Philosophical Speculations

Klocek provides a great alchemical illustration, in very clear stages, of living thinking as a spiritual path, and I thought it deserved a thread of its own. There is an added layer of depth when we consider the mineral world studied by alchemists was itself the result of densification of spirit-soul processes of the 'archetypal beings' through ages of Earth's evolution, as discussed at the beginning, thereby resulting in the basis for analogs which the free-thinking human can use to 'triangulate' the forgotten spiritual worlds in full consciousness, through the metanoia of soul work. The plant, animal, and human kingdoms, including all cultural developments, provide further analogs. Below is only an excerpt of the first part - there is much more in his book, The Seer's Handbook.

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THE ELEMENTAL MANDALA

ALCHEMY IS THE STUDY of how to dialogue with the beings that stand behind nature as archetypes of substances found in the manifest world. When an alchemist is successful in harmonizing his or her mental state with a particular archetypal being, the lesson of the being is given as an insight into how to transform a particular substance. The substance is considered to be the sign of a process in nature that has some significance for the alchemist emotionally. The sign has a specific relationship to a specific challenge or dilemma hidden in the alchemist's soul. When the soul has been sufficiently prepared through inner thought purification, the being of the spiritual archetype standing behind the substance can approach it with an insight. These activities of transforming the lower impulses by realizing the nature of the True Human constitute the work against nature, or, for short, the work. An alchemist understands that any work on oneself is also a work on nature and that an adept can transform nature in more efficient or, we could say, magical ways than are available to persons not undertaking the work of the alchemical marriage.

The archetypal beings that are guardians of the secrets of nature provide visual images for educating striving esoteric students. The images are primarily dream images that come to the student, or artist, when the proper stage of inner development has been reached. To be effective, the dream images need to be transformed into the language of the awake state. The purpose of this book is to present techniques for this transformation.

In the past, the artist/student in the alchemical tradition was charged with the vow of secrecy so that the sublime secrets given by the archetypes did not fall too early into the unpurified consciousness of the general populace. It was felt that if the secrets were given to unprepared minds, insanity accompanied by a lust for power could be the result. The alchemist might then become a sorcerer or dark magician and stray from the narrow path of humble dialogue with, and service to, the doorkeepers and archetypes standing behind the forces found in substances. Over time, the techniques of these masters were passed on through symbolic maps and charts that enabled student alchemists to journey through the dangerous places and achieve the work without the danger of revealing the secrets too early. This precaution explains why so many manuscripts were arcane and seemingly written by unbalanced persons. The thought was that if you wished to get into the secret places you had to do it slowly and thoroughly and with a mood of reverence for the mystery beings standing behind the phenomena in the laboratory. An old alchemical mantra states that you must be able to “work and pray” without expecting any results. The alchemists sought to reveal the mystery, while modern science seeks to solve the mystery. Thinking you have solved the mystery can easily become a dangerous Faustian conceit.

The charts for the alchemical journey most often take the form of a mandala or sacred wheel, because the sacred journey never ends and usually brings you back to where you started. However, when you come back you have changed; you now know where you have been. The mandala is a dynamic map of the stages of development necessary for the transformation of the soul.

The most basic mandala form is the four-step diagram known to adepts as the rotation of the elements (figure 1). There are four stages, one for each of the classical elements. Earth is followed by water, followed by air, followed by fire, which returns us to earth. This pattern follows the laws of nature where earth is on the bottom with water next, then air, and then fire. This is the normal sequence.





Beginning to work on oneself is seen as the act of putting fire under earth – a work against nature. When putting fire under earth, the alchemist is working against the natural order of things. Cooking a meal is working against nature, according to these ideas. From this viewpoint, we can see that for an alchemist not much that human beings do technically follows natural law. The legacy of this work against nature can be seen today in such things as pollution and the overtaxing of natural resources. Remember that in the past the alchemist was expected to purify the self at each stage of the work, which meant saying a sacred mantra while cooking dinner, saying grace before meals, and praying before doing a scientific experiment. These common safeguards were employed by alchemists so that their work against nature would not result in personal inflation or the actual destruction of nature, a sobering consideration for modern scientific researchers. To guard against such hubris, safeguards are necessary at each step of the way, sequences of questions the alchemist should ask.

