I am what I am firstly because I am the soul, not because of the faculty which does recognize such, without which I would still be and still are - in slumber, in wakefulness, I, my soul, endures.
The sense of I, id - individuality in relation to the worlds - becomes distinct because I have a soul; without which I should not come to know that I know, but should gravitate to and around that which I am most sympathetic to.
And it is to the ego that we attribute experience and also that which follows experience - and it is the egg-shaped ego which encloses the soul, with essences of: fiery activity (cognition), fiery ethers (form and the plans thereof), divine impulses (characterizing streams of being, planetary rays etc.), vitality fluids (of which there are many), memory (akashic recall), sympathy ('bonded to' influences, signature keys etc.), substance (particles of quality, that which is of elements known or to be known - e.g. copper and its corresponding planet etc.), metabolism (related to sympathy, access to Pneu of Man at present), Desire (subtle body which makes sense of sense, sensitive to fiery activity also), Greater Desire (sensitive to the impulse of greater cognition, motivation, and exclamation) and last but not least, Joy, Love, Laughter, Compassion and Happiness: which are natural to the soul and the ego, and characteristic to the expression of being, as being.
-B.Hive
What does living "in the consciousness soul" mean?
We could start by reading chapter one of Rudolf Steiner's, Theosophy part four - although that is very basic.
An aspect of the Consciousness (or Spiritual) soul, is the importance of individuals making free decisions, being "true to oneself". Steiner was careful when giving advice to present facts and let people decide for themselves. This is a theme in Steiner's "Philosophy of Spiritual Activity", but really a theme for the whole of anthroposophy.
We are capable of making our own good decisions out of the Consciousness Soul, because through it we attain to the Eternal Spirit, the True and the Good - see "Theosophy". That gives us the power to make our own "moral imaginations".
This ability is a fairly new one bestowed upon Man, and still, as they used to say on a lot of websites, "under construction".
Another aspect is the direct spiritual intuitions a student may have, which are not just a result of intellectualizing or study. Here one must talk of Manas or Spirit Self as well as Consciousness Soul:
"The "I" lives in the soul. Although the highest manifestation of the "I" belongs to the Consciousness Soul, one must, nevertheless, say that this "I" raying out from it fills the whole soul, and through it exerts its action upon the body."
(Quotes from "Theosophy")
The highest expression of our holiest of holies, the 'I', is the Consciousness Soul- it could be called an "over-ego". (BTW my old copy of "Theosophy" refers to the Intellectual Soul as "Kama Manas".)
Continuing:
"The spirit forming and living as "I" will be called spirit self because it manifests as the "I," or ego, or self of man. The difference between the spirit self and the consciousness soul can be made clear in the following way. The consciousness soul is in touch with the self-existent truth that is independent of all antipathy and sympathy. The spirit self bears within it the same truth, but taken up into and enclosed by the "I," individualized by it, and absorbed into the independent being of the individual. It is through the eternal truth becoming thus individualized and bound up into one being with the "I" that the "I" itself attains to the eternal."
"The spirit self is a revelation of the spiritual world within the "I", just as from the other side sensations are a revelation of the physical world within the "I". In what is red, green, light, dark, hard, soft, warm, cold one recognizes the revelations of the corporeal world. In what is true and good are to be found the revelations of the spiritual world. In the same sense in which the revelation of the corporeal world is called sensation, let the revelation of the spiritual be called intuition."
2 comments:
Steiner termed the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch (747 BC – 1413 AD) the age of the development of the Verstandes-Gemütsseele; the usual translation is ‘Intellectual-Mind Soul’ but ‘Intellect and Mind Soul’ might be more accurate). In other words, human beings in that epoch learned to understand the world rationally (Verstand) for themselves but also to reflect inwardly on their feelings (Gemüt), to live within the feeling and will. One could say that Verstand was more objective and collective, and Gemüt more subjective and personal. It was this latter quality of the Gemüt which needed to develop in the peoples of northern and western Europe before they were exposed to the power of the rational intellect. In Asia, the traditional social hierarchies, patterned on supra-personal cosmic models, had served to maintain social order for millennia. These did not exist in Europe north of the Mediterranean. The wild will forces of the Celtic, Germanic and later, Slavic peoples had first to be moulded by Christian religious feeling in the human soul life (Gemüt) before Europe was really ready, by the early 17th century, to adopt the ways of thinking of natural science mediated to it by the Arabs. -Terry Boardman
Countless clever thinkers have accepted this as true: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Yet the result is this: From morning until evening I think, therefore I am. Then I fall asleep. I do not think, therefore I am not. I wake up again, I think, therefore I am. I fall asleep, and as I now do not think, I am not. This then is the consequence: A man not only falls asleep, but ceases to be when he falls asleep. There is no less fitting proof of the existence of the spirit of man than the theorem: ‘I think.’ Yet this began to be the most widely accepted statement in the age of evolution of Consciousness (the age of the Spiritual Soul). When we point to such things today, it is like a sacrilege — we cannot help ourselves!
-Rudolf Steiner.
Source :
https://wn.rsarchive.org/…/GA237/E…/RSP1977/19240701a01.html
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