Ashvin,AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 8:02 pmGüney27 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 6:56 pm Ok, let's go trough the lecture I currently read
I think this part here is good, because it realy is talking about the basics.We come now to the third member of man's being, to the astral body — the “Soul Body” in Rosicrucian terminology. Man has the astral body in common only with the animals. The astral body is the bearer of feeling, of happiness and suffering, joy and pain, emotions and passions; wishes and desires, too, are anchored in the astral body. The astral body must be characterised by saying that there is within it that which is also present in the animal world. The animal world, too, has consciousness. The astral being of man and of the animal is held together by forces which have their seat in the Imaginative world or the “Elemental” world in Rosicrucian parlance. The forces which hold the astral body together and give it the form it has, are to be perceived in their true form, in the astral world. The ego-consciousness of the animal is also within this astral world. Just as in the case of a human being we speak of an individual soul, in the case of an animal we speak of a group-soul which is to be found on the astral plane. We must not think here of the single animal living on the physical plane but a whole species of animals — all lions, all tigers — have an ego in common, a group-soul to be found on the astral plane. So that the animal is really only comprehensible when it can be followed upwards to the astral plane. “Strands,” as it were, go forth from the lions, for example, and in the astral world unite into the group-soul that is common to the individual lions living on the earth. Just as the human being has an individual ego, so in every astral body there lives something of a group-ego; this animal-ego lives in the human astral body and the human being does not become independent of this animal-ego until he develops astral sight and becomes a companion of astral beings, when the group-souls of the animals confront him on the astral plane as individual animals confront him here. In the astral world there are beings who can only come down in fragments, as it were, to the physical plane as so-and-so many animals. When the life of these animals comes to an end they unite in the astral world with the rest of this astral being. A whole species of animals is a being on the astral plane, a being with whom converse can be held as with an individual here on earth. Although there is not exact similarity the group-souls are not incorrectly characterised in the second seal of the Apocalypse where they are divided into four classes: Lion, Eagle, Bull, Man (i.e., man who has not yet descended to the physical plane). These four Apocalyptic animals are the four classes of the group-souls which live in the astral world by the side of the human being with his individual soul.
So how would you study-meditate this?
How does studying this, gives you a explanation of the currents of your metamorphosis?
And how do you can be sure if it's reality, without being clairvoyant (I understand that this is logical and understandable, but so are fairy tales too)?
I know that this isn't working like in normal science, but how do you work or study-meditate with these lectures?
Guney, you did the easy part of quoting a lecture and asking questions... now comes the more difficult part of using your focused concepts to express the intuitive context you experience when reading through the quote. You should try to imagine how this context might relate to the currents of your metamorphosis, from first-person experience. Again, it doesn't need to be very vivid or precise, just share a few thoughts that naturally arise.
I know the first reaction will be, 'if I knew how to imagine that, I wouldn't be asking the question!' This is the attitude we need to overcome if we are going to make any progress with the study-meditate approach. The latter can't be imparted as stepwise instructions for building furniture but has to be lived through in our thinking. We should learn to trust that these supersensible ideas can only be related to the depth flow of our own thinking experience, so we already know the relevant answers to our questions at some level. Now it is a matter of using our active thinking to probe around and seek out the 'future-memories', i.e. a more lucid and encompassing intuitive orientation to our flow of existence.
We should be clear that we are not seeking some logical 'proof' for the existence of animal group-souls, like we would ask someone to prove that there are lions in Africa with written records, photos, statistical data, or something like that. The only proof we need is that, when thinking through these ideas, they help us make better sense of our totality of experience - they harmonize the facts of that experience. If we feel like we simply don't have enough facts of experience to harmonize, then this limitation our thinking bumps into is also feedback on where to focus our efforts. By no means should we expect that by applying some magical trick on the quote we will unlock the secrets of the astral body, astral plane, group-souls, and so on. When we study-meditate properly, we are led to more questions that help steer and focus our efforts. Ideally, these are questions that we didn't suspect to ask before.
Your thoughts can certainly be in the form of more questions, as long as these questions have some specificity and are actively exploring the ideal relations that may have relevance to how group-based animal consciousness also lives within our thinking, feeling, and willing life. There are no 'right' or 'wrong' thoughts or questions here. Deeper knowledge always comes from the very process of actively exploring ideal relations and therefore resonating with higher-order perspectives that are the very essence of activity and creativity (and the moral virtues cultivated through them).
The astral body is 'that' which we have in common with animals, this means it must be something which differentiate us and animals from plants. Somehow that comes with the ability to move trough space, and having sense organs.
If you want to stay in the given, wouldn't it be right for you to say that you experience emotions, like animals, and stop there?
Because if you say astral body this means that there is (I don't argue against it) another 'substance', from which your body is extracted.
And this certainly isn't in the given of our experience.
I can even acknowledge that these emotions, steer my thinking and willing.
But how would postulating an astral body, differentiating me from materialist, which postulates neurophysiological activity, as the body of emotions?
I explain the given trough my thinking in both cases.
That's my position right now, I'm see the biggest lesson in steiners (or any person which writes about the topic)study of our thinking activity, because it is really the means by which we can make any statement, so it is right to study this activity, but if I go too deep in esoteric scripture, Its feel like im postulating abstract things, to understand my perception.
I don't know if you are clairvoyant, but I am not, so it wouldn't be truthful if I would say that I know that Steiner is right, and I don't want to believe in anything.
It's logical yes, but that is another thing.