GA 13 - Rudolf Steiner's "Secret Science in Outline"

[Federica]

Thanks for exploring and sharing these ideas, Federica.

Let me state up front that the overarching idea I am working with here is that a thought like 'defying the hierarchies' shouldn't be the guiding light for my understanding of these issues. I think most of your post above aligns with that same idea, especially when addressing the spectrum of spiritual experiences you are already familiar with, like computer technology and coffee. We have much experience with how these modulate our cognitive-perceptual life and, if we have done a bit of inner work, we can sense the differentiations when our spiritual activity engages with them versus abstaining from them. We can place these differentiations within the context of our ideals for self-development that, in turn, will also coincide with World development. Because of that inner experience, we are motivated to move our imaginative activity through the ideal relations in a thorough and nuanced manner.

You carefully went through the process of imaginatively thinking through various circumstances, weighing their spiritual costs/benefits in those circumstances. You rightly call attention to moderation and balance. Indeed the 'mortification' of desire not only isn't a great idea, it isn't actually possible through the ascetic measures alone - the underlying desires will simply be redirected to another aspect of soul life and the pressure will burst from there. Such ascetic practices should only come as a side effect of inner development that has transmuted certain bodily desires into the Love for spiritual development in harmonic alignment with the hierarchies, through the Wisdom of knowing what tasks await us across the threshold of physical death. Then we may say, "Once I cross the threshold and ascend to the spiritual worlds to co-participate in fashioning the curvatures of Earthly destiny, I cannot carry my physical desires with me, they will need to be burned off, so I choose to start doing some of that work right now during Earthy life to help maintain continuity of consciousness."

So all of that is a rigorous and healthy approach, in my view, and should be maintained as much as possible. It is a living into and together with phenomenal experience. And you seem to maintain that approach for a bit when moving to psychedelics, but I'm not sure how long that lasts. When we move to an unfamiliar spectrum of experience like psychedelics (unfamiliar for both you and myself), I think there is a strong temptation to switch back to vague notions of 'defying the hierarchies' or something similar and let that guide our thinking rather than inner experience and imaginative explorations. You ask the following questions:

But do psychedelics even offer similar possibilities? Is there any immense value we miss by staying away from psychedelics, as we would miss, should we decide to stay away from the wealth of content and interaction accessible through the web? And is it possible to remain in control of one’s own agency, when the lawfulness of perception is shut down in a forceful way?

What would be the spiritually acceptable reason to try and induce imagination exogenously, from the bottom-up, once one is able to willingly enter the imaginative state through concentration? How would that not equal the introduction of a contender to the soul forces? Why is there a need to pump up the imaginative muscles, not only with spiritual exercise, but also with spiritual steroids?

For me, these are completely open-ended questions at this time. I don't see any clear-cut answers to them. I can certainly form some loose intuitions of what the answers may look like, but in all cases, I think the answers would be accompanied by "it depends, under these circumstances, etc." It would positively pain me to answer these questions with the broad stroke that intervening in the deeper ideal rhythms is a defiance against the hierarchies. As you know, the process of evolution is precisely taking over creative responsibility for the rhythms the hierarchies previously maintained for us, as they withdraw from these spaces due to their own evolution. The first domain that should happen is within our cognitive-perceptual (neurosensory) rhythms. Again, these are all 'physical' rhythms insofar as the "I" can only think, feel, and act on the physical plane through the physical body (which is a compressed image of the more subtle bodies).

You are also correct to point out this should happen in stages. We need great wisdom and intuitive flexibility when evaluating what rhythms we can be involved in, depending on our inner stage of development. That is a very intimate and individual question for each person to decide. At best, I am comfortable saying that, once someone else like Cleric has experimented with psychedelics, investigated its effects, and reported them here, we can place a certain amount of confidence in the facts reported and investigate those facts imaginatively without physically experimenting with psychedelics ourselves. It is the same principle with many facts conveyed through Steiner's spiritual research. But someone had to dare to take these steps inward into unfamiliar territory, into the deeper spaces of ideal rhythms, to methodically trace their phenomenal shadows, and we may be called to do so in the future as well, in our own way. I remain open to that possibility and that redemptive challenge.

For example, my parents are going to this Arsha Vidya retreat in about a month and I may join them for a few days to practice some Eastern-style meditations and yoga and explore the Vedanta teachings. That is not something I would recommend spiritual seekers start out with or employ in a one-sided way, or even on a consistent basis. Nevertheless, it is an opportunity to move my imaginative and physical activity through a wider phenomenal spectrum and therefore kindle deeper intuitions. It is something that I have determined can be responsibly approached at this time for limited spiritual functions. The last thing I would want to do is have this evaluation determined for me beforehand by a rule that has been externalized, like 'Eastern meditative techniques are defiance against the individuated 'I' principle'. In my view, the evaluation should always be kindled anew based on evolving circumstances, first and foremost my own intuitive development.

The expanding inner knowledge should be the foundation for the ascetic practices rather than the latter being a means to the former or some other myopic goals.

Ok, Ashvin, then we disagree. I don’t see how ascetic practices can be nurturing and spiritually developing, at the present stage of human evolution, in which the capacity to govern our incarnated - fallen - life of desires in freedom has been opened for man. We are supposed to use our free will to regulate our desires. My opinion is that there is no freedom in self-inflicted mortification of the body, but its opposite. Defiance could induce this practice, just as well as fear. Sedate the baby so it will stop screaming, impose tethered plastic caps so people will reduce their littering habits (as we now have in the EU, good luck to us with this sort of mindset) or curb the bodily rhythms, as a mystical workaround for moderation of desires. Looking without prejudice at this last example, at the extreme of the spectrum we find suicide. After all, why stay on this side of the threshold only to negate all that it intrinsically implies for our human organization? I’m glad that OMA’s daily meditation today speaks quite clearly to this question as well:

Pleasures - direct and control them by exercising wisdom
"To seek pleasure is a normal tendency in every human being – we all know that. However, should we have absolute faith in this natural impulse that urges us to satisfy all our instinctive desires? Some people enjoy eating or drinking to excess, others take pleasure in fighting, stealing, vandalizing or seducing women.
It is easy to understand why they find these things pleasant, for nature offers such a wealth of possibilities. But this tendency to indulge in pleasure cannot be completely justified unless it is directed and controlled by the presence of wisdom and reason. The basic impulse is permissible, but never such manifestations; it must not be allowed to run free and out of control. All needs are wonderful forces; there is nothing wrong with them. It is only when the other factor – the guiding words of wisdom – is absent that these instincts become harmful.