Earth/physical thinking is the fundamental stage in problem solving. Facts and data are gathered by asking, What is different? The answers to this question result in abstract categories.

In water/living thinking, the facts are arranged into sequences of typical movement or flow patterns by asking, What is changing? The answers to this question result in morphological systemic thinking.

In air/simultaneous or reciprocal thinking, the patterns are considered from the point of view of how they were likely to have evolved to where they are today by asking, What is reversing? The answers to this question result in an inner experience of the reciprocal nature of all solutions. At this stage it is understood that all systems go through the process of reversal.

In fire/pure thinking, the rhythm of the problem-solving process is considered from the point of view of what the problem is likely to look like in many years by asking, What is the whole? There are no “answers” to this question since it is asked by being completely silent inside. What is revealed from a fire question is a better question.

These four stages are an archetypal pattern underlying most interactions between humans as well as most patterns of change in the natural world.
Practice in recognizing and implementing knowledge about these patterns is an invaluable aid to group process and personal growth. These questions can be arranged in the form of a mandala that is useful when undertaking alchemical transformative work on the lower self in order to perceive the True Human.

SALT, SULFUR, AND MERCURY

In figure 2 we can see a further modification of the elemental mandala. A diagonal line through the center separates earth and water from air and fire.
Earth and water are elements related to the physical process of precipitation in which salts settle out of solution. Air and fire are related to the physical process in which a physical element is incinerated, or, as alchemists called it, “calcined.” They used that term because if anything organic is burned to ash, the ash usually contains a great deal of calcium or calx, which is chalk.

The alchemical forces of salt and sulfur are also known as coagula and solve. The salt coagulates or precipitates from the solution, and the sulfur is a solvent form of a mineral. Alchemists called sulfur “rock grease.” The two forces of salt and sulfur, or coagula and solve, are also considered to be forces in the human soul. Salt is the coagula quality in the thinking process, and sulfur is the solve aspect of the will. Thinking comes into being like a salt crystal falling to the bottom of a jar of brine. The unknown suddenly appears to solidify in the mind and then can be grasped. The will, on the other hand, is constantly slipping away from the grasp of the human being, even as it is being employed to do something. The esoteric trick is to unite the salt and the sulfur. Then the crystallized thinking can be softened by the sulfurous will and take on more of the dynamic nature of the will. When this happens, the newly transformed thinking can dissolve the crystals of what is known and find a new solution to the problem. At higher levels of the work, the will becomes thoughtlike and precise in its effectiveness, while the thinking becomes creative and fluid. The union of these two soul forces is described as the alchemical marriage.





For the alchemical marriage to take place, however, another soul force needs to be brought into the mixture. Alchemists know this soul force as mercury. Figure 3 describes the relationship of the other two forces and the four elements to mercury.





We see that the center area is designated mercury/akasha. The force of mercury is seen as the quality of consciousness needed to get salt to marry
sulfur. Mercury is the great healer that, through rhythm, influences all polar opposites to integrate into new and higher orders of being. We also see in the diagram that mercury/akasha is likewise present at all other levels of transformation. It is the agent of transformation from earth to water, which is
achieved through the process of putting fire under earth. Only a being endowed with the capacity for recognizing consciousness, or, we could say, a being who could be self-conscious or self-aware, can bring fire under earth and transform nature. Mercury is rhythm, akasha is consciousness; together they make rhythmic consciousness or consciousness of rhythm. This quality accurately describes the necessary force needed to get salt to marry sulfur. A rhythmic consciousness is one in which a daily practice of stilling the mind creates a dynamic wave in the spiritual world. Time is telescoped and concentrated by such a rhythmic consciousness, and the will becomes an organ for thinking.

The four elements are transformed through the rhythmic interplay of the three forces. When this happens the center of the mandala is filled with akasha, or consciousness. The artist/student then rises to the level of adept and the fertilization of the Spirit Embryo by the activity of the True Human can begin. Establishing a practice to work with these ideas is of paramount importance to the soul life of a human being and was the content of the mystery schools from the most ancient times. The practice is the most fundamental tool of the adept. The other tool in the tool bag of the aspiring adept is the development of living picture imagination, otherwise known as “seeing.” To understand “seeing” we can refer to the mandala of the last figure as we go through the process.

