This time I would like to approach the vista offered by the Exceptional State using the poetic imagery created by William Wordsworth, more especially “Ode to Immortality”

On discovering the principle of mechanical leverage (law of lever and balance) Archimedes (287-212 BC) is reported to have said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”. In this simple image we can sense the enormous potential power of this simple principle. If we could find said lever and fulcrum, then the apparently impossible would be possible. The Exceptional State is a method of knowledge which leads to an experience of the self and the world and our relationship to it way beyond the current atomic paradigm. The fruits of this state are literally unimaginable for the matter bound mind. Instead it leads us safely and inexorably into a realm where many commonly held truths are seen from a different perspective.

One of the first hurdles that we have to overcome as we start on this path is a strong tendency in culture to treat the inner life as less real than that content given to us by our senses. Invariably and for understandable reasons what our eyes see, ears hear and other senses smell or feel is considered more real than fleeting inner impressions of light, sound or feeling. These experiences are all invisible to external observation and are often deemed less real. As we strengthen the inner life it dawns on us with gentle warming rays how the outer life is merely a stimulus to the inner life. This inner life finds itself based in truths beyond those of natural science and consequently lead to insights way beyond what is considered the leading edge of science. Christ told Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). The Exceptional State is the healthy state whereby a person can consciously and with increasing ease move between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit. We can listen to people who have had near death experiences, mystical experiences or psychedelic experiences and realize that they are giving their own testimonies of what it is like to see life from the other side of the veil. Research in the field of NDE shows that such a strong and traumatic experience invariably leads to decades of inner work as the individual tries to reconcile living in a world where most people are afraid of the very thing they know is only the beginning of a new stage of life. There are lots of interesting scientists that examine the continuation of consciousness beyond life. Pim van Lommel is one of those voice and in his book Consciousness Beyond Life (https://pimvanlommel.nl/en/consciousness-beyond-life/ > ) collates a lot interesting and convincing data points from 20+ years of systematically studying the phenomena to give an overview of this field. The book also paints a very clear picture of the way in which a brush with death, perhaps counterintuitively for many, in the vast majority of case has a hugely positive transformative effect on people’s lives. Ervin Laszlo had this to say about the book.

“We have been confusing our radio receiver with the symphony on the air. When our receiver shuts down, the symphony continues on the air, only it’s no longer manifest to our ear. Pim van Lommel shows that the symphony of human consciousness does continue and also remains accessible in the non-ordinary states of consciousness that in our culture occur most frequently at the portals of death. His evidence is robust, and can no longer be ignored either by the science community, or by society at large.”

Concerning psychedelics the field is large, extremely large and I feel under qualified to say anything of substance other than to mention the interesting work of Rick Strassman as documented in “DMT: The Spirit Molecule”. Amanita dreamer (https://www.youtube.com/@AmanitaDreamer) is also an interesting cultural phenomena with her use of the agaric mushrooms to heal her own mental problems. I am not advocating this, only recognizing its existence. One thing is clear, when you listen to the testimonies these people it is obvious that the inner life has been intensified, but also that the results can often be confusing and difficult to reconcile with living a normal life (Whatever that might be). I recently heard it described as opening the door to the spirit worlds, but not knowing what it is that you have let in. The Exceptional State properly understood means opening this door in full possession of consciousness and being able to decide whether or not to let these influences, these beings, these active forces into our being. Research into the fields of multiple personality /
dissociative disorders as well as the voluminous research into the placebo/nocebo effect are also mentioned in passing here as they also provide evidence of the non-material nature of our soul lives.

There is nothing we know that is not the product of our thinking. This spiritual activity of thinking impacts our feeling and willing life, but even these inner activities can only be known through thinking. Thus it is no exaggeration to say that thinking is the essence of our being because it is that by which we know ourselves. We experience ourselves in feeling and willing, but only know ourselves through thinking. The thoughts we produce are a revelation of our essential nature.If we can recognize this central nature of thinking in our being we can also understand that by investigating this activity of thinking we can study its behaviour, its characteristics, its field of action and by doing so we are also increasing our self-knowledge. The exceptional state is nothing other than an investigation of that which lives and creates in us every waking moment of the day.

