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"Earthly life would grow poor if no other forces were to stream down upon the earth from the spiritual world except those which have so far descended upon it." Rudolph Steiner, The Problem of Destiny, 1916
Unknown Influences Around Us
In this essay we'll examine how the supersensible realm affects the terrestrial realm. Among other insights, we'll gain discernment of how higher, discarnate beings illuminate, impress, influence, and inspire us through personal communion--dialectical interchange--and through immediate activity and effect within our lives. We'll explore the understanding that unless the supersensible, spiritual realm, from the beginning of time, had undeviatingly preserved and protected the terrestrial realm, humankind would have, centuries ago, devolved to the point of atavistic barbarism and murderous anarchy.
The study of how the supersensible realm affects the terrestrial realm is of particular importance at the present time because the devolution of humankind has accelerated since the demonic assassination of US president John F. Kennedy in 1963 and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968, among many others. At present, the pervasive debasement of the world mind is being given a horrible impetus with the insane, destructive outrages perpetrated daily by former US president Donald J. Trump and his devotees in the Republican Party.
It's of increased significance, therefore, during this fraught time, that we gain an understanding of how the Divine continues to preserve and protect humankind within the terrestrial domain.
"And darkness shall be preferred to light, and death shall be judged to be more useful than life. No one shall look up to heaven. The religious man shall be counted insane; the irreligious shall be thought wise; the furious, brave; and the worst of men shall be considered good. For the soul, and all things about it, by which it is either naturally immortal, or conceives it shall attain to immortality, conformable to what I have explained to you, shall not only be the subjects of laughter, but shall be considered as vanity. Believe me, likewise, that a capital punishment shall be appointed for him who applies himself to the Religion of Intellect. New statutes and new laws shall be established, and nothing religious, or which is worthy of heaven or celestial concerns, shall be heard or believed in the mind. Every divine voice shall, by a necessary silence, be dumb: the fruits of the earth shall be corrupted; and the air itself shall languish with a sorrowful stupor. These events, and such an old age of the world as this, shall take place --- such irreligion, inordination, and unseasonableness of all good"
From the Asclepian Dialogue of Hermes, by Ficinus, as rendered by Thomas Taylor, 1891; the original Greek version of this Dialogue was written before 400 BC
The primary manner in which the supersensible realm affects the terrestrial realm is the Divine creating and sustaining a world which provides precisely coordinated learning experiences transcendentally matched to our current needs and capabilities. The Divine has the power to take all human actions and thoughts and use them to assist us in our evolution. All persons receive exactly the experiences they deserve and from which they can best learn what they need for their personal evolution--and at the same time for the evolution of all humankind. The Divine does not create negative elements, those are created by human error and perfidy through the exercise of human freedom. 1
"One of the determining factors as to whether a given human soul shall enter the body in one household, in one station of life, in one race of men; rather than in another household, another station in life, another race, is that in that household, station or race, either by physiological inception or by personal development, the conditions exist, or are easily assembled, for the action of law, which will there precipitate those attributes from the quality-reservoir, so to speak, which are needed to fill out the completeness of that soul." Betty White, The Gaelic Manuscripts, circa 1935
To link to a video, click on the image above (use your earphones).
"Radio and TV signals fill the room we are in right now, and if our eyes and ears were built a little differently, we would actually be able to see and hear them, just the way we can see sunbeams streaming through the window onto the furniture and hear the cat purring on our lap.
"As it is, the radio and TV signals vary in vibration or frequency, so that each signal remains distinct even though they're all jumbled together in the same space. That way, the electronic circuits within a TV or radio can tune-in to a single signal, allowing us to hear only one program sent by only one station. The signals are separated from each other by frequency, so they can't overwhelm us.
"The room we're in is also filled with countless realms of existence beyond the physical world--all teeming with life--and again, if our eyes and ears could see and hear those nonphysical realms, the room would be incomprehensibly crowded, and we would be completely overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the many entities here among us.
"Likewise, the many realms of existence all inhabit the same space, but each realm remains distinct by its vibration. In this case it is not a radio or TV frequency, but rather the vibration of consciousness that makes each realm of existence unique and discrete, so that the inhabitants and activities of that realm aren't disturbed by the many other beings inhabiting other realms, all teeming with life.