But coming back to your position, I find it difficult to reconcile your last statements:

”I can imagine all of the practices you mentioned fitting into a healthy spiritual practice IF the intention is born from Wisdom and Love, i.e. expanding knowledge of the holistic spiritual relations and the desire to freely harmonize one's activity with them.” with the before last ones: “Indeed the 'mortification' of desire not only isn't a great idea, it isn't actually possible through the ascetic measures alone - the underlying desires will simply be redirected to another aspect of soul life and the pressure will burst from there. Such ascetic practices should only come as a side effect of inner development that has transmuted certain bodily desires into the Love for spiritual development in harmonic alignment with the hierarchies, through the Wisdom of knowing what tasks await us across the threshold of physical death.”


If this is what you mean by keeping the concepts fluid and using artistic forms, I have to admit I am not able to decode them. To me, these expessions sound like a risky approach. Maybe your inner perception is that meaning has increased, but what I experience externally is arbitrariness.

And you seem to maintain that approach for a bit when moving to psychedelics, but I'm not sure how long that lasts. When we move to an unfamiliar spectrum of experience like psychedelics (unfamiliar for both you and myself), I think there is a strong temptation to switch back to vague notions of 'defying the hierarchies' or something similar

The notion of defying the hierarchies is not vague. As I previously tried to lay out in concrete terms, I think it is the expression of a Luciferic and/or Ahrimanic impulse. I can put it in a matrix:

I am aware that such an illustration could prompt you to say that I am in need of easy rules, by lack of artistic ability to remain fluid. But just as it’s been said hundreds of times that graphs should not be read as abstract models, I will say that this matrix is only meant to address your objection that my idea is vague, not to establish rigid and automatic rules, supposed to exempt us form thinking.

For me, these are completely open-ended questions at this time. I don't see any clear-cut answers to them. I can certainly form some loose intuitions of what the answers may look like, but in all cases, I think the answers would be accompanied by "it depends, under these circumstances, etc." It would positively pain me to answer these questions with the broad stroke that intervening in the deeper ideal rhythms is a defiance against the hierarchies.

Then it must have become painful for you to read much of what Steiner wrote and said? I think it’s safe to say he was not particularly adept of ambiguous and aquarelle-like kind of evaluations. The quote below is a fitting example.

As you know, the process of evolution is precisely taking over creative responsibility for the rhythms the hierarchies previously maintained for us, as they withdraw from these spaces due to their own evolution. The first domain that should happen is within our cognitive-perceptual (neurosensory) rhythms. Again, these are all 'physical' rhythms insofar as the "I" can only think, feel, and act on the physical plane through the physical body (which is a compressed image of the more subtle bodies).

The way I see it, this characterization doesn't well describe what has been delegated to our creative responsibility in our times. You can call it “cognitive-perceptual rhythms that are all physical rhythms”, but the truth remains that the part of creative responsibility delegated to man in our times amounts to sense-free thinking. That’s it. It’s already huge of course, but for some reason you have decided that it’s not enough, and argue that “these are all physical rhythms”. That's how physical they are, the way Steiner puts it:

Another misunderstanding is possible. It might be imagined that some activity of the soul, intended to lead to supersensible cognition, were in some way connected with changes in the physical organism. As a matter of fact, such activities have nothing whatever to do with anything in man that belongs to the province of physiology, or to other aspects of natural science. They are processes purely of soul and spirit, as far removed from the physical as are ordinary healthy thinking and perceiving. The way in which they take place in the soul is no different from the way in which we think our thoughts or come to our decisions. As much or as little as healthy thinking has to do with the body, just so much and so little have the activities of a genuine training for supersensible knowledge. Any kind of training that affects man in a different way is no true spiritual training, but a caricature of it.

Is it even possible to be more unequivocal than that on the issue? I doubt it.

We need great wisdom and intuitive flexibility when evaluating what rhythms we can be involved in, depending on our inner stage of development. That is a very intimate and individual question for each person to decide.

Are you saying that some individuals may be so advanced today as to tackle right now what the rest of humanity will only begin to master in remote future eons?

The devices of the future won't be something that utilize our better understanding of the laws of the physical-world-in-itself, but instead will be something like amplifiers of our inner intents. Our L-movements would cascade through the stages of the device and manifest on a larger scale. Here, however, even deeper moral coordination will be needed. Even if we could get our hands on one such future device today, it would simply not work. No one would be able to set it in motion. This is simply due to the fact that the devices don't utilize some hardcoded laws of Nature that are immutable and independent of everything else

At best, I am comfortable saying that, once someone else like Cleric has experimented with psychedelics, investigated its effects, and reported them here, we can place a certain amount of confidence in the facts reported and investigate those facts imaginatively without physically experimenting with psychedelics ourselves. It is the same principle with many facts conveyed through Steiner's spiritual research. But someone had to dare to take these steps inward into unfamiliar territory, into the deeper spaces of ideal rhythms, to methodically trace their phenomenal shadows, and we may be called to do so in the future as well, in our own way. I remain open to that possibility and that redemptive challenge.

For my part, I am not comfortable at all with such phrasing, with how it depicts the contents of this forum. As for the prospect of going to a retreat with your family, it seems a great idea to me, though scarcely connected with the rest of this discussion.

[AshvinP]

The expanding inner knowledge should be the foundation for the ascetic practices rather than the latter being a means to the former or some other myopic goals.

Ok, Ashvin, then we disagree. I don’t see how ascetic practices can be nurturing and spiritually developing, at the present stage of human evolution, in which the capacity to govern our incarnated - fallen - life of desires in freedom has been opened for man. We are supposed to use our free will to regulate our desires. My opinion is that there is no freedom in self-inflicted mortification of the body, but its opposite. Defiance could induce this practice, just as well as fear. Sedate the baby so it will stop screaming, impose tethered plastic caps so people will reduce their littering habits (as we now have in the EU, good luck to us with this sort of mindset) or curb the bodily rhythms, as a mystical workaround for moderation of desires. Looking without prejudice at this last example, at the extreme of the spectrum we find suicide. After all, why stay on this side of the threshold only to negate all that it intrinsically implies for our human organization? I’m glad that OMA’s daily meditation today speaks quite clearly to this question as well:

Pleasures - direct and control them by exercising wisdom
"To seek pleasure is a normal tendency in every human being – we all know that. However, should we have absolute faith in this natural impulse that urges us to satisfy all our instinctive desires? Some people enjoy eating or drinking to excess, others take pleasure in fighting, stealing, vandalizing or seducing women.
It is easy to understand why they find these things pleasant, for nature offers such a wealth of possibilities. But this tendency to indulge in pleasure cannot be completely justified unless it is directed and controlled by the presence of wisdom and reason. The basic impulse is permissible, but never such manifestations; it must not be allowed to run free and out of control. All needs are wonderful forces; there is nothing wrong with them. It is only when the other factor – the guiding words of wisdom – is absent that these instincts become harmful.