Thank you Ashvin, it's being a GREAT reading! I will comment at some point. In the meantime, I want to add to the elemental mandala as a system for developing concentration, spoken of already in the introduction, this short explanatory video by Dennis Klocek, that I am finding helpful, among other things, for image forming:

Eugene,
I thought I would dare to ask a personal question: what are you going to read this weekend?
I was wondering if you have started the Seer's Handbook, and if so what your first impressions are.

By the way, is anyone else reading it? (I noted Ashvin and Cleric are)

Regarding Klocek’s Seer’s Handbook, my wish is that no one here that checked this thread, and was lucky enough to become aware of Ashvin’s suggestion to read it, will overlook this book. I hope no one here will have to suffer the sadly ironic fate of not taking action, after having been pointed towards it.
My first impression is that, beyond being astonishingly accessible and practical, the book is corresponding, and yet also perfectly complementary to Steiner's own handbook for the seer, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
In this post, I am loosely referring to the Seer’s Handbook as background for a re-elaboration on Truth versus Both/And, starting from what Ashvin has written about the apparent magic of metaphors. I am sorry if this will sound know-it-all, and yes I had never read anything about alchemy before last week, when I started reading the Handbook, which I haven’t even finished. Still, I am inspired to write the following, in case even only one person resonates with it, trusting that any inadequacies will be signalled.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 12:25 pmI am always struck by how many seemingly arcane metaphors work to tune our understanding to deep dynamics of our spiritual Be-ing, and how they work so well. How is this so? It can only be because our metaphor-forming activity is also the Process of the World. The coagula of holistic Ideas into differentiated perceptual-conceptual structures and the solve into holistic Ideas enriched with the fruits of labor; the salt and the sulphur. “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?"

Which therefore means the human be-ing is not an encapsulated bubble at the periphery of MAL, but participating in the entire depth gradient from the most mineralized perception-concept to the most holistic Idea. Every act of thought-feeling-perception is the entire Cosmic gradient from Alpha to Omega working into our present experience. 'Pure awareness' doesn't form metaphors! It is time for humanity to awaken that it isn't the only metaphor-forming community of be-ings in the Cosmos, and that its very be-ing is a metaphor for Cosmic Be-ing.

The coagula (coagulation) of underlying archetypal (big) Ideas mentioned above is the same process that since a long time has been referred to by Cleric and Ashvin as ‘precipitation’ into dead thoughts. ‘Dead’ not necessarily meaning ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ but also meaning human, small, one-sided, temporary, stiffened. Such process of precipitation of spiritual Ideas into 'dead' human thoughts - in particular metaphors in this context - pertains to Thinking, but is mirrored in Nature out there by a specular process. Just because Nature (the World Process) works by the same laws traced by the archetypal Ideas (it comes from these same Ideas) the same precipitation phenomenon happens in it in terms of process of coagulation of salt (coagula) from a water solution, triggered when fire is put under the water solution/under water. And just as the alchemist says that the coagulation of salt from a water solution is not how Nature would work by itself - it’s not natural - but only happens when we decide to transform the elements by putting fire under water, so our Thinking force is not ‘natural’ in the same sense, meaning it is not really part of the World Process, as our physical body is. Instead, it pertains to the Spiritual forces. Correspondingly, it operates a similar transformation of reality, similar to the non natural transformation operated when fire is put under water. When we think, we are transforming reality, in literal sense, meaning we change it and we create something new. That’s not natural. That’s spiritual.


When we think, we precipitate Ideas into our human ideas, thoughts, and metaphors, with which we work out pERcepts (objects of perception) and we create endless individualized perceptions from that material, in a creative process that is both separating and reuniting. For this reason, thinking is the very first step of initiation. Initiation is nothing presumptuous or mysteriously exotic, it means understanding the meaning of life and living up to it. It means daring to look up to Knowledge, and to look for it. So Thinking can be seen as the first stage of Initiation, because by thinking, we go through Nature, and then beyond Nature. We go beyond our physical, animal, bodily, and even emotional build-up, and we start transforming. We first transform Ideas into perceptions, without even knowing it, then we start transforming ourselves, by realizing that thoughts (and feelings) are real stuff, real things, like all other things: they respond to laws, they make a difference, they can be added to, subtracted from, and factored into our I. We can supplement our I-complex with new thought-out pieces, literally, thought out into existence, that go beyond the nature-bound pieces we are all well aware of, thus transforming the I-complex. So our thinking can go on transforming reality - which it’s already doing right now - but with more guided intention, more trained expertise, and more transformational power. We can re-think - which means re-engineering from within - our I-complex, literally, from Nature, then beyond Nature, beyond the World Process, so that we don’t remain dragged down and imprisoned into that part of us (physical and etheric) that is drenched in that Process - or “drawn down into physical existence” as per the lecture Ashvin just shared.


