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Three Part Lecture Series on the Physical and the Spiritual Body

All men brave out of fear except philosophers: they are lovers of Sophia. Sophia being the female aspect of Logos, the Gnostic Knowledge of God.

The audacious soul inclines toward the body because it does not realize that this body to which it is subjecting itself, is none other than its own reflection in the mirror of matter.

INTUITION

PSYCHO - MIRROR: INCOMPLETENESS

" The unrelated human being lacks wholeness, for he can achieve wholeness through the Soul. The psyche proves to be a half bodily, half spiritual substance "Anima Media Natura", as the alchemists call it; a hermaphroditic being, capable of uniting the opposites, though who is never complete in the individual, unless related to another individual."

Carl Gustav Jung

The Cabalistic teachings of medieval Jews as well as Gnostic Christian writings of the 2nd Century describe the act of Word Made Flesh as androgynous. God created man - ADAM to his own image androgynous. The removal of the feminine into another form symbolizes the beginning of the fall from perfection into duality.

"To man I am Hermes to woman I appear as Aphrodite"

Boddhisattva is androgynous.

From the tantric point of view each being contains the whole Universe. The collective Unconscious is the realm of the psyche where non-duality prevails. The fundamental concept of Tantra is recognition of polarity. Integration of polarity is the core of Tantric practice: the union of male and female energies, matter and spirit, active and passive principles, wisdom and compassion, the unifying principle personified by Avalokiteshvara (the Buddha of Compassion).

The principle of opposites is equally of primary importance in Jung's psychology. For Jung, opposition is inherent in the structure of the psyche, as it is in the Cosmos.

On the psychological level, the significance of the principle of opposites lies in the fact that the psyche is a dynamic unity, a self regulating system in which Consciousness and the Unconscious are complementary to each other.  To deny one or the other results in one-sidedness, disequilibrium and hence loss of wholeness.

“ It is a fundamental mistake to imagine that when we see the non-value in a value or the untruth in the truth, the value or the truth ceases to exist.  It has only become relative. Everything human is relative, because everything rests on an inner polarity.”  wrote Carl Gustav Jung.

In the gallery stage area an enclosure was created by semi-transparent mirror foil and it had the word "Intuition" written on it. A sequence of slides were projected from outside making the the interior disappear and reappear between slides. Behind this curtain sat the performer and a Buddhist image of two dancing skeletons were painted  behind with fluorescent paint and lit with ultraviolet light . In front an "all seeing eye" was lit by a slow-blinking strobe light.

While the artist was reading his lecture from the bathroom, live video feed showed two gay man kissing on the monitors.

Rudolf Steiner, German scholar, theosophist and mystic, founder of the Waldorf school system describes four levels of apprehensions corresponding to four levels of human nature.

While the first level, sense perception is not knowledge itself, the 3 remaining levels are progressively higher stages of knowledge, as follows:

1     Sensory Perception Physical Body

2     Imaginative Knowledge Etheric Body

3     Inspirational Knowledge            Astral or soul Body

4     Intuitive Knowledge Spirit Body

From our ordinary, commonsense vantage point, we might assume that the higher states of knowledge are progressively more vague and obscure.  Predictably, Steiner claims the reverse.  Sensory knowledge (or sense perception, which is technically not knowledge at all) is only clear to the extent that we illuminate the material world by the cognitive capacities of imagination, inspiration and intuition.   We can only understand our own self if we ascend to the level of intuition which is the highest form of intelligence.

We know our own self only if we see the physical body as an expression of the etheric, the etheric-body as an expression of the astral, and the astral and an expression of the spirit.

Three members have to be distinguished in the soul as in the body.  Sentiment Soul, Intellectual Soul, and Consciousness Soul.  And just as the body works from below upwards with a limiting effect on the soul, so the spiritual works from above downwards into it, expanding it.  For the more the soul fills itself with the true and the good, the wider and the more comprehensive becomes the eternal in it.

