The Imagination of the Etheric Brain

Cognitive Yoga: Making Yourself a New Etheric Body and Individuality

From Chapter 6: Etherization of Smell

When this etheric current flows to and fro through the point of outmost intensity between the eyes, it activates a clear multileveled kaleidoscopic imaginative vision, enlarging it gradually as the circulating current is intensified. The same process is often referred to in various esoteric traditions as the opening of the `third eye' (in spiritual science the chakra between the eyes is referred to as the two-petalled lotus flower). However, the representation of an eye, taken from the physical body, really misrepresents the functions of this wonderful astral organ and its etheric counterpart. Therefore, an exact scientific distinction must be made between the two. It must be emphasized that true imaginative `seeing' is different from physical seeing in all respects. For example, unlike our physical eyes that can only observe in one direction from within outward and have only a limited forward view of the world, the `third eye' has a simultaneous panoramic etheric vision, and it can view the whole etheric brain process, as well as its connections to the surrounding etheric environment and cosmos, from all directions at once.

Furthermore, all other functions of the physical eye that enable ordinary sight but remain mostly instinctive and unconscious are fully conscious in etheric seeing. This applies above all to the motor aspects in the eye's muscle movements and focusing processes. In physical seeing they are partly unconscious, reflexive and automatic. Indeed, our voluntary eye movements, which we can consciously regulate, function unconsciously most of the time. In etheric-imaginative perception, all movements must be consciously activated and regulated and the navigation in the etheric space is wholly dependent on conscious human-world operations, which cannot be described in detail here.

There is another major difference between physical and imaginative seeing. The physical eye grasps what exists as light, colours and shapes in the real world, and because the contents are already given in the external physical world, it grasps them as such in a passive way (`passive' refers here only to the contents of ordinary perception, and not to the activity of perception itself). The reverse holds true in imaginative seeing. Imaginative seeing is a productive, creative operation. The third eye must first actively produce the substances and formative forces it needs for its vision out of the real world-human, human-world process described above. Then it must actively draw and paint what it will `see' in the universe and the human body through multiple real movements, radiations and extensions. It can only perceive if it first creates the drawings and moldings of what it is going to see, by means of an actual etheric- imaginative painting; however, its ‘paints’ are taken not from any subjective psychic source, but rather from the consciously etherized and cognitively transformed perceptions of the etheric world and etheric human body. For this reason, its extraordinarily rich and manifold artistic creations and productions are, strictly speaking, objective. It imaginatively paints, sculpts and cognizes the world that it sees, using the actively purified and etherized colors, lights, sounds and warmth forces, energized by the extracted and intensified etheric forces of smell, taste and touch. These provide the etheric sweetness and aroma that it has extracted from the real etheric world through the cognitive yoga process of inhalation described above.

The opening and activation of the third eye, or two-petalled lotus flower, is part of the transformation process of the etheric brain as a whole. When it is used to co-produce and study the process that shaped and activated it, it paints and perceives a remarkable picture of the transformation process of the etheric brain. This picture must be understood as an objective etheric or imaginative, perception; it is actively produced as an etheric, living, extract of the whole process and illuminated by exact imaginative cognition. First, it portrays the result of the release of the etheric forces from the strongest attachments to the MECM centres in the physical brain, second, its opening up to the whole etheric cosmos, and third, the merging and integration of the etheric forces of the individual etheric body with the forces of the etheric world.

This is one real Imagination of the flowering process of the brain: it becomes an unfolding chalice of radiating inner light, opening, awakening, and growing towards and together with the light of the cosmos as a flower unfolds its enclosed petals towards the light of the sun. Its wonderfully flashing and shining radiations reach to the farthest cosmic spaces above, merging with spiritual radiations emanating from the sun, moon, planets and stars, and communicate far and wide with the etheric formative forces of all natural and earthly beings. It is a magnificently dynamic, ever awake and active organ of light, like a flowering, adorned crown, with the third eye as its stirring wheel, by means of which the united human-world's living forces are regulating, harmonizing, and directing the circulating ebbs, flows and currents of etheric perception and cognition. This flower that is formed and matured through the cognitive yoga practice becomes the main organ of etheric world-human, human- world cognition and consciousness. The etherized and released etheric brain becomes a rhythmic, breathing, organ, a flowering chalice that produces, gathers, and cognizes detailed supersensible knowledge, grasped through clear imaginative perception and consciousness. The etheric brain becomes a cognitive, breathing, rhythmic organ and function that monitors and co-produces the living reciprocal breathing and exchange of etheric becoming between the human and the cosmos.

It is the first independently built supersensible, etheric organ, used by spiritual science, as an individual achievement of modern spiritual scientific research.

In the above described process, we have in fact also transformed our etheric brain into a livingly cognitive, conscious, breathing rhythmic system. It has become not only a new etheric brain and etheric sense and nerve system, but at the same time a dynamic rhythmic system of etheric cognitive breathing open to and synchronized with the world. From the external etheric world, it takes in living formative forces through the etherized senses, inhaling them directly into the etheric brain and body, and exhales the etherized forces of the body in turn out to the external etheric world. The etheric brain becomes a centre of rhythmic etheric breathing and can henceforth be used to regulate and cognize the processes by means of which our etheric senses breathe in and out with the etheric world. Thus, the inhaled world forces and the exhaled body forces meet, interact, and mutually exchange their potencies and influences. We learn in this way to observe and study the exact interrelationships between the macrocosmic and microcosmos etheric streams: how the macrocosmic stream forms and nourishes the human body and how the microcosmic human body answers this stream etherically. Since this is an etherized cognitive breathing process, everything takes place in full imaginative consciousness. Through the etheric rhythmization of the brain, the two streams of becoming unite synergistically: the becoming self-conscious of the etheric world and the becoming world-conscious of the human being merge and reciprocally, mutually, interlace and produce one world-human creative and breathing cognitive stream.

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