Until, with persistence, and technique that we can get help learning, we recalculate and reposition the coordinates of the center of gravity of our I-complex to a point that finally is truthful to our double human nature, at balance between Nature/World Process and Spirit. As soon as we orient our look in that direction, we instantly stop spending life going around in circles, trying to live and believe in our ‘animal life with benefits’ in which we corrupt and silence the disturbing existential questions by holding out suffering banknotes to those questions, earned with resigned resentment, skepticism, painful agnosticism, fearful path-diversity, or a combination of all that. As soon as we orient our look in that direction, we reestablish balance, by humbly and industriously doing the job we are meant to do, or at least signaling such intention. Only then we start living up to (literally) our spiritual identity, not by claiming that we are it, not by stealing it in thought and then 'dunno-ing', when we are forced to notice that it doesn’t fit, not by crashing it into thousand broken mirror pieces then fake-marveling at the shiny mess, but by finding and walking the path that intelligences higher than us have laid for us, working our way towards, in Jung’s words, the embodiment of the essential, so that our life does not go to waste.


PS. In Sweden for example (soon elsewhere I would guess) we have the relatively new concepts of flygskam, köttskam, klimatskam, SUV-skam, even flerbarnskam (skam=shame, not scam). Our collective shames of polluting. But we should realize that the most polluting choice, the one we should be the most wary of, our ‘livskam’, is the shame of letting our life go to waste by not directing it towards true Knowledge, by jealously forbidding our Will to marry our Thinking, pushing it instead to endlessly and hopelessly wriggle around, in the emotional-physical loops of the World Process, under edifying cover of intellectual humility.
So the most necessary, auspicious, effective, and future-oriented sort of activism, more than climate activism, should be inner climate activism, where we stop polluting the spiritual water table of our I-complex with the microplastics of ‘work-for-me’ soul-soothing fragments that appease our emotional-sensual needs, and we start orienting instead our inner climate towards respect for the spiritual environment we come from, building up a fully healthy and sustainable ‘best version of ourselves’, or Higher Self, not out of exhaustible, fossilized Earthly energies but out of the inexhaustible, spiritual energies of Sun-light. For sure, nothing would be more healing for our physical Planet as well.

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 3:32 pm Regarding Klocek’s Seer’s Handbook, my wish is that no one here that checked this thread, and was lucky enough to become aware of Ashvin’s suggestion to read it, will overlook this book. I hope no one here will have to suffer the sadly ironic fate of not taking action, after having been pointed towards it.
My first impression is that, beyond being astonishingly accessible and practical, the book is corresponding, and yet also perfectly complementary to Steiner's own handbook for the seer, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
In this post, I am loosely referring to the Seer’s Handbook as background for a re-elaboration on Truth versus Both/And, starting from what Ashvin has written about the apparent magic of metaphors. I am sorry if this will sound know-it-all, and yes I had never read anything about alchemy before last week, when I started reading the Handbook, which I haven’t even finished. Still, I am inspired to write the following, in case even only one person resonates with it, trusting that any inadequacies will be signalled.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 12:25 pmI am always struck by how many seemingly arcane metaphors work to tune our understanding to deep dynamics of our spiritual Be-ing, and how they work so well. How is this so? It can only be because our metaphor-forming activity is also the Process of the World. The coagula of holistic Ideas into differentiated perceptual-conceptual structures and the solve into holistic Ideas enriched with the fruits of labor; the salt and the sulphur. “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?"