"We can learn to tune-in to some of these many realms through meditation [and dialectical interchange with Higher Beings], in which we learn to adjust the vibration of our consciousness. "
Mark Macy, "The various realms of spirit," 2002, 2
"Each of us is immersed in a sea of radiation frequencies: X rays, infrared rays, radio waves, and microwaves. Just as visible light makes up only a fraction of the electromagnetic wave spectrum, so visible matter composes only a tiny portion of the entire multidimensional (frequency) energy-universe. The vast majority of the universe is not particle based, as current science assumes, but frequency based. Physical particles of matter are simply the dense result of non-physical energy frequencies (waves). Just as visible light is not only a particle of energy but also a wave temporarily exhibiting particle behavior, so our entire physical universe is not just molecular energy but a continuum of energy frequencies extending deep into the heart of the multidimensional universe. Simply put, all objects and life-forms are multidimensional in nature. Everything around us is multidimensional, simultaneously existing in different energy frequencies of the universe. Yet all these energy dimensions coexist in the same time and space, just as radio waves, microwaves, X rays, and visible light exist together, each within its own frequency band." William Buhlman, Adventures Beyond the Body
The Divine Affects the Terrestrial Domain Through the Created Nature of Humankind
The very nature of the human being, and the precise nature of human Reason attests to how the Divine affects the terrestrial realm. Humans are brought into existence as creatures with both a body and a soul (spiritual body), creatures who are both physical/mortal and spiritual/eternal. We possess the potential to become aware of the spiritual/eternal element of our being through a number of capabilities that we can (not necessarily do) develop:The Divine Creator affects the terrestrial realm by, among many other ways, bestowing on humankind the potentiality of Reason. I use the term Reason (capitalized) to distinguish this exceptional spiritual ability from ordinary reason: human thinking in general. Only a very few persons develop their minds to gain the capability of Reason, the ability to:
- Reason
- Self-reflection: awareness of Mind and its disparate powers
- Communion (dialectical interchange) with higher, supersensible beings 3
- Inspirational dialectic 4
- Activating the senses and potencies of the spiritual body
The "distallate" of reason is intelligence: "a sensitiveness of response through action to needs and situations, combined with an ability to form or gather or take advantage of conditions that answer its needs," Betty White, The Gaelic Manuscripts, 1928
- attain awareness of personal ignorance of one's own areas of mental ignorance and moral lack, and overcome these areas
- attain understanding of what areas of life and thought are in question or require contemplation
- investigate and contemplate possible answers to these questions
- become rationally and intuitively aware of right answers to these questions: the Truth
- apply the Truth in our lives
- continue searching on an ongoing basis for Understanding and Truth
"The entire cosmos is a complex matrix of sound and light vibrations. Every element in our world and every kingdom of beings derives its essential nature from the keynote resonating as the basis of its consciousness. All primary questions concerning origins and destiny turn upon the rate of vibration, the plane of matter and state of consciousness, and corresponding conceptions of space, time and motion. Beyond the planes of manifestation and prior to the primal differentiation of spirit and matter lies the one invariant and all-potential vibration of the Paramatman, [the Supreme One] which through its radiation gives periodic form and substance to the septenary universe. Ultimately, this is a purely transcendental process entirely exempt from rational analysis. It is necessary to discard the false notion that each human being is somewhat like a machine or a self-contained box. As the universal vibration of the One Life is at the core of every living form, no being in the universe is entirely dependent upon any external source of motion. Owing to the transcendental commonality of consciousness, all beings are inevitably involved in a universal system of mutual interdependence."
Raghavan Iyer, "Resonance and Vibration"
The supersensible realm is "present" in our everyday world, just as the invisible energy waves are present in the indoor or outdoor space we inhabit at the moment. To discern the presence and activity of supersensible forces affecting the terrestrial realm requires that we work to gain the ability to use our intuition and intelligence to attain understanding of the supersensible forces invisibly present, through the development of our Reason to gain Higher Intelligence.
We gain unity with Divine Intelligence by developing our Reason to attain understanding of the Truth, a supersensible element. The Intelligence we develop by activating our rational understanding is also a spiritual reality.
Activation of the Soul and the Role of Mind in Apperception
The Divine creates humankind with a soul and a body and sensations and a Mind. As both Plato and Iamblicus revealed, the soul possesses an ultimate, underlying potency of the soul which is superior to the whole realm of nature and generated existence. This potency gives us the potential of attaining communion with higher beings and of being transported beyond the scenes and arrangements of this world and of partaking of the life eternal and the higher powers of the heavenly ones.
