The Ever-Present Origin - Michael Goodnight - Editor

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dream-like and somnolent aspects and precipitates their separation. Thedividing deed leads to death: the death of man and his entire culture.Wakefulness, then, is not adequate, least of all the attitude of all-ornothingwakefulness. Clarity, however, is adequate, for it alone is free ofbrightness, twilight, and darkness, and is able to penetrate the wholewhere somnolent timelessness, somnial temporicity, and mentalconceptuality all become diaphanous. Anyone who perceives in thismanner is free from time and can see through the whole in which hepartakes, not as a part, but integrally.The Ever-present Origin. Part OneChapter 12The Concretion of the SpiritualWhatever happens on the earth - man must share the responsibility. Butthe earth itself is not just something here and now; it is no more thecenter of the universe than is the sun. Both the heliocentric and thegeocentric world-views have become obsolete in favor of the whole which,since it is not spatially localizable, has no center. What happens to theearth - and the earth is nothing but an event which in materialization hasbecome progressively slower - originates in more encompassing andspatio-temporally non-localizable interconnections.It is also a star among stars, just as humans are only human among otherhuman beings. On its great journey across the millennia it hastens throughthe changing landscapes of "heaven," transforming its own countenanceand man's. In man, who is the consciousness of the earth and itsinterconnections with distances and proximities, the influences whichaffect our entire solar system as one system among many have theirenduring effect. All efforts to conceive of these factors in spatial andtemporal terms are futile, and yet it is certain that they can be realized byus in a space-time free manner.Of course, nothing that exists exists for its own sake; it exists for the sakeof the whole: In origin, the whole is pregiven for man; it takes on for manits conscious character in the time-free present, for consciousness is notrestricted to time and space. It cannot be concretized in conceptualitysince conceptuality deals only with abstractions and absolutes. It can befathomed only dimly in vital, magic life, and is realizable throughimagination and experience, as in myth and mysticism, only in a twilight ofconsciousness. It is approached in thought, but thought immediatelycloses itself off since in its process of deduction discursive thought alwaysexcludes any openness in its compulsion to system.The new mutation of consciousness, on the other hand, as a consequenceof arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptualemergence of the spiritual. (The poets' rejection of the psychic and mentalaspects as a "source" of poetic creation, as discussed in chapter 3, section74
2 of Part II above, and their turn toward the spiritual are only oneindication among many of this circumstance.)Two apocryphical statements of Christiane docgtrine clarify in their waywhat is meant here: "This world is a bridge, cross it but do not make of ityour dwelling place,"' and "I have chosen you before the earth began."They point to the spiritual origin prior to all spatio-temporalmaterialization. We may regard such materialization as a bridge thatmakes possible the merging or coalescence, the concrescere of origin andthe present. The great church father Irenaeus presumably had thesesayings in mind when he stated: "Blessed is he who was before the comingof man." We have seen him; he revealed himself in space and time. In hisdeparture he was beheld by his disciples in his transparency, atransparency appropriate only to the spiritual origin (if anything can beappropriated to it), the transparency which a time-free and ego-freeperson can presentiate in the most fortunate certainty of life. The grandand painful path of consciousness emergence, or, more appropriately, theunfolding and intensification of consciousness, manifests itself as anincreasingly intense luminescence of the spiritual in man.Throughout the millennia the traditionalists, the "initiates," have seenman's previous journey as a decline, a departure from the affinity to and adistanciation from origin. Painful as this distanciation may be, it hasserved the requisite intensification of consciousness. Only distanciationcontains the possibility for the awakening of consciousness.The phenomenon releasing origin is spiritual, and with each consciousnessmutation it becomes more realizable by man. With respect to thepresently emerging mutation we may speak of a concretion of thespiritual. The word "concretion" here is not to be considered as theantithesis of "abstraction." Quality and quantity, or efficiency anddeficiency as we have posited them, are an expression and modes ofeffectuality of various degrees of intensity. And with this in mind, wespecifically speak of the spiritual and not simply of spirit. Our deliberationsin the first part have shown that the concept of "spirit" is replete with sucha multitude of aspects inherent in the previous consciousness structures,be they vital, experiential or imagistic-conceptual, that this aspectuation isnecessarily unable to impart in truth a clear description of the concerns ofheaven and earth, God and man. Concretion, then, does not mean atransformation of the intangible into something tangible or substantial, butrather the completion of con-crescere,thatis, the coalescence of thespiritual with our consciousness.Since the spiritual is not bound to the vital, to the psychic, or to themental, but rather shines through to us in their efficacy - be it vital,experiential, conceptual, or reflective - a new possibility for perceptualconsciousness of the spiritual for the whole of mankind one day had toshine forth. Previously the spiritual was realizable only approximately inthe emotional darkness of the magical, in the twilight of imagination in themythical, and in the brightness of abstraction in the mental. The mode of75
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deficient forms which have become a
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they could not reach their intent w
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identity, or with his being equated
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was especially influential on Greek
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anticipated by Pope Sabinus, who in
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discovery of Augustine's words. "I
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concretion of space, our epoch is c
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While plumbing the hidden depths of
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With Leonardo the perspectival mean
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Page 26 and 27: not an avenue. Although man's horiz
Page 28 and 29: order to obtain a sequential view o
Page 30 and 31: the truly unrepresentable become ev
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Page 34 and 35: characteristics of the structures,
Page 36 and 37: Structureaugmentation, a loss or a
Page 38 and 39: "silenced music" of which St. John
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Page 42 and 43: homogeneity of the viscera, as well
Page 44 and 45: Archaic — OriginaryMagicempathy a
Page 46 and 47: IntegralCreed)Method(Divinity)(Eteo
Page 48 and 49: that structure itself. Orestes' act
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Page 54 and 55: Even though we may be unable to do
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Page 72 and 73: crystallizing in a new perception o
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