But coming back to your position, I find it difficult to reconcile your last statements:

”I can imagine all of the practices you mentioned fitting into a healthy spiritual practice IF the intention is born from Wisdom and Love, i.e. expanding knowledge of the holistic spiritual relations and the desire to freely harmonize one's activity with them.” with the before last ones: “Indeed the 'mortification' of desire not only isn't a great idea, it isn't actually possible through the ascetic measures alone - the underlying desires will simply be redirected to another aspect of soul life and the pressure will burst from there. Such ascetic practices should only come as a side effect of inner development that has transmuted certain bodily desires into the Love for spiritual development in harmonic alignment with the hierarchies, through the Wisdom of knowing what tasks await us across the threshold of physical death.”


If this is what you mean by keeping the concepts fluid and using artistic forms, I have to admit I am not able to decode them. To me, these expessions sound like a risky approach. Maybe your inner perception is that meaning has increased, but what I experience externally is arbitrariness.

Federica,

I'm glad this discussion has opened up a few different avenues for thinking to explore.

These are the examples you gave for the ascetic practices - "For example I deprive it of sleep, as a principle, and wake up at 04:00 every morning, I deprive it of sexuality as a principle, I make it rest on bare wood, I sit cross-legged until my joints hurt, I only eat stale bread, etcetera."

When you said "as a principle", that sounded to me like "following a prescribed ascetic mode of conduct because I believe it is the spiritual thing to do". In which case, I agree that's never a good idea.

Is it your position that abstinence from sexuality, for example, cannot possibly be a means of 'freely governing our desires', or altering our sleeping routine in some way that may seem 'extreme' to most people? If so, then I disagree. I don't think there are any set rules for how we can employ our intuitive knowledge to freely regulate our desires, and that will certainly depend on each individual's level of inner development and karmic circumstances. Some people may decide to work with more 'extreme' measures than others. Those measures can still be the free expression of the "I" if they are not rooted in external authorities and shadowy inner impulses but drawn from creative and moral intuition.

What should be kept in mind is that expanding our inner knowledge is not just accumulating facts about 'what's good and what's not' or 'how to regulate our desires'. We are drawing on the spiritual forces that lay at the basis of our psychic constitution, which I believe relates to OMA's quote, which help us spiritualize and transmute our Earthly desires. It is true spiritual alchemy. If we don't do that intimate cognitive and moral work, drawing on the forces of the progressive hierarchies, then neither mortification nor suicide will get rid of the desires, they will simply reappear in a new form later in life or our next incarnation. That is why I say it can't possibly work if it is done "as a principle", rather than as a side effect of our ever-expanding intuitive development.

For me, these are completely open-ended questions at this time. I don't see any clear-cut answers to them. I can certainly form some loose intuitions of what the answers may look like, but in all cases, I think the answers would be accompanied by "it depends, under these circumstances, etc." It would positively pain me to answer these questions with the broad stroke that intervening in the deeper ideal rhythms is a defiance against the hierarchies.

Then it must have become painful for you to read much of what Steiner wrote and said? I think it’s safe to say he was not particularly adept of ambiguous and aquarelle-like kind of evaluations. The quote below is a fitting example.

As you know, the process of evolution is precisely taking over creative responsibility for the rhythms the hierarchies previously maintained for us, as they withdraw from these spaces due to their own evolution. The first domain that should happen is within our cognitive-perceptual (neurosensory) rhythms. Again, these are all 'physical' rhythms insofar as the "I" can only think, feel, and act on the physical plane through the physical body (which is a compressed image of the more subtle bodies).

The way I see it, this characterization doesn't well describe what has been delegated to our creative responsibility in our times. You can call it “cognitive-perceptual rhythms that are all physical rhythms”, but the truth remains that the part of creative responsibility delegated to man in our times amounts to sense-free thinking. That’s it. It’s already huge of course, but for some reason you have decided that it’s not enough, and argue that “these are all physical rhythms”. That's how physical they are, the way Steiner puts it:

Another misunderstanding is possible. It might be imagined that some activity of the soul, intended to lead to supersensible cognition, were in some way connected with changes in the physical organism. As a matter of fact, such activities have nothing whatever to do with anything in man that belongs to the province of physiology, or to other aspects of natural science. They are processes purely of soul and spirit, as far removed from the physical as are ordinary healthy thinking and perceiving. The way in which they take place in the soul is no different from the way in which we think our thoughts or come to our decisions. As much or as little as healthy thinking has to do with the body, just so much and so little have the activities of a genuine training for supersensible knowledge. Any kind of training that affects man in a different way is no true spiritual training, but a caricature of it.

Is it even possible to be more unequivocal than that on the issue? I doubt it.

I believe Steiner is here referring to how the fruits of the intuitive thinking path are not the result of changes in the physical organism, as the fruits of some other spiritual paths may be (for ex. Kundalini yoga). He is not saying that developing higher cognition will in no way affect the physical body or allow us to modulate our physiological rhythms. In general, Imaginative cognition gives us the capacity to work creatively on the soul body, Inspiration on the etheric body, and Intuition on the physical body. That's because these bodies are the spiritual beings and forces that we retrace into through inner development. Of course, at this stage, we can't generate entirely new bodies on demand, but we can gain holistic insight into their spiritual nature and creatively work into them by drawing on the higher aesthetic and moral impulses at their foundation. For example, think of all the souls who use higher cognition to work on physically healing not only themselves, but also other people of illness.

In so far as they express themselves, these qualities are to be found in the astral body but if they are to be transformed, this must happen in the etheric body. What the ego has transformed in the etheric body is present in a man as Life-Spirit, in contrast to Life-Body. In theosophical literature, Life-Spirit is called “Budhi.” The substantiality of Budhi is nothing else than that part of the etheric body which has been transformed by the ego.

When the ego becomes so strong that it is able not only to transform the etheric body, but also the physical body—the densest of the principles in man and the forces of which extend into the very highest world—we say that a man is developing the very highest member of his being: Spirit-Man, or Atma. The forces for the transformation of the physical body lie in the highest world of all. The transformation of the physical body begins with the transformation of the breathing process, for Atma is Atmen—breath. This transformation causes changes in the constitution of the blood which works upon the physical body; man is here functioning in the very highest worlds.

Transformation can proceed in two ways and to be precise we must speak of an unconscious and a conscious transformation. In reality, every European, from out of his ego, has unconsciously transformed the lower members of his being. In the present phase of evolution he works consciously only in respect of the development of Spirit-Self (Manas) and he must be an initiate if he is to learn to work consciously at the transformation of his etheric body.