Which therefore means the human be-ing is not an encapsulated bubble at the periphery of MAL, but participating in the entire depth gradient from the most mineralized perception-concept to the most holistic Idea. Every act of thought-feeling-perception is the entire Cosmic gradient from Alpha to Omega working into our present experience. 'Pure awareness' doesn't form metaphors! It is time for humanity to awaken that it isn't the only metaphor-forming community of be-ings in the Cosmos, and that its very be-ing is a metaphor for Cosmic Be-ing.

The coagula (coagulation) of underlying archetypal (big) Ideas mentioned above is the same process that since a long time has been referred to by Cleric and Ashvin as ‘precipitation’ into dead thoughts. ‘Dead’ not necessarily meaning ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ but also meaning human, small, one-sided, temporary, stiffened. Such process of precipitation of spiritual Ideas into 'dead' human thoughts - in particular metaphors in this context - pertains to Thinking, but is mirrored in Nature out there by a specular process. Just because Nature (the World Process) works by the same laws traced by the archetypal Ideas (it comes from these same Ideas) the same precipitation phenomenon happens in it in terms of process of coagulation of salt (coagula) from a water solution, triggered when fire is put under the water solution/under water. And just as the alchemist says that the coagulation of salt from a water solution is not how Nature would work by itself - it’s not natural - but only happens when we decide to transform the elements by putting fire under water, so our Thinking force is not ‘natural’ in the same sense, meaning it is not really part of the World Process, as our physical body is. Instead, it pertains to the Spiritual forces. Correspondingly, it operates a similar transformation of reality, similar to the non natural transformation operated when fire is put under water. When we think, we are transforming reality, in literal sense, meaning we change it and we create something new. That’s not natural. That’s spiritual.


When we think, we precipitate Ideas into our human ideas, thoughts, and metaphors, with which we work out pERcepts (objects of perception) and we create endless individualized perceptions from that material, in a creative process that is both separating and reuniting. For this reason, thinking is the very first step of initiation. Initiation is nothing presumptuous or mysteriously exotic, it means understanding the meaning of life and living up to it. It means daring to look up to Knowledge, and to look for it. So Thinking can be seen as the first stage of Initiation, because by thinking, we go through Nature, and then beyond Nature. We go beyond our physical, animal, bodily, and even emotional build-up, and we start transforming. We first transform Ideas into perceptions, without even knowing it, then we start transforming ourselves, by realizing that thoughts (and feelings) are real stuff, real things, like all other things: they respond to laws, they make a difference, they can be added to, subtracted from, and factored into our I. We can supplement our I-complex with new thought-out pieces, literally, thought out into existence, that go beyond the nature-bound pieces we are all well aware of, thus transforming the I-complex. So our thinking can go on transforming reality - which it’s already doing right now - but with more guided intention, more trained expertise, and more transformational power. We can re-think - which means re-engineering from within - our I-complex, literally, from Nature, then beyond Nature, beyond the World Process, so that we don’t remain dragged down and imprisoned into that part of us (physical and etheric) that is drenched in that Process - or “drawn down into physical existence” as per the lecture Ashvin just shared.


Until, with persistence, and technique that we can get help learning, we recalculate and reposition the coordinates of the center of gravity of our I-complex to a point that finally is truthful to our double human nature, at balance between Nature/World Process and Spirit. As soon as we orient our look in that direction, we instantly stop spending life going around in circles, trying to live and believe in our ‘animal life with benefits’ in which we corrupt and silence the disturbing existential questions by holding out suffering banknotes to those questions, earned with resigned resentment, skepticism, painful agnosticism, fearful path-diversity, or a combination of all that. As soon as we orient our look in that direction, we reestablish balance, by humbly and industriously doing the job we are meant to do, or at least signaling such intention. Only then we start living up to (literally) our spiritual identity, not by claiming that we are it, not by stealing it in thought and then 'dunno-ing', when we are forced to notice that it doesn’t fit, not by crashing it into thousand broken mirror pieces then fake-marveling at the shiny mess, but by finding and walking the path that intelligences higher than us have laid for us, working our way towards, in Jung’s words, the embodiment of the essential, so that our life does not go to waste.


