AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2024 11:08 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2024 6:39 pm
I'm sure I'm not surprising anyone by saying that I've kept thinking about this issue. I have tried to unlisten to my antipathy and focus on what is the deep meaning of drug use for exclusively spiritual purposes - what it entails to seek a transformation of the physical cognitive response through targeted interventions on the physical reflective organs of cognition, from the perspective of a human being looking up towards the Good, inspired by the Hierarchies to take on the responsibilities we are called to accept in this phase of human evolution.
When we look at the path ahead from within the large context of our eon-long evolving mission and responsibility, we progressively realize that what we need to work on, at the current level of development of our Being, is the human "I", the Will, so that we can orient it in freedom towards the Good. In this epoch, the "I" is our most imperfect sheath, whose blossoming, or lack thereof, will make or break our meaning as humanity.
As Max Leyf recently described, speaking of "
the conversion of desire and the magnum opus":
Experientially, our existential “center of gravity” progressively shifts, as a result of the conversion here described, from an identification with the first-order desires to an identification with the agency to transform them over time. When we say “I,” we no longer refer to the more or less arbitrary heap of appetites and complexes and neuroses that we ordinarily identify with and instead begin to refer to the one who is responsible to reform them. In the first instance, we have identified with what we want and perceive everything that prevents us from achieving it as an affront to us. In the second instance, we have identified with the power to want what to want and perceive our earlier wants as obstacles and stumbling-blocks on the path to whom we wish to become.6 The ideal that we seek to embody is not arbitrary, but is rather conceived in light of the Image and Idea of (the) Go(o)d.
This conversion, from the primacy of the instincts to the primacy of the idea of the Good, is the epochal task man is called to effect in our times, through leveraging the potential of the "I". Conversely, the physical body that we have the chance to experience in the present times is the most perfectly developed of our four bodies, since it’s been refined, and further and further refined, by the Hierarchies over the round of all four convolutions, starting from the Saturn eon, when everything else of our present constitution was yet to be conceived. Whenever our physical body works imperfectly and dysfunctionally (beyond karmic constraints) it’s because we have altered its ideally perfect workings through less-than-harmonious soul-etheric activity that dephases the admirable interconnections of rhythms of our natural constitution.
In future eons, man will reach a point in development where we’ll be able to creatively intervene on the templates of physicality, but for now, on Earth, we don’t even master the simplest life form, and our clear and lawful impulse inspired by the Logos is to dedicate our best efforts to awakening to our true self, working on the one space we have the potential to control entirely within us - the thinking space.
The way I see it, from this perspective, the attempt to complement spiritual development through the force of thinking with purposeful interventions aimed at changing the functions and rhythms of the physical brain and reflective cognition appears as not only a scorn to our own "I" - in the sense previously conveyed by the words: “
The "I" is innerly divided that there's something which it is incapable to achieve through its own forces. Basically on the deepest level this amounts to the "I" doubting its own divinity” - but also an act of defiance against the wisdom that’s been infused, since the Saturnian beginning of our cosmic evolution, in our most ancient and perfect sheath.
I was wondering, Ashvin, apart from the fact that you don't think it's appropriate to stick to clear-cut rules when it comes to psychedelic use, what would be your reply to such a critique?
Federica,
My reply, of course, wouldn't be to challenge the broad principle you are laying out above. It is very well outlined and stated. I think it's clear that it is the core principle - the "I" needs to draw on the idea of the Good to spiritualize its soul constitution, first and foremost. It can't forcibly or quickly spiritualize the etheric and physical sheaths through any sort of external intervention that works around its cognitive and moral development. Such interventions not coupled with inner wisdom and loving intentions (these two should not operate separately) are guaranteed to do more harm than good for us and society as a whole.
The principles, though, also need to be fleshed out through nuanced considerations of the most varied facts from the most varied angles. Here are a few observations that come to mind in contemplating your post above, in no particular order. They should at least help us view the issue from various perspectives. If there is one thing we can be sure about, it is that our perspective on any given topic should always be evolving and gaining refined texture even if that perspective is generally tending in the direction of established spiritual principles, which it should be. After contemplating these points, perhaps you can share if/how they inform your perspective on the issue.
- We are always intervening in the physical organism and the reflective organs of cognition. This is part of what it means to have the incarnate "I" principle. Even when we sit still and think, we are taking hold of the neurosensory system. Whenever we consume substances from the outer world, we are modulating the physical organism in some way. It is true that our ego-consciousness should not try to meddle too much in the deeper rhythmic and metabolic systems, but a part of purifying the soul life is also torquing the neurosensory system and even aspects of the rhythmic system (like breathing). We have instilled many disorderly tendencies into our physiology through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and drawing on the idea of the Good should help us instill more harmonious currents to gradually heal them.