Thus even the most primitive human being in the very earliest stage of evolution has the three original members and within them the ego. Then begins the process of transformation. For long ages it proceeded unconsciously; humanity is now beginning consciously to transform the astral body. The Initiates are now consciously transforming the etheric body and in the future all human beings will consciously transform the etheric body and the physical body.

Certainly, the emphasis for most of us will be working on the soul body, but that doesn't mean we simply think about transforming our desires without taking physical measures. Again, to what extent ascetic practices will become a part of that creative work will depend on each individual's circumstances. Some physical pleasures will need to be strictly regulated, but we need to always approach these domains with caution and wisdom, paying attention to the continual intuitive feedback we are receiving from our prayer, meditation, study, and experimentation. If we try to wage a war against all desires at the same time, we will simply burn out and be engulfed by the lower nature. This is highly creative and improvisational soul work.

We need great wisdom and intuitive flexibility when evaluating what rhythms we can be involved in, depending on our inner stage of development. That is a very intimate and individual question for each person to decide.

Are you saying that some individuals may be so advanced today as to tackle right now what the rest of humanity will only begin to master in remote future eons?

The devices of the future won't be something that utilize our better understanding of the laws of the physical-world-in-itself, but instead will be something like amplifiers of our inner intents. Our L-movements would cascade through the stages of the device and manifest on a larger scale. Here, however, even deeper moral coordination will be needed. Even if we could get our hands on one such future device today, it would simply not work. No one would be able to set it in motion. This is simply due to the fact that the devices don't utilize some hardcoded laws of Nature that are immutable and independent of everything else

I don't think Cleric was suggesting a universal rule that applies to every single human soul. Yes, the very nature of current evolution is that there are human souls spanning the entire gradient from the lowest to most advanced stages of Earthly evolution. We should remember that initiation is about going ahead of the general stream of evolution, not to feel superior or leave it behind, but to work redemptively back into it.

[Federica]

Ashvin - Again, there would be a lot to say, and I will say it, but not just yet. I'm struggling with the video feedback thing and I need to detangle that first.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin - Again, there would be a lot to say, and I will say it, but not just yet. I'm struggling with the video feedback thing and I need to detangle that first.

Understood. In the meantime, I will post a link here as a reminder to myself of a concrete example I wanted to share re: ascetic measures born of inner knowledge as a creative means of modulating desires.


Levels of Dreaming and the Makeup of the Human Being: The Spiritual Ontology of Dreams


This guy has a lot of interesting papers here. Actually, I will just go ahead and share the example now.

In the case of the astral dream, when we meet this guardian we encounter patterns--essentially sympathies and antipathies--from the untransformed part of our astral body. In an etheric dream, we meet the projections from the etheric body in a kind of default way: experiences (even our own actions within the dream) happen as if to us, not as actions freely taken by us as is possible when we are awake. But in the astral dream the Ego has just awakened to itself, and the possibility now exists for the Ego to experience a whole sensory panorama, through the stimulation of the astral body, that is no longer bound by the rules of waking life. In other words, “one’s wildest dreams” can literally be fulfilled as experiences within the astral dream.

In a sense, the astral dream is a kind of training ground for higher spiritual perception. The lower guardian poses us this question: What will you do when you awaken into the world of the spirit? The guardian is asking us, and providing us with an opportunity to demonstrate, the extent to which our Ego is capable of infusing the astral body with its Higher Will. If a lucid dream is thus used as a kind of playground for the fulfillment of desires that arise from habits within the astral body, we prevent ourselves from gaining access to higher spiritual perception, remaining satisfied with our own projections instead of opening to the vast spiritual world available beyond the mask raised by our astral body. We kid ourselves if we think that what
happens in our dreams is private, known only to us. This inner space of the dream, particularly the astral dream, is like the foyer of a grand palace: so filled with potential wonders that it is possible to get lost there, mistaking the entrance for the inner sanctum.

Such dangers--for they are dangers to spiritual development--have been well-known throughout the esoteric traditions, from the ancient Greek’s imputation “Nothing in Excess” to the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz to the teasing rituals of the African Bushmen to the yogas of
ancient India. The astral dream is a sign that the Ego is waking up to its higher nature, not that its mission is accomplished.

Most people wouldn't even suspect there exists this degree of freedom for inwardly exploring the soul configuration. Now if we awaken into an 'astral dream', which at first would be a form of lucid dreaming or 'astral projection', we have the opportunity to experiment and become intimate with what parts of the soul configuration remain untransformed, clinging to past habituated patterns of activity. This is much different from conceptually evaluating what 'needs to be worked on' during normal waking life - it reveals soul patterns at a much more intimate level and where we can, in a sense, objectively experience the consequences of those patterns and get feedback independently of the fragmented physical-etheric mediation of normal conceptual life.

With that deeper insight, we can then evaluate what needs to be paid closer attention to during waking life, what needs to be more strictly regulated, and so forth. If, for example, we discern a pattern of sexual obsession, aspects of our waking experience that speak to this pattern will stand out more vividly for us and we can pay greater attention to them. Then we may freely choose to avoid sexual situations, imagery, etc. as a means of deconditioning from this pattern and continue paying attention to the intuitive feedback we receive. We are not taking such measures simply because someone told us to, and we were conditioned to believe it is the 'spiritual thing to do', but from deeper and intimate self-knowledge. In fact, to successfully exercise our will-to-asceticism in such a scenario, the "I" must remain fiercely present in the flow of experience and continually renew its efforts, when otherwise it was dreamily carried on the wave of instinctive soul patterns that continually attract it to corresponding thoughts, mental images, and sensory experiences.

He then proceeds to some more discussion that is also relevant to ours and helpful to contemplate:

Dream technologies are all essentially methods of utilizing the various levels of freedom that are potentially experienced in the astral realm by virtue of an astral body that is freed from the influence of the etheric body.

Such technologies include astral travel, remote healing, communication with plants, animals, or with the dead, and both “white” and “black” magics, among other potential uses. I highly recommend reading my friend Ryan Hurd’s excellent article, Lucid Dreaming as Shamanic Technology , for a well-researched perspective on different ways of viewing the phenomenon of lucid dreaming.

For the purposes of this article, the main thing to point out is simply that care and foresight must be exercised when the transition to the astral dream state is made, especially for those who wish to develop spiritual seership. In this case, one maintains a definitive humility in the face of such possibilities, always with awareness that how we approach the spiritual world has definite consequences for what we experience there. Recognition that the reception of spiritual experiences are a gift from higher sources and not simply a consequence of one’s own will or desires should be maintained as a conscious attitude.