"Understanding does not consist in impressions of sense, but in reasoning about them; in that only, and not in the mere impression, truth and being can be attained." Plato, Theatetus
Through study of ourselves we gain awareness of the nature of apperception and the diverse effects sensations and Mind contribute to this noetic operation. Apperception, the gaining of Understanding and Truth, is not merely the receiving of sensations impinging on our sense organs. It requires the mental ordering, arranging, and categorizing of sensations to achieve knowledge. Reality, to be known, requires unifying intelligence to comprehend the interchanges between its disperate elements, to make all of this congeries into a connected world of experience and Truth. Apperception is thus a general term for all sensory and mental processes in which reality comes into connection with an already existent system of mental elements (concepts, understandings, intuitions, feelings, inspirations, desires, etc.), and is thereby ordered, classified, explained or, in a word, Understood.
"If perception were given only in the form of sensation, of an external impression affecting the senses, then all possibility of self-consciousness would cease to be. For what sense grasps and conceives is only the qualities of external things, not the character, states, and activities of one's own ego. We see and hear colours and sounds; we do not see seeing and hear hearing themselves. Even when, with respect to content, we remain within the limits of the sense world, knowledge of sensible things is never a cognitive act of the senses alone. An original and independent form of awareness (Gewahrwerden) operates here which has nothing in common, and is not to be confused, with that form of perception (Wahrnehmung) by which we stand in relationship to the corporeal world. Even the mere sense-impression, accordingly, in so far as it is not simply the corporeal impression, but the consciousness of this impression, contains a genuine and indispensable purely noetic element." Ernst Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, 1953
In the ordinary phenomenon of human consciousness there are mental and psychic forces holding sway within the soul and mind which are not limited in their effects on the physical realm. These forces reveal themselves in Thought or Cogitation, in the activity of Mind. These mental forces at work in Thought do not become active through the faculty of memory or from sense organs. There is also a higher, psychic, spirituial organ of Intuition, 5 which when fully activated, vouches to us for the correctness of a present thought or hypothesis. This occurs; not when a former thought emerging from the memory sustains this thought or hypothesis, but when the correctness of the present thought is experienced directly, intuitively.
Likewise, the power of Inspiration which the Divine has placed within our human makeup as a potency can be actualized through effort, enabling us to commune--dialectically interchange--with higher, discarnate beings, and thereby receive thoughts, impressions, concepts, images, and disparate types of mental and psycic content.
The Higher activities of mind--Reason, Intuition, and Inspiration--remain unnoticed in the ordinary conscious life; indeed there are many persons who deny that any "higher powers" play any part in gaining Understanding and Truth, misconstruing apperception as mere experience of sensations. These Higher phenomena/experiences escape the every-day consciousness of most humans because they spend their lives in mindless, souless pursuit of "one damn thing after another." Most persons do not develop Reason, and are unaware of the nature of ordinary reality, let alone the supersensible powers of Intuition and Inspiration.
"In the act of Sense-perception . . . the thinking activity, contained in and co-operating with it, is a purely supersensible element in which the bodily organism has no share. In it the human soul rises out of the bodily organism. As soon as man becomes distinctly, separately conscious of this Thinking in the act of Perception, he knows by direct experience that he has himself as a living soul, quite independently of the bodily nature."
Rudolf Steiner, Supersensible Knowledge, 1926
It is our duty to activate and instantiate the elements of Divine bestowal. And this requires, among many other things, the deliberate and intelligent development of our personal qualities and capabilities. The seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists were particularly perceptive concerning this element of personal development.
The act of perception, the Cambridge thinkers maintained, reveals not only the properties of the external object being perceived, but also discloses the potencies and nature of the perceiving subject. Our ability to apprehend Reality is in direct ratio to our essence: our powers of fair appraisal, our capability of allowing an object to disclose itself to us without our dictating to it what it must be. Every act of objective knowing is also an act of self-knowing; the result reveals who we are as much as what the object is. In this comprehensive understanding of human experience, the Cambridge Platonists were head and shoulders above seventeenth century English empiricism, which had made a vain effort to resolve the knowing subject, the ego, into a mere "bundle of perceptions."