The physical body, as the coarsest structure lies within outer structures and mutually interpenetrate each other. The ether-body fills the physical body as a life-form; extending beyond this on all sides is to be perceived the soul-body (astral form) and beyond this extends the sentient soul, then the intellectual soul which grows larger the more it receives into itself of the true and the good.  These formations in the midst of which the psychical body appears as is in a cloud, may be called the human aura.

The spiritual skin which separates the spirit - man from the homogeneous spirit - world makes him an independent being within it. This spiritual skin expands continually with advancing human evolution, so the spiritual individuality of man (his auric sheath) is capable of enlargement to an unlimited extent.

“ At some unspecified point in the 3rd millennium, man would, by its own efforts and the strength of his powers of thought be able to transcend himself, escape the material age and enter a new evolutionary phase of vastly greater spirituality and sensibility.” wrote Rudolf Steiner.

Some other sources say that for humanity a prerequisite to cross this threshold, is the opening of the Heart Chakra.  This is energy center called Anahatha in Sanskrit exhibits twelve spokes of lotus petals and glows a golden color it is said that purity resides here. This level in the kundalini yoga system a threshold a transcending force in the realm of worldly existence.  The individual with an awakened Anahatha or Heart Chakra can directly perceive the workings of karma and free himself of it.

A number of paranormal abilities result from the awakening of the Anahatha chakra. The ability to control air (vayu) is acquired. Non - individualistic, cosmic love is awakened.  The practitioner of kundalini yoga becomes eloquent, and poetic genius develops.

He also acquires the power to free himself and have his wishes fulfilled, by the capacity of direct perception of the workings of the earthly karma.

The Anahatha controls the sense of touch.  When it is awakened, one’s sense of touch becomes increasingly subtle, and even astral matter can be felt and this sensation can then be communicated to others.  Powers of psychic healing also develops. 

Prana is a life-force energy, more vital than air for out existence.  Prana exist as an energy field connected so closely with spirit that spirit can not exist without it.  We take prana in through the top of our head and also with our breath.

Prana can be transmitted through the palms of the hand and directed to the diseased area of other person’s body.  Psychokinetic powers also develop when Anahatha is awakened.

Rudolf Steiner’s “unspecified point in the 3rd millennium” might as well be the Mayan date of AD 2012.  The Mayan, were obsessed with time, and the movements of celestial bodies.  The Mayan Great Cycle similarly to the Euro-Indian astrologers use of the rough figure of 2000 years predicts a physical change and psychological and spiritual shift of consciousness around the Millennium.

Already we are in the beginning of our transition to the coming era of Anahata Consciousness - the Intuition Consciousness.

Dr. Nosek

©1995

Epilogue:

We are more uncomfortably aware of the statistical predictions that with the rate of our increasing population, our wasteful destruction of land resources, our pollution of rivers, lakes and oceans and the very air itself - the world will become untenable between the years 2000 and 2020.  Economic and social values are being discarded. Orthodox religions systems in rampage - new beliefs, new sects are springing up by the dozens.  Since 1987 the number and complexity of crop circles vastly increased and many esoteric secrets are being revealed.

The great Mayan cycle coincides with the end of the Great precessions period concluding with the end of the present age of Pisces. Our planet is moving into the age of Aquarius and the greater liberation of our souls.

2011

“The union of opposites through the middle path is the most fundamental item of inward experience”

Buddha on his journey to enlightenment abandoned asceticism as he must have realized that practicing it, one rejects part of oneself and consequently wholeness cannot be attained.  Instead he adopted and later taught the middle way.  The truth, the absolute, which is inexpressible, can only comprehended in rising above any kind of exclusiveness.  The conflict produced by reason and contending positions can be resolved by attaining a higher standpoint  – That is, by the awareness of the total rather than the separate parts.  Intuition is the non-dual knowledge, the knowledge of the absolute.

In intuition a content presents itself whole and complete, without our being able to explain or discover how this content came into existence.