Dream technologies have their place and shouldn’t be avoided out of any sort of fear that one’s progress will automatically be derailed with their use. However, it can be easy to overdevelop one’s astral body through the engagement of certain processes that are designed to heighten facility with one or another dream technology (most egregiously, the use of drugs). Pursuit of dream technologies for their own sake, and not in the context of continued spiritual development, can lead to imbalances which show up elsewhere in life and prevent progress from being more easily achieved. The caveats for this kind of shift in consciousness are far too numerous and contextually dependent to explore further in this article. In this regard, however, I can fully recommend the perspective cultivated by anthroposophy as a basis for healthy spiritual development.

[Güney27]

Ashvin - Again, there would be a lot to say, and I will say it, but not just yet. I'm struggling with the video feedback thing and I need to detangle that first.

Understood. In the meantime, I will post a link here as a reminder to myself of a concrete example I wanted to share re: ascetic measures born of inner knowledge as a creative means of modulating desires.


Levels of Dreaming and the Makeup of the Human Being: The Spiritual Ontology of Dreams


This guy has a lot of interesting papers here. Actually, I will just go ahead and share the example now.

In the case of the astral dream, when we meet this guardian we encounter patterns--essentially sympathies and antipathies--from the untransformed part of our astral body. In an etheric dream, we meet the projections from the etheric body in a kind of default way: experiences (even our own actions within the dream) happen as if to us, not as actions freely taken by us as is possible when we are awake. But in the astral dream the Ego has just awakened to itself, and the possibility now exists for the Ego to experience a whole sensory panorama, through the stimulation of the astral body, that is no longer bound by the rules of waking life. In other words, “one’s wildest dreams” can literally be fulfilled as experiences within the astral dream.

In a sense, the astral dream is a kind of training ground for higher spiritual perception. The lower guardian poses us this question: What will you do when you awaken into the world of the spirit? The guardian is asking us, and providing us with an opportunity to demonstrate, the extent to which our Ego is capable of infusing the astral body with its Higher Will. If a lucid dream is thus used as a kind of playground for the fulfillment of desires that arise from habits within the astral body, we prevent ourselves from gaining access to higher spiritual perception, remaining satisfied with our own projections instead of opening to the vast spiritual world available beyond the mask raised by our astral body. We kid ourselves if we think that what
happens in our dreams is private, known only to us. This inner space of the dream, particularly the astral dream, is like the foyer of a grand palace: so filled with potential wonders that it is possible to get lost there, mistaking the entrance for the inner sanctum.

Such dangers--for they are dangers to spiritual development--have been well-known throughout the esoteric traditions, from the ancient Greek’s imputation “Nothing in Excess” to the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz to the teasing rituals of the African Bushmen to the yogas of
ancient India. The astral dream is a sign that the Ego is waking up to its higher nature, not that its mission is accomplished.

Most people wouldn't even suspect there exists this degree of freedom for inwardly exploring the soul configuration. Now if we awaken into an 'astral dream', which at first would be a form of lucid dreaming or 'astral projection', we have the opportunity to experiment and become intimate with what parts of the soul configuration remain untransformed, clinging to past habituated patterns of activity. This is much different from conceptually evaluating what 'needs to be worked on' during normal waking life - it reveals soul patterns at a much more intimate level and where we can, in a sense, objectively experience the consequences of those patterns and get feedback independently of the fragmented physical-etheric mediation of normal conceptual life.

With that deeper insight, we can then evaluate what needs to be paid closer attention to during waking life, what needs to be more strictly regulated, and so forth. If, for example, we discern a pattern of sexual obsession, aspects of our waking experience that speak to this pattern will stand out more vividly for us and we can pay greater attention to them. Then we may freely choose to avoid sexual situations, imagery, etc. as a means of deconditioning from this pattern and continue paying attention to the intuitive feedback we receive. We are not taking such measures simply because someone told us to, and we were conditioned to believe it is the 'spiritual thing to do', but from deeper and intimate self-knowledge. In fact, to successfully exercise our will-to-asceticism in such a scenario, the "I" must remain fiercely present in the flow of experience and continually renew its efforts, when otherwise it was dreamily carried on the wave of instinctive soul patterns that continually attract it to corresponding thoughts, mental images, and sensory experiences.

He then proceeds to some more discussion that is also relevant to ours and helpful to contemplate:

Dream technologies are all essentially methods of utilizing the various levels of freedom that are potentially experienced in the astral realm by virtue of an astral body that is freed from the influence of the etheric body.

Such technologies include astral travel, remote healing, communication with plants, animals, or with the dead, and both “white” and “black” magics, among other potential uses. I highly recommend reading my friend Ryan Hurd’s excellent article, Lucid Dreaming as Shamanic Technology , for a well-researched perspective on different ways of viewing the phenomenon of lucid dreaming.

For the purposes of this article, the main thing to point out is simply that care and foresight must be exercised when the transition to the astral dream state is made, especially for those who wish to develop spiritual seership. In this case, one maintains a definitive humility in the face of such possibilities, always with awareness that how we approach the spiritual world has definite consequences for what we experience there. Recognition that the reception of spiritual experiences are a gift from higher sources and not simply a consequence of one’s own will or desires should be maintained as a conscious attitude.

Dream technologies have their place and shouldn’t be avoided out of any sort of fear that one’s progress will automatically be derailed with their use. However, it can be easy to overdevelop one’s astral body through the engagement of certain processes that are designed to heighten facility with one or another dream technology (most egregiously, the use of drugs). Pursuit of dream technologies for their own sake, and not in the context of continued spiritual development, can lead to imbalances which show up elsewhere in life and prevent progress from being more easily achieved. The caveats for this kind of shift in consciousness are far too numerous and contextually dependent to explore further in this article. In this regard, however, I can fully recommend the perspective cultivated by anthroposophy as a basis for healthy spiritual development.

Thank you Ashvin.

I looked up into this paper and it’s very interesting.
There is a website online in which he published essays.

I’m very familiar with these state between wakefulness and sleep.
It can be achieved by relaxing the body and trying to stay awake, while the body goes sleeping.

In these states there are very interesting images with which one can interact.
But these can often be very scary, like for example one sees demons which try to attack one.
Did you ever experienced these states?


Another question is, that when one is able to ,,see“ these soul currents in form of images, how does that gives one the capacity to transform them?

[AshvinP]

Thank you Ashvin.

I looked up into this paper and it’s very interesting.
There is a website online in which he published essays.

I’m very familiar with these state between wakefulness and sleep.
It can be achieved by relaxing the body and trying to stay awake, while the body goes sleeping.

In these states there are very interesting images with which one can interact.
But these can often be very scary, like for example one sees demons which try to attack one.
Did you ever experienced these states?


Another question is, that when one is able to ,,see“ these soul currents in form of images, how does that gives one the capacity to transform them?