PS. In Sweden for example (soon elsewhere I would guess) we have the relatively new concepts of flygskam, köttskam, klimatskam, SUV-skam, even flerbarnskam (skam=shame, not scam). Our collective shames of polluting. But we should realize that the most polluting choice, the one we should be the most wary of, our ‘livskam’, is the shame of letting our life go to waste by not directing it towards true Knowledge, by jealously forbidding our Will to marry our Thinking, pushing it instead to endlessly and hopelessly wriggle around, in the emotional-physical loops of the World Process, under edifying cover of intellectual humility.
So the most necessary, auspicious, effective, and future-oriented sort of activism, more than climate activism, should be inner climate activism, where we stop polluting the spiritual water table of our I-complex with the microplastics of ‘work-for-me’ soul-soothing fragments that appease our emotional-sensual needs, and we start orienting instead our inner climate towards respect for the spiritual environment we come from, building up a fully healthy and sustainable ‘best version of ourselves’, or Higher Self, not out of exhaustible, fossilized Earthly energies but out of the inexhaustible, spiritual energies of Sun-light. For sure, nothing would be more healing for our physical Planet as well.

Federica,

Thank you for this consolidating summary of a few different angles recently presented on the forum! I really wouldn't critique/change a thing about it. I am also really liking the new highlighting font

Correspondingly, it operates a similar transformation of reality, similar to the non natural transformation operated when fire is put under water. When we think, we are transforming reality, in literal sense, meaning we change it and we create something new. That’s not natural. That’s spiritual.

This also relates to the 'Nirvana' discussion on the other thread. I think it's important to highlight how all these lofty modes of Being can refer to both high ideals to reach and also the means by which we reach them. As you point out, our thinking is always creating 'something from nothing' when viewed from the lower natural perspective. Nothingness here is not to be equated with the modern planar concepts of quantum void, pure awareness, etc., but rather the infinite sea of supra intelligent/wise ideational potential from which all new impulses flow into the perceptual plane and into which all fruits of the perceptual plane return. We could also call it the 'liminal spaces' of existence, to which our consciousness is attenuated between sleeping-waking, death-rebirth, and all Macrocosmic stages of pralaya. At the microcosmic scale, we also find it in every movement of our thinking-perception.

And, since we are dealing with the superimposed vertical depth gradient of Time-Consciousness, our 'work against Nature', i.e. spiritual activity, through this rhythmic coagula-solve process, gradually becomes the sphere of Nature for lower waves of development. In a certain sense, it already is, but will become much more so in times to come. We are in very Truth living within the nested spiritual activity of our higher Self.

Acts 17 wrote:For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Yet the mostly fixed pictures we see around us in Nature are the fading memories of this higher Self. They will fade away into oblivion unless we ourselves find the inner strength of Will - the inner Acts of courage - to rescue them from the depths of the subconscious and resurrect them into a new life which fructifies the Spirit of the New World.

And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

I just noticed this when reading the chapter. Interestingly enough, Dionysius the Areopagite was the first to give the teaching of the nested spritual activity of the higher hierarchies in whom we live, move, and have our being (so-called 'Pseudo-Dionysius' was his pupil who put it into writing, as they took on the name of their teacher).

Speaking of Pseudo-Dionysius, it's worth noting how in his theological paradigm the "nested spiritual activity of the higher hierarchies in whom we live" co-exists with a possibility of a direct connection with the ultimate Divinity bypassing any hierarchies, with these two perspectives not contradicting but complementing each other.

Dionysius vision is remarkable because, on the one hand, his understanding of hierarchy makes possible a rich symbolic system in terms of which we can understand God and the cosmos and our place within it, and, on the other, he finds room within this strictly hierarchical society for an escape from it, beyond it, by transcending symbols and realizing directly one's relationship with God as his creature, the creature of his love. There is space within the Dionysian universe for a multitude of ways of responding to God's love. That spaciousness is worth exploring: and therein, perhaps, lies the enduring value of the vision of Dionysius the Areopagite.

Andrew Louth

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 7:53 pm Speaking of Pseudo-Dionysius, it's worth noting how in his theological paradigm the "nested spiritual activity of the higher hierarchies in whom we live" co-exists with a possibility of a direct connection with the ultimate Divinity bypassing any hierarchies, with these two perspectives not contradicting but complementing each other.

