The intent gets translated immediately I to pictures for which I don't know the detailed process of manifestation.
I don't know why the picture is exactly how it is and trough which resources it is manifested.

There is a big difference between the two.

Do you draw pictures?

Guney,

It may seem that way at first, but what do you really know about the resources that you use to manifest the painting idea? Where did they come from? If we start tracing the paper, pen, etc. materials back, we will eventually arrive at some mysterious part of nature and, if we are being concrete about it, we don't have any clear idea about how the natural elements and life forms evolved into these particular forms. They lead us into a spiritual void not much unlike the void from which your imaginative pictures precipitate. This is related to what Cleric said a few comments up:

Probably everyone is familiar with experiences when we become conscious of something as if we see it for the first time. For example, at some point we may notice that people have noses. Of course, that's obvious, we have always known that, but now something made us ponder - what a strange thing this nose is? A lump of flesh protruding from the face. Our life is full of such things that we take for granted. In meditation we gradually begin to rediscover the whole World in a similar way.

We take the paper, pen, and practically everything that is given to us to through the sensory spectrum to express our imaginative life for granted, but on the inner path it should begin to dawn how mysterious these elements are, how little we know about them, how fortunate it is that they should exist in this particular constellation that is tailor-made for expressing our imaginative life, and so forth. These are all riddles that the thinking soul awakens into, to begin with.

On the other hand, that your intent to pictorially represent the ideal relations of 'freedom' is immediately translated to a flow of pictures gives you a place in the perceptual flow where the manifestations are less mysterious. Before your intention, the perceptions don't exist, after your intention, they do. You make an intuitive movement with your thinking-will, and something comes into manifest existence from 'nothing'. The sequence of these newly formed pictures is explained by your intuitive intent, just as the words you would speak if you were telling someone a story.

It is true that the imaginative 'substance' is still quite mysterious, but less so than the paper you draw on. We work with this imaginative substance much more often than we do with the paper, practically every time we think. The feedback you get from perceptions on the paper when you draw is from your imaginative thinking space, not from the paper-itself. And the feedback we get from imprinting thoughts into the imaginative substance is intuitively clear - if some imprinted thought doesn't fit harmoniously with our intuitive idea, we immediately sense logical dissonance.

So this is the concrete meeting point between the unmanifest and manifest from which our concrete and intuitive knowledge of the perceptual flow can expand. I think Cleric's upcoming essays will also make this more clear.

I don't paint or draw - actually, when Federica told me her recent drawing was poor quality, I was thinking 'then I would hate to find out in what quality my drawings would rank' But I think it is a great imaginative skill to learn and work with and I hope to pick it up someday soon.

[Lou Gold]

For comparison, here is how Jacob Collier views his own musical thinking.. I find the evolution from 'me' to 'we' especially interesting.

[Federica]

This one looks very nicely made. I wonder who drew it

...and if anyone is piling on the agony

[Cleric K]

I don't know why the picture is exactly how it is and trough which resources it is manifested.

Guney, this is normal. It’s actually related to the anthill. It’s normal that when we begin to behold the elemental spectrum it takes shapes and forms quite independent of our conscious activity. And this is not surprising. It’s the same also in dreams. Not only that we don’t feel responsible for the ‘pixels’ of the dreamscapes but they feel so independent that we take them for sensory realities.

As Ashvin noted above, we don’t in the least feel responsible for the inner light ‘pixels’, they face us as a mystery. But just like in dreams, even the patterns and flow in the dream/elemental world move quite independently from whatever we do at the tip of our needle.

To understand the full details of inner imagery we need to resonate with higher-order minds. As said earlier, one of the geniuses behind our inner imagery is our Angel. But even the Angel doesn’t feel like the complete master of these images. Their ‘substance’ belongs to even deeper minds. In fact, to comprehend the nature of light (the foundational inner experience of light and color, not the photons that we abstractly imagine) we need to raise all the way to the Seraphim. We can present this schematically:



The intuitive life of the Seraphim is experienced as inner light. Imagine a point of light and how it expands far beyond your human form, such that you are now a Divine being whose Cosmic consciousness is filled with light. This light however doesn’t feel like something external but it is like a reflection of the infinite intuitive potential. This light should not be thought of as some concrete arrangement of pixels but as if all conceivable inner states of existence can be differentiated from it, as if through a prism.

In the image, this is symbolized by the widest cone which reflects its intuitive existence as the inner experience of elemental light (the finely curved line). These lofty beings could maintain the full coherency of this potential but in a way, they sacrifice it. They let go of that coherency and now certain irregularities take shape in the potential. All such constellations are possible perspectives of existence.

The Angelic consciousness is embedded in the higher (the next cone). It can creatively modulate the elemental nature of this light, even though not fully consciously in the full depth. They are lucidly active in the soul strata.

Human consciousness is even more deeply embedded, such that what we behold as inner phenomena is the collective modulations of countless spiritual intents. Our “I” thinking activity is the final touch, so to speak (the jagged lines, although they should be conceived as modulations over everything, not as some pure shapes).

I know that this sounds very abstract but it’s actually very easy to comprehend when we take it as a first-person experience in meditation. All that is needed is the inner openness that the first-person contents of our experience are vastly not our creation at the level of a thinking ego.

As usual, we should warn here about the painter’s fallacy. We shouldn’t imagine that the World is created from our personal visual perspective. These higher minds encompass greater unities. That’s why in Revelation it is said that “The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within.”

Now, even though all our existence is contained in the consciousness of these minds, it wouldn’t be correct to say that they can follow each lesser perspective in the way we experience our daily consciousness. They feel that these perspectives arise within them as such irregularities, which in fact fragment their Cosmic consciousness. Yet they are willing to endure this condition because they do it out of freedom, out of pure Love.

This understanding presents us with a very interesting understanding of the higher stages of cognition. For example, to approach the experience of the Seraphim in the Intuitive state means that all these cones above need to align, to become concentric. As the image suggests, this is not some personal event. It is Cosmic and it consists of the cooperative work of all levels of minds. These alignments are like the astronomical events where certain planetary bodies arrange in some way. This also hints that it is not always possible to experience sublime states of being on demand. Certain higher phase-conjunctions are necessary. The question is that we don’t miss them.

It may seem strange but such events are joyous for the whole Cosmos. We can imagine that by working towards this alignment from below, we give the chance to the higher beings to become lucidly conscious all the way down to the human condition – in the way we experience it in our heightened state. It’s like one of the eyes of the Seraphim coming into focus, so to speak. A lightning bolt surges all the way from the Cosmic to the elemental through us. We as human beings intuit something of this lofty stage of existence but the Seraphim also rejoice because some of the irregularities are momentarily cohered.

So ultimately, when we begin to glimpse at the elemental world, we’re faced with an inner world that is even more dynamic than the sensory, and it is quite independent (anthill). Initially, these experiences correspond primarily to the processes of our lower bodies but in them also the higher minds can work creatively.

Today, higher development demands that we not only behold the elemental panorama (like in atavistic clairvoyance) but seek also the intuitive alignment with the higher minds/beings.