Hi Guney,

We should be clear this isn't a primary tool of higher development. Especially in the early stages, when we haven't purified much of the soul life, there can be a strong temptation to indulge in and abuse the newly discovered astral degrees of freedom, as Miller indicated. I haven't had much experience with lucid dreaming partly for that reason, so I am speaking from a principled understanding of higher development in general, which is also what I tried to convey in the essays.

IF we find ourselves in these astral dreams, then we can use that as an opportunity to receive feedback in pursuit of self-knowledge. We shouldn't expect any one-time strokes of insight or transformation (although sometimes such insights can happen), but rather a gradient of transformation unfolding over many iterations of sleeping-waking. Over time, we can become sensitive to this process of transformation, i.e. how we advance toward certain insights about the soul life and make certain corresponding efforts, and then regress back into mental fogginess, apathy, indolence, etc., then we are inspired again and advance a little further, and so on. Overall, we are spiraling upwards.

We should keep in mind this soul context that we experience in dreams is always present during waking life as patterns of feeling, primarily what we call 'sympathies and antipathies'. These lead us to think certain things and not others, to interact with certain people and not others, to visit certain places and not others, etc. So we always have the opportunity to notice these patterns throughout the day, but normally we don't know what to look for or have the presence of mind to notice not only what we are thinking and doing, but how are thinking and doing it. Through our efforts, these habitual daily patterns should begin to stand out more.

The soul images are not themselves the soul currents, but we gain an understanding of the latter by learning to read the former, just like you learned to mine meaning from English letters and words by reading them. When our ego-consciousness confronts the dream imagery with this understanding of their symbolic function, they convey certain densified meaning that is otherwise spread out over many conceptual states. They point us to the meaning of our own soul configuration, to various constellations of pride, envy, wrath, lust, sloth, gluttony, vanity, etc. that lead to egoistical habits of thinking, feeling, and willing. We will still need to communicate this meaning to ourselves in the form of the inner conceptual voice, but it should feel that these concepts are naturally precipitating 'from above', from our intuitive context, rather than painstakingly cobbling them together from below.

Transforming the soul life is a living process, a living dialogue with higher spirits. When we resist certain patterns of thinking, speaking, physical movements, etc., we are concretizing our desire to be transformed so the higher worlds take notice. We can't do this all at one time, though, so we need to be strategic and set aside a few minutes per day to practice resistance. For ex., we can practice active listening, where we listen to someone else speak for 5 or 10 min. without getting distracted and wandering off into our own thoughts, inserting any of our own commentaries, any judgments about what is being communicated, etc. The more we dedicate our efforts to such practices, even if only a few minutes per day, the more they will radiate outward and 'infect' other domains of life as well. The relevant insights, inspirations, and qualities will begin flowing in to repurpose our spiritual activity toward more heavenly aims. At first, we shouldn't focus on 'interpreting' any dream imagery, but just keep in mind their symbolic function that points toward our soul life. We can entrust their meaning to the Divine via prayer, meditation, and sacred sleep. Then the Divine will offer its benediction in return, which is experienced as the inflow of insights and inspiration.

In a sense, it is about gradually releasing various etched pathways (beliefs, preferences, interests, habits, etc.), finished forms that have crystallized from receded activity (including activity from past incarnations), that morph and twist our natural longing for the Divine into certain selfish tendencies. These are the elastic threads that entangle and constrain the 'steering wheel' of our thinking-will into narrow and egoistic movements. The more we resist, become conscious of, and then release these elastic threads, the more our steering wheel naturally and smoothly turns toward the Divine Will. Again, prayer and concentrated meditation (including phenomenological study) are the primary tools. We should become conceptually familiar with the basic soul curvatures along which we flow, i.e. the details of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies, and the most common soul configurations in our epoch. As we know, we can only coherently perceive as much as we have the corresponding concepts to perceive in our inner and outer environments. If we have never studied the details of spiritual science in a living way, we simply won't know what we are seeing even if it's staring us in the face.

[Cleric]

Another question is, that when one is able to ,,see“ these soul currents in form of images, how does that gives one the capacity to transform them?

I would like to add something here because the way the question is posed can make us expect things in an incorrect way.

Such a question would make sense if a surgeon says: "I can't operate unless I see the organs. Once I see them this gives me the capacity to transform them." Habitually, we may imagine things in a similar way when it concerns spiritual development. We may imagine that we first need to see inner images of, say, the chakras, and then begin to rotate and attune them, as if we are tuning a musical instrument.

Please note the hidden indirection here. The surgeon wants to fix the body by augmenting its physical structure. The disciple may say "I want to develop my ability to love." Now if the latter imagines that first the soul organs must be experienced in inner images and then manipulate them such that our ability to love is somehow 'unlocked', this would still be a quite materialistic conception that we unknowingly transpose to the deeper soul life. However, in order to love we should tackle the task directly. We should try to love, no matter how imperfect the results may be. It is these imperfections that may indeed manifest in our expanded imagination and serve as feedback, giving us insights on how to perfect our love. So you see, the experiences in our inner soul life indeed help us to work on our transformation but the transformation itself happens by trying to work with the actual inner forces that we try to perfect.

Your question can make one believe that when the images of the inner currents are perceived, together with this the capacity for some completely new inner forces will manifest through which we'll work on our being. Such a person may say "You try to love but that is only because you are working on a level too low. When you reach the perception of the heart center you will no longer 'love' but will manipulate the rotations of the heart organ with completely different inner gestures you now can't even imagine. Thus 'looks like' love only when perceived in the sensory realm." Clearly, this is a very dangerous position. It is actually true that love is something far more extraordinary than a mere feeling. In the higher experiences, love is a cognitive, creative force, it is infinitely manifold, but it is completely false that we can reach the higher Love by looking at its manifestations in our normal consciousness as a mere shadow, and that on high we'll be doing something completely different. This implies that one may as well skip trying to love (as if not to waste time) and instead try to reach directly for these completely different soul forces. No. We can only reach the higher Love when we start from our present capacity to love, no matter how clumsy it might be. Higher Love will blossom from within these clumsy early attempts.

This also helps us realize how by following teachings like those of OMA and BD, who do not put emphasis on the development of higher cognition per se, but on the development of living skills and forces that flow in all aspects of life, we are still transforming our being in very powerful ways. The reason is that we are working directly with the inner degrees of freedom of our spiritual forces - the virtues. These act as deeper soul rotations (see the video feedback meditation) and our Earthly life's flow streams accordingly. Higher cognition allows us to recognize more holistically how this deeper spiritual activity manifests in our life (for example by encompassing whole scenes of our life and realizing how our forces have manifested or failed to manifest a certain result), but the virtues would have their harmonious contribution to our flow even if we don't encompass it at a higher order but still experience it more like an Earthly-life movie. This creates the most fertile conditions in which higher cognition can then awaken almost as a matter of course.