As I sit here writing these words I hear the rain pounding on the roof and the windows. With that sound I am drawn, by my thinking, out of the chair I am sitting and for a brief period of time I am the rain pounding on the tiles. My thinking can put me anywhere I am capable of imagining and this activity of thinking can be intensified to ever greater levels so that instead of being a momentary shadowy experience it becomes an experience where I feel the roof, I feel the rain. I feel the raw power of nature and live in the wind. Of course, my body never leaves the chair, but my consciousness was not in the chair, it was free of its body limits. For a short while consciousness forgot that it is usually tied to the body, just like happens when we fall asleep. Except that I can recall the experience and know the cause of it. In reviewing this activity of my thinking using my memory I am experiencing an aspect of myself which takes me beyond myself. As I consider the richness of this line of thought I am reminded of John Donne expressing this reality in the line

“It is the mind itself that make a heaven of hell and hell of heaven”.

Thomas Traherne expressed it like this “

“You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.”

To the best of my knowledge Wordsworth did not live briefly on a roof on a rain swept night, but he was with his intensified soul filled thinking able to wander lonely as a cloud floating high o’er vales and hills, at once see a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. However, a liberated thinking capacity does not need to limit itself to what is knowable through the senses. Thinking, like Christ, is not of this world, though it can shed its understanding light on this world. A liberated, intensified thinking can lead us to experience our essential nature in ways not possible if it remains tethered in slave like fashion to impressions originating in the physical body. In Wordsworth’s Ode to Immortality we can feel running through this poem a locus of consciousness which clearly, at least initially, feels itself unfettered.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45536/ode-intimations-of-immortality-from-recollections-of-early-childhood >  

Some literary critics may remain content with an interpretation that reduces this to an allegory or a metaphor for the loss of innocence. However, someone more familiar with the experiences to be attained through the exceptional state will sense how Wordsworth, simply by linking our birth to a state of sleep, has experienced something far more profound. He is telling us that he remembers a time when he was a being without a body. He knows that he left this state, he left this spiritual home, to sojourn in the world of the senses. Furthermore, his own personal experience was that during his infancy this state persisted for a while because in infancy he did not entirely forget his origins. He is also convinced that this is not unique to him because he speaks of our infancy, rising with us and our home.

He then drops the use of we and us and replaces it with individual experience of a boy, who whilst still feeling connected is more conscious of his experience of self rather than in a universal we. As the impact of the life of the senses intensifies, so also the youth sees this inner life die away and superseded by common day experience. It is through inner work that we become capable of seeing the former glory from which we originate, yet also retaining individual consciousness. This aspect of not having to sacrifice individual consciousness is a large topic and will be left for another article.

And so the poem continues like a pendulum alternating between reflections on the immensity of the inner life of the soul and the joy and the suffering to be found in this state of forgetfulness. This dual nature of reality is visible to the philosopher, the lover of wisdom and the true, but remains unseen by the blind until the eternal sleep which will again remind us of the eternal nature of the mind. Those who see truth in Wordsworth feel, like the Seer, blessed. This blessedness, as well as immense awe, is also one of the feelings that intensifies as we work more consciously on strengthening the inner life to experience in ever greater intensity the exceptional state.

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Why is this concept so important in TPOF?

In this state the observed and the observer become one. In this state subject and
object are transcended and experienced in a living way. However, this is a
perspective that must be fought for, just like a person desiring to have a panoramic
or bird’s eye view must climb to the top of a mountain to gain this new, yet
fully justified, relationship between the self and the world, the inner and the
outer.

In natural science we study the forces that break down nature, they are the forces of entropy,
ie. that measurable physical property of disorder, randomness or uncertainty.
Yet we are also surrounded by living beings in which an opposite force lives. These
living beings create order and whilst living transcend the destructive physical
forces. They negate the universal laws of entropy for their allotted time, but
as soon as these life forces leave then the formerly living object submits to
the laws of disintegration. An oak for example manifests its order in the structure
of its leaves, bark, acorns, crown and root system. Each and every plant is
proof that life is something beyond the mere natural scientific laws.