- Related to that, we have to consider that the critique above applies equally well to anything we consume or interface with through our physical organism, including our computer technology. That is, when it is left at such a broad level of resolution. So we need to move our thinking around a bit and probe exactly what differentiates the "I" choosing to modulate its cognitive life via psychedelics, for ex., from modulating it via computer technology, coffee, or other substances. I would add this shouldn't be based on personal experiences or feelings alone - there are many relevant factors aliased from our personal experience.
- Where do we draw the line between the "I" simply making use of the tools around it to leverage its cognitive-perceptual capacity toward the Good, tools also placed in our physical context by the Divine, and the "I" acting defiantly and doubting its own divinity?
As always, the purpose of making these points is not to land on some 'right' answer, to argue yay or nay against psychedelic use for spiritual development. In fact, at this time, I think we have already decided that it is unlikely anyone on this forum will attain benefits from such use that they cannot attain more safely and effectively through imaginative and intuitive development. But the primary purpose of thinking through such issues from varied angles should be precisely to exercise and stimulate the latter. I am reminded of Tomberg's meditation on The Hermit.
The Arcana of the Tarot, I must stress, are spiritual exercises. And the ninth Arcanum, the Hermit is one of them.
For this reason the preceding meditations on the three antinomies aim not so much at a solution of the antinomies that will please everyone, but more to encourage spiritual endeavour orientated towards the solution of these antinomies.
You can certainly resolve them in a more profound and satisfying way. It is a matter, in the case of the solutions that I have proposed above, above all of a concrete illustration (which is, I know, far from being the best) of an individual endeavour by way of a special spiritual exercise. This consists in setting before you a thesis and an antithesis, both as clearly as possible — I should say: as crystallised light—in such a way that all intellectual light which is at your disposal may then be consumed by these two opposing theses. You will then arrive at a state of mind in which all that you know and clearly perceive is put into the thesis and its antithesis, so that they may be like two rays of light, whilst your mind itself is plunged into darkness. You know and see nothing more than the light of these two contrary theses; beyond them there remains only darkness.
And it is then that one undertakes the essential thing about this exercise, namely the endeavour to draw light from darkness, i.e. an effort aiming at knowledge which appears to you to be not only unknown but also unknowable.
In fact, every serious antinomy signifies psychologically: "the light that I possess is polarised at two poles; between these two luminous poles there is only darkness". Now. it is from this darkness that the solution to the antinomy, the synthesis, must be drawn. It is necessary to create light from darkness. One could say that it is a matter of an act analogous to the Fiat lux ("Let there be light", Genesis i, 3) of the first day of creation.
Experience teaches us that there are two kinds of darkness in the domain of consciousness. One is that of ignorance, passivity and laziness, which is "infralight" darkness. The other, in contrast, is the darkness of higher knowledge, intense activity and endeavour still to be made —this is "ultra-light". It is a question of this latter "darkness" in instances where it is a matter of resolving an antinomy or finding a synthesis.
Thanks for this response and invitation, Ashvin.
I believe we discussed the points you raise before. For sure, our physical separateness is an illusion, just as much as our spiritual bubble-ness is. I did have that in mind, when writing the critique. We continually interact with our environment - physical, emotional, mental - within a concentric context, where no aspect can be torn apart. In the physical sphere, we mainly do it somewhat passively through perception. Still, concentric around our passive perception, there's the feeling we clothe it in, and the intention we set as the inner driver of the perceptual flow.
In this sense, I understand what you point out - that the simple fact of being incarnated in a body of matter constantly and inevitably prompts us to generate a flow of bodily experience. This flow is very diverse, both in its physical character and in the quality of its concentricity within the cone: “sensations-feeling-thinking-intents”. So, as you say, it’s necessary to differentiate the many ways in which our physical body may find itself engaged in activity, to evaluate what spectrum of activity is more likely to be entirely lawful and aligned with the Good - aligned with the range of activity designated by our evolutionary standpoint - versus what spectrum is most likely defiant, far-fetched and risky, due to our present great limitations in the realm of physicality, in which we are bound to heavily constrained activity, regulated within boundaries so tight that we can call them natural laws, and rest confidently in our clearly traced paths inside them.
So I will attempt this differentiation. First we can notice that, when we operate our body according to the templates of nature, the ones a plant and/or an animal lives by with unconscious wisdom - breathing, moving, consuming elements of the environment - we are satisfying our survival instincts. We are preserving our life. I would deem that the whole perceptual spectrum can be considered from this angle: in a strong sense, we perceive to preserve our Earthly existence. Yes, when we say perception we inevitably involve thinking, but we are attempting a differentiation here, so I guess we can provisionally refer to the rather passive perceptual sphere in its life preserving quality, to start with.