[Güney27]

Thank you Ashvin.

I looked up into this paper and it’s very interesting.
There is a website online in which he published essays.

I’m very familiar with these state between wakefulness and sleep.
It can be achieved by relaxing the body and trying to stay awake, while the body goes sleeping.

In these states there are very interesting images with which one can interact.
But these can often be very scary, like for example one sees demons which try to attack one.
Did you ever experienced these states?


Another question is, that when one is able to ,,see“ these soul currents in form of images, how does that gives one the capacity to transform them?

Hi Guney,

We should be clear this isn't a primary tool of higher development. Especially in the early stages, when we haven't purified much of the soul life, there can be a strong temptation to indulge in and abuse the newly discovered astral degrees of freedom, as Miller indicated. I haven't had much experience with lucid dreaming partly for that reason, so I am speaking from a principled understanding of higher development in general, which is also what I tried to convey in the essays.

IF we find ourselves in these astral dreams, then we can use that as an opportunity to receive feedback in pursuit of self-knowledge. We shouldn't expect any one-time strokes of insight or transformation (although sometimes such insights can happen), but rather a gradient of transformation unfolding over many iterations of sleeping-waking. Over time, we can become sensitive to this process of transformation, i.e. how we advance toward certain insights about the soul life and make certain corresponding efforts, and then regress back into mental fogginess, apathy, indolence, etc., then we are inspired again and advance a little further, and so on. Overall, we are spiraling upwards.

We should keep in mind this soul context that we experience in dreams is always present during waking life as patterns of feeling, primarily what we call 'sympathies and antipathies'. These lead us to think certain things and not others, to interact with certain people and not others, to visit certain places and not others, etc. So we always have the opportunity to notice these patterns throughout the day, but normally we don't know what to look for or have the presence of mind to notice not only what we are thinking and doing, but how are thinking and doing it. Through our efforts, these habitual daily patterns should begin to stand out more.

The soul images are not themselves the soul currents, but we gain an understanding of the latter by learning to read the former, just like you learned to mine meaning from English letters and words by reading them. When our ego-consciousness confronts the dream imagery with this understanding of their symbolic function, they convey certain densified meaning that is otherwise spread out over many conceptual states. They point us to the meaning of our own soul configuration, to various constellations of pride, envy, wrath, lust, sloth, gluttony, vanity, etc. that lead to egoistical habits of thinking, feeling, and willing. We will still need to communicate this meaning to ourselves in the form of the inner conceptual voice, but it should feel that these concepts are naturally precipitating 'from above', from our intuitive context, rather than painstakingly cobbling them together from below.

Transforming the soul life is a living process, a living dialogue with higher spirits. When we resist certain patterns of thinking, speaking, physical movements, etc., we are concretizing our desire to be transformed so the higher worlds take notice. We can't do this all at one time, though, so we need to be strategic and set aside a few minutes per day to practice resistance. For ex., we can practice active listening, where we listen to someone else speak for 5 or 10 min. without getting distracted and wandering off into our own thoughts, inserting any of our own commentaries, any judgments about what is being communicated, etc. The more we dedicate our efforts to such practices, even if only a few minutes per day, the more they will radiate outward and 'infect' other domains of life as well. The relevant insights, inspirations, and qualities will begin flowing in to repurpose our spiritual activity toward more heavenly aims. At first, we shouldn't focus on 'interpreting' any dream imagery, but just keep in mind their symbolic function that points toward our soul life. We can entrust their meaning to the Divine via prayer, meditation, and sacred sleep. Then the Divine will offer its benediction in return, which is experienced as the inflow of insights and inspiration.

In a sense, it is about gradually releasing various etched pathways (beliefs, preferences, interests, habits, etc.), finished forms that have crystallized from receded activity (including activity from past incarnations), that morph and twist our natural longing for the Divine into certain selfish tendencies. These are the elastic threads that entangle and constrain the 'steering wheel' of our thinking-will into narrow and egoistic movements. The more we resist, become conscious of, and then release these elastic threads, the more our steering wheel naturally and smoothly turns toward the Divine Will. Again, prayer and concentrated meditation (including phenomenological study) are the primary tools. We should become conceptually familiar with the basic soul curvatures along which we flow, i.e. the details of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies, and the most common soul configurations in our epoch. As we know, we can only coherently perceive as much as we have the corresponding concepts to perceive in our inner and outer environments. If we have never studied the details of spiritual science in a living way, we simply won't know what we are seeing even if it's staring us in the face.

Ashvin,


You are right.
Spiritual science can give us conceptual understanding of inner realities, which can help us to understand our experiences in a deeper way, than when someone without this knowledge, would tap into these „images“.


That’s what Jung did.
He made the unconscious conscious.
I feel like that’s what most esoteric traditions aim to do.
The unconscious processes, which guide or metamorphosis from behind must become conscious, so that we are able to steer it in an other direction.
I don’t know if Jung had knowledge of esoteric terms that were given to describe the conditioning of our experience.
He did it trough going consciously into the dream realm trough active imagination and dream work.

This is maybe an approach that is to one sided, because it doesn’t seem to include prayer, concentration and devotion. I don’t know if Jung had an higher ideal like OMA teaches it.

(I think the fact that Jung hold back from going to deep in an occult direction is explained by the fact that he doesn’t wanted to be called an „mad occultist“.
I don’t know exactly why but I think Jung’s work have a lot of potential for the western world to understand the soul-world and awaken to it.)


Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the current task of humanity to purify one soul, to give our higher nature a pure vessel to incarnate in?


You mentioned sacred sleep I don’t know that term, can you explain it please?

[Güney27]

Another question is, that when one is able to ,,see“ these soul currents in form of images, how does that gives one the capacity to transform them?

I would like to add something here because the way the question is posed can make us expect things in an incorrect way.

Such a question would make sense if a surgeon says: "I can't operate unless I see the organs. Once I see them this gives me the capacity to transform them." Habitually, we may imagine things in a similar way when it concerns spiritual development. We may imagine that we first need to see inner images of, say, the chakras, and then begin to rotate and attune them, as if we are tuning a musical instrument.

Please note the hidden indirection here. The surgeon wants to fix the body by augmenting its physical structure. The disciple may say "I want to develop my ability to love." Now if the latter imagines that first the soul organs must be experienced in inner images and then manipulate them such that our ability to love is somehow 'unlocked', this would still be a quite materialistic conception that we unknowingly transpose to the deeper soul life. However, in order to love we should tackle the task directly. We should try to love, no matter how imperfect the results may be. It is these imperfections that may indeed manifest in our expanded imagination and serve as feedback, giving us insights on how to perfect our love. So you see, the experiences in our inner soul life indeed help us to work on our transformation but the transformation itself happens by trying to work with the actual inner forces that we try to perfect.