Moving Beyond Divine Bestowal to Activation
and Realization of Divine Knowledge and Power
As we've seen, the Divine, and the supersensible realm, affect the terrestrial realm, to begin with, through the bestowal of potentialities in the very nature of humankind. This is sometimes expressed as Humankind being created in the image of God or the Divine affecting humans through Destiny: "the spending of impetus unarrested by spiritual consciousness." 6 Beyond realizing these elements of bestowal, we can bring to realization the conjoining of elements of Divine Knowledge and Power with human thought and activity.
Divine Power and Goodness are brought into direct and indirect effect in the terrestrial realm through our praying for, contemplating, meditating on, and attaining progressive Understanding of these forces, and uniting with them in such a manner as to transmute them into available, efficacious earth forces.
"Do thou, then, Tat, my son, pray first unto our Lord and Father, the One-and-Only One, from whom the One doth come, to show His mercy unto thee, in order that thou mayest have the power to catch a thought of this so mighty God, one single beam of Him to shine into thy thinking. For thought alone 'sees' the Unmanifest, in that it is itself unmanifest."
"If, then, thou hast the power, He will, Tat, manifest to thy mind's eyes. The Lord begrudgeth not Himself to anyone, but manifests Himself through the whole world.The Corpus Hermeticum V, "Though Unmanifest God Is Most Manifest,"
translated by G.R.S. Mead 7
If we "work" assiduously enough, we receive Light from the Father of all Lights, which we are to distribute so quietly and unobtrusively that this will arouse no resentment or resistance, but will gradually permeate others unawares.
Our real Mind possesses a kind of spiritual perception capability which enables us to access the great ocean of spiritual influence. This contact or permeation can be brought about by a definite process of personal volition. The first essential of this volition must be a genuine energy of desire. We must WANT to reach out in harmony with spiritual forces. That WANT, that desire is a voluntary wide opening to influence from without, wide-hearted, expansive, outside-oneself feeling of contact and perception.
We maintain ourselves forcefully, to gain the strength to receive. We stimulate our spirit to respond to supersensible intimations with a forceful and rising wonder similar to that inspired by the overwhelming beauties of nature. We maintin a yearning aspiration, almost like the attraction of needle and magnet; something above that can be recognized as a complement to what exists below. When this genuine aspiration is firmly established, then we have our spiritual impetus.
Impetus we originate within ourselves. It is based on desire. The strength and vitality of our impetus depend on the intensity and vitality of our desire and the clarity of our perception. It is humble but unwavering, not an arrogant demand. It is not so much the energy of demand as the showing of a force that calls its complement into presence and activity. Whenever a thing is desired enough to cause an outgoing of determination, automatic action begins.
We can conceive, " realize" a spiritual being by the strength of our direct desire for contact. We do it by calling for spiritual companionship or association. It amounts to very little unless something arises within us to enlarge our capacity to receive it and blend with it. Something within us must rise continually to meet the spiritual associations. We cannot just wait for them to come to us.
A wonderful transmuting, absorbing power is what we set in action through spiritual contact. Once set in action, we cannot stop it. It is bound to act, to affect whatever persons, objects, or events it is meant to. The more confidence we have in it, the more powerful it is. This power would be terrible were it not used for good.
"...Man's earthly forces would become paralysed if no help comes from the spiritual worlds. What we acquire through a spiritual-scientific knowledge and bear with us through the portal of death, gives us the power allowing spiritual forces to descend upon the earth. This will have to take place in a growing measure, so that the human beings who live upon the earth may receive the forces descending from the souls who are penetrated with the spirit, souls who have passed through the portal of death and who send back what they have taken with them from the earth, but in a changed form, according to what has taken place through the fact that their life-experiences have entered the spiritual worlds."
Rudolph Steiner, The Problem of Destiny, 1916
Notes1 Human Freedom
2 Mr. Macy's essays are available here
3 Communing With Higher Beings
4 Inspirational Dialectic With Higher Beings
5 "How could our thinking insight sit in judgment on the declarations of the senses, unless there were something living within it which transcends sense-perception? Therefore the truth or falsity in things is decided by something within us which opposes the physical body and consequently not subject to its laws." Rudolph Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact
6 From The Betty Book by Betty White and Stewart Edward White, 1937
7 If we read Plato carefully we find him referring to ancient wisdom which has much in common with the the Hermetic writings. I refer to Hermetic writings in this and other of my essays to indicate that a particular teaching has come to us from the ancient past and has been found veridical and productive by many generations of human beings.