Dionysius vision is remarkable because, on the one hand, his understanding of hierarchy makes possible a rich symbolic system in terms of which we can understand God and the cosmos and our place within it, and, on the other, he finds room within this strictly hierarchical society for an escape from it, beyond it, by transcending symbols and realizing directly one's relationship with God as his creature, the creature of his love. There is space within the Dionysian universe for a multitude of ways of responding to God's love. That spaciousness is worth exploring: and therein, perhaps, lies the enduring value of the vision of Dionysius the Areopagite.

Andrew Louth

Instead of debating the teachings of DtA, let's see if what Louth wrote can align with the holistic Ideas we discern through our own logical reasoning. If the higher hierarchies are not individual beings but rather represent stages of our own centripetal evolution back to the Godhead, as all esotericists agree, then how could we 'bypass' stages of our own evolution? That is like a child bypassing the years of 14-35 because he 'realized' his direct connection to his adult Self. Or, conversely, like a child coming into existence when bypassing his father and mother who must give birth to him. We know such things don't stand up to reason.

Establishing a realationship with the Godhead (Trinity) is not other than establishing a relationship with the higher hierarchies who are nested within its Power, Wisdom, and Love and who bring its Ideas to manifestation on various planes of consciousness. That is why the threefold archetypal structure permeates throughout. Only if we conceive of these hierarchical layers as comprised of distinct beings with no lawful relation with each other, as well as our own 10th hierarchy of man, can we speak of 'bypassing' any of them. Our human domain of experience simply wouldn't exist without the continuous spiritual activity of all nested hierarchies from man to the Godhead. In which case, there would be no human be-ings to enter into relationships with any Divinities, let alone the Godhead.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:19 pm Instead of debating the teachings of DtA, let's see if what Louth wrote can align with the holistic Ideas we discern through our own logical reasoning. If the higher hierarchies are not individual beings but rather represent stages of our own centripetal evolution back to the Godhead, as all esotericists agree, then how could we 'bypass' stages of our own evolution? That is like a child bypassing the years of 14-35 because he 'realized' his direct connection to his adult Self. Or, conversely, like a child coming into existence when bypassing his father and mother who must give birth to him. We know such things don't stand up to reason.

Rephrased in a different way, at each point of our own centripetal evolution we have the ability to know and connect directly and introspectively to our own Self "bypassing" any structures seemingly external to us, and even any existing mind structures of our internal origin. However, the degree of this direct knowledge unfolds to us in layers and stages along the path of the spiritual evolution where at each stage we uncover deeper and deeper layers of it until we discover that there is actually no difference between the Divine Self of All and the very core of our own Self. At this point we also discover that such "bypassing of structures" was only seeming, because there are actually no structures "external" to the Self or separate from the Self.

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:00 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:19 pm Instead of debating the teachings of DtA, let's see if what Louth wrote can align with the holistic Ideas we discern through our own logical reasoning. If the higher hierarchies are not individual beings but rather represent stages of our own centripetal evolution back to the Godhead, as all esotericists agree, then how could we 'bypass' stages of our own evolution? That is like a child bypassing the years of 14-35 because he 'realized' his direct connection to his adult Self. Or, conversely, like a child coming into existence when bypassing his father and mother who must give birth to him. We know such things don't stand up to reason.

Rephrased in a different way, at each point of our own centripetal evolution we have the ability to know and connect directly and introspectively to our own Self "bypassing" any structures seemingly external to us, and even any existing mind structures of our internal origin. However, the degree of this direct knowledge unfolds to us in layers and stages along the path of the spiritual evolution where at each stage we uncover deeper and deeper layers of it until we discover that there is actually no difference between the Divine Self of All and the very core of our own Self. At this point we also discover that such "bypassing of structures" was only seeming, because there are actually no structures "external" to the Self or separate from the Self.

Does it not sound like there's a narrator looking at things from the vantage point?

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:26 pm Does it not sound like there's a narrator looking at things from the vantage point?

It does sound and seem like there is a narrator until it is discovered that the narrator has always been the Self itself. In other words, it is the Self seeking itself through all evolutionary layers, first confusing itself with a creature and a narrator separate from the rest of the world, but after evolving higher and going deeper, at some point discovering that it is the very Self directly knowing It-Self from the vantage point of the Self.