As human beings, our goal in this area of physical activity is primarily one of moderation. We are called to willingly replicate the infused wisdom that regulates those maintaining activities in the animal, plant, and maybe even mineral realms, so that the activities don't override this function of preservation. Clearly, we have to be vigilant that the soul doesn’t take over those activities as instruments for the satisfaction of arbitrary desires. However, my present understanding in this area is that there is no point in intentionally mortifying natural desires with the
exclusive intention of desensitizing the body to pleasure. Maybe that was appropriate in past millennia, I am not sure, but today, when we are supposed to willingly develop the capacity to regulate those desires, such mortification reads to me as defiance towards the hierarchies and scorn to the true self, just in the same way as psychedelics do. It would be like saying: "
I don’t trust I can regulate the desires myself, so I try to amputate them, erase them, by overriding them with physical pain; and I don’t trust the body to be the appropriate support for incarnated spiritual development as it is in its rhythms, shaped by the hierarchies." So I try to
bend it, in its rhythms. 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.
Maybe I am digressing, but I wanted to mean that defiance, and the impulse to override the ideal bodily rhythms, can be implemented from quite different points of departure - one is more tech-friendly, matter-friendly (psychoactives) the other is more mystical (hairshirts). Coming back to what type of 'physical engagement' - let’s call it so - has chances to be self-diminishing and defiant and what hasn't, I would say it’s all a matter of intention. Because, as you say, as long as we are incarnated we can’t sever the will from thinking, from feeling, from sensing. Hence the only way to responsibly differentiate is to sit in our ‘control tower’ of will-thinking and coordinate our bodily activity in a way that both honors its divine, ideal perfection, and also regulates its vulnerability to the potential tyranny of the soul. There's a middle ground to be found.
In this sense, I think that our line of action should work primarily downward: with our willed thoughts we educate our soul, which in turn will regulate bodily activity in moderation, under the guidance of the I. So for example when it comes to coffee consumption, I would say that, if one experiences addiction - like the guy in the interview Cleric shared, who felt that coffee is like psychedelics! - then it should be regulated. The tumorous loop of arbitrary desire should be bursted. In my direct experience, though coffee is (moderately) pleasant, coffee doesn’t do that at all. It’s not difficult for me to abstain from it, so I am not sure there would be value in eliminating it, unless I wanted to mortify the body, which as I said, I don’t aim to. However, I could consider eliminating it, if my present understanding turned out to be incorrect. If you will, coffee for me is pleasurable in the same way that taking a shower at the preferred water temperature is. Sure, I could take it 3 degrees colder or warmer, and it could be a good experiment for some specific reason. But just for the sake of adding some discomfort to everyday life, I don’t believe it makes sense.
For the other example you mention, screen exposure/computer use, it’s similar. I believe it entirely depends on how our willed thoughts direct that type of bodily engagement. Do we do it with the aim of disrupting our bodily rhythms - either purposefully, or because we succumb to arbitrary desires? Or do we put effort in abdicating the least possible amount of agency in every aspect of the experience, while still engaging with it, aware of what we would miss if we were to completely abstain from it?
Now coming to psychedelics, it should stand to reason to proceed similarly. Our ego should consider such form of bodily engagement, and see whether it honors and facilitates the ideal bodily rhythms as structured by the hierarchies (like moderated satisfaction of bodily desires does) and/or, as a technology, whether its use can facilitate spiritual development, under condition of maintaining control, like it is for computer use, where, if we are able to maintain perceptual and ideal control, we are rewarded with otherwise inaccessible content and interactions. 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? And here, of course, the connection becomes evident with the other principle I previously mentioned, that you for some reason entirely rejected, calling it an opinion, when applied to psychoactive: that in the times of the consciousness soul, we are called to develop our I consciously. 'Consciously' not only means with full engagement of active thinking. It also means with the least possible disruptions to the ideal rhythms of the physical body, that we don’t master. Those rhythms are mastered for us, just like
individuation was mastered for ancient man, by the hierarchies. Now we've got individuation. How is it not defiant against the hierarchies, instead of quietly developing individuation into its own garden, within the limits of its proper context - that is, through thinking work - to attempt taking over the rhythms of physicality, or even only playing around with them, jumping across multiple borders of lawfulness?
Cleric has recently referred to
future technological devices as amplifiers of inner intents:
Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu May 23, 2024 1:53 pm
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 think that using psychedelics as boosters, or amplifiers, of spiritual development, runs great risk of being a well fitting example of the error described in the quote. Present-day technology such as psychoactives, inscribed as they are in the hardcoded laws of chemistry, can’t be hijacked in that way. This is because we don’t master those laws today, other than externally. We don’t master them from the inside out. The Hierarchies do.
So this is how I would start moving our thinking around a bit. In any case, I see that one could argue that change happens in streams, and not as a unitary front, therefore innovation in this field is OK; one could also argue that waking state is maintained because of micro-dosing; one could argue that rhythms are not disrupted, but simply explored; and there's certainly a whole list of other possible arguments. In this sense, I realize that what I'm expressing, at the end of the day, is still an opinion. To conclude on a lighter note, let’s say that when it comes to the administration of the physical body in our times, I am perhaps more on the conservative side, rather than on the liberal one.