Your question can make one believe that when the images of the inner currents are perceived, together with this the capacity for some completely new inner forces will manifest through which we'll work on our being. Such a person may say "You try to love but that is only because you are working on a level too low. When you reach the perception of the heart center you will no longer 'love' but will manipulate the rotations of the heart organ with completely different inner gestures you now can't even imagine. Thus 'looks like' love only when perceived in the sensory realm." Clearly, this is a very dangerous position. It is actually true that love is something far more extraordinary than a mere feeling. In the higher experiences, love is a cognitive, creative force, it is infinitely manifold, but it is completely false that we can reach the higher Love by looking at its manifestations in our normal consciousness as a mere shadow, and that on high we'll be doing something completely different. This implies that one may as well skip trying to love (as if not to waste time) and instead try to reach directly for these completely different soul forces. No. We can only reach the higher Love when we start from our present capacity to love, no matter how clumsy it might be. Higher Love will blossom from within these clumsy early attempts.

This also helps us realize how by following teachings like those of OMA and BD, who do not put emphasis on the development of higher cognition per se, but on the development of living skills and forces that flow in all aspects of life, we are still transforming our being in very powerful ways. The reason is that we are working directly with the inner degrees of freedom of our spiritual forces - the virtues. These act as deeper soul rotations (see the video feedback meditation) and our Earthly life's flow streams accordingly. Higher cognition allows us to recognize more holistically how this deeper spiritual activity manifests in our life (for example by encompassing whole scenes of our life and realizing how our forces have manifested or failed to manifest a certain result), but the virtues would have their harmonious contribution to our flow even if we don't encompass it at a higher order but still experience it more like an Earthly-life movie. This creates the most fertile conditions in which higher cognition can then awaken almost as a matter of course.

Thank you cleric!

I think my position of thinking is that when we use the symbolic pictures to gain a better understanding, of some hidden aspects of our soul life, that we can use them as feedback, to transform our selves trough the methods of for example OMA‘s work.

I noticed that OMA and BD talk in a very different way about the topic then Steiner. OMA often hints at things and then don’t go deeper into it.

For example he says that there is primordial light in everything that exist, but doesn’t explain it, and then say that there are only certain people can see it.
The he turns it into a practical method, for example to imagine that one breaths light or that on becomes light.

I feel like his students have to take a lot of things in faith and then try it in practice.
He doesn’t go as deep as Steiner and speaks in a very simple language.

It is sometimes very confusing to read Steiner and OMA parallel.

Another feeling I have is that OMA try to say that when a human being gets hold of his personality (lower nature), one becomes initiated.

But Steiner says that one becomes an initiate, trough certain techniques and trough certain trials one have to go trough.
(I didn’t read the whole work of Steiner or OMA but I read a couple books from both, so there is sure much that I’m not aware of in their work)


Why is it that there are two initiates at the same time ( and both live in Europe, as far as I know OMA gave lectures in France) that have very different ways of becoming initiated?
It is clear that different souls exist, and that they have different destiny’s, but is this the whole reason ?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,


You are right.
Spiritual science can give us conceptual understanding of inner realities, which can help us to understand our experiences in a deeper way, than when someone without this knowledge, would tap into these „images“.


That’s what Jung did.
He made the unconscious conscious.
I feel like that’s what most esoteric traditions aim to do.
The unconscious processes, which guide or metamorphosis from behind must become conscious, so that we are able to steer it in an other direction.
I don’t know if Jung had knowledge of esoteric terms that were given to describe the conditioning of our experience.
He did it trough going consciously into the dream realm trough active imagination and dream work.

This is maybe an approach that is to one sided, because it doesn’t seem to include prayer, concentration and devotion. I don’t know if Jung had an higher ideal like OMA teaches it.

(I think the fact that Jung hold back from going to deep in an occult direction is explained by the fact that he doesn’t wanted to be called an „mad occultist“.
I don’t know exactly why but I think Jung’s work have a lot of potential for the western world to understand the soul-world and awaken to it.)


Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the current task of humanity to purify one soul, to give our higher nature a pure vessel to incarnate in?


You mentioned sacred sleep I don’t know that term, can you explain it please?

That's right, and sometimes the prayer/devotion is implicit in the work one is doing - for ex. Jung undertook to explore the imaginative space of the soul to help as many patients and people as possible. It was a sacrificial and loving work. However, as far as I know, he did not recognize the direct and objective power of prayer and concentration in transmuting the soul life, since he was not directly conscious of the higher Self that makes it possible.

But we can imagine people who explore 'active imagination' for much less noble intentions and that's what makes all the difference in what results. As Miller said, "how we approach the spiritual world has definite consequences for what we experience there." We cannot underestimate the role of intention in approaching the spiritual world and the beings who comprise the curvatures of our psychic and sensory experience.

The problem is that our intentions are not transparent to us, to begin with. It's not as simple as saying, "I intend to do this inner work for the benefit of the Whole and the glory of God." Our intentions are much more revealed in our concrete thinking, feeling, and willing efforts over time. As Cleric said, working with the virtues (and conversely, resisting the vices) is an inner display of our intentions that will attract the corresponding higher experiences and insights.

In that sense, I am simply calling normal sleep 'sacred' when we intend that it be devoted to entrusting the meaning of our mental, emotional, and sensory experiences throughout the day to the higher worlds, so that meaning can lead to new insights, impulses, and forces which spiritualize and redeem the elemental kingdoms (including our bodies).

BD has a nice prayer that I usually work with. Even if we don't use this particular prayer, it is in this spirit that we can make our sleep sacred.

O, my Lord,

As I sleep tonight, surround me with Your Light and protect me
for I go Beyond to study, to pray and to work.

God of Power, send Your Holy Spirit to illuminate my room with Your Light
and with the Power of Your Spirit, surround my bed with the fiery circle of Your Love
that my room and all of my house may be free from every evil influence.

Perfection in Your Love will be the meaning of my life.

Your perfect Love casts out every fear from my soul and brings peace and joy to my spirit.

/Offer yourself before the Face of God/

Bless me, O God!

I thank You for all that You have given me.

Help me that the freedom of my soul and the strength of my spirit, the light of my mind and the purity of my heart may be increased.

O Lord, I desire that Your Love, Your Wisdom, Your Righteousness and Your Goodness abide within me forever.

Let the Kingdom of God be established within us and among us.
Let God remove all obstacles from the Path of His Kingdom.

God, illuminate our minds and grant us light and knowledge so that we may understand Your Will and do It.