In the exceptional state we are capable of directly experiencing an essential part of
our being that transcends itself. Initially this exceptional state is
experienced as something foreign to everyday life. It can be reasoned that thinking about thinking leads us away from life, distancing us from what is real. At a superficial level this argument is a valid description of the problematic relationship the exceptional state can appear to have with leading our lives. Some minds will judge it to be navel gazing with all the associated negative connotation. However, a more careful reading of the statement opens up at least 2 interesting
questions.

1. Might something also be gained from leading us away from life?
2. There is an assumption that thinking about thinking distances us from the real, but what is meant by the word real and how does it relate to thinking.

As can be intuited from these questions there is also a perspective which, far from
distancing us from life, can enrich life in a way that re-evaluates and redefines
the limits of reality in an expansive direction. This is so as all that was previously
held to be real is still real, yet in a context where it is not the only real.

It is a normal reaction to be somewhat cautious or even afraid of thinking about thinking. As already indicated arid thoughts hardly seem like an area where I might find a life enhancing transcendent state. This fear or trepidation can come from 2 general directions and one of them will be more dominant in each and every one of us.

• People who have a rich inner life of feeling and or strong inclinations to act will often experience thinking as a weak barren soul faculty and feel a natural aversion to deepening this in the hope of finding something that transcends their current way of living. Let’s call these people Lovers of Lucy
• People who have a strong desire for knowledge and understanding will often abhor the lack of certainty that accompanies leaving the world of the senses that has been enriched through a better understanding of it. They will feel as if the certainty and sense of order and control on which they based their lives is too valuable to warrant leaving it. Let’s call these people Adorers of Harry.

However, there are some people who “Halfway along the journey to life’s end find
themselves astray in a dark wood.”(Canto 1 1-2) At the beginning of the divine
comedy Dante similarly feels the understandable dread of Lovers of Lucy and Adorers of Harry yet also the allure of something light filled, inspiring and fear
squelching. He then encounters the leopard, angry lion and she-wolf, which he
recognizes “Just so inside my mind, which was still fleeing” (Canto 1, 25)  as aspects of himself, of his inner life, which will try to devour him before a path out of the dark forest can be found.

But when I came beneath a steep hillside –
Which rose at the far end of that long valley
That struck my stricken heart with so much dread –
I lifted up my eyes, and saw the height
Covered already in that planet’s rays
Which always guides all men and guides them right.
And then the fear I felt was somewhat less

(Canto 1, 13-18)

Then suddenly, as I went slipping down,
Someone appeared before my very eyes,
Seemingly through long silence hoarse and wan.
When I caught sight of  him in that wide
waste, “Take pity on me,” I shouted out to him,
“Whatever you are, a real man or a ghost!

(Canto 1, 61-66)

Are you a real man or a ghost? These 2 terms viewed from a “common sense” perspective are
mutually exclusive. However, they don’t need to be so because as above the tricky
word here is the word real . How do we define what is real and not real?
This can only be done with thinking. We are still dancing around the concept of
the exceptional state here, but this is a useful process in creating clarity. If
we investigate further the “common sense” reasoning concerning the differences
between the real man and the ghost we realize that “real” means something that
can be seen by the common sense of sight. However, real does not need to be limited
to this feeble notion of reality. After all we would not deny gravity because we
cannot see it, nor for that matter radio waves, ultraviolet or infrared light. Again
normal reasoning would concur that whilst we cannot see these, we can infer
their existence because of their effects.

Now let us investigate this train of thought. Real things can be seen by the common sense
of sight. Somethings are real that cannot be seen, but we know they are real
because they cause something to happen that can be seen with the common sense
of sight. I.e. these real things are invisible to sight and indirectly perceptible
through their effects. Let’s stick with the electromagnetic spectrum for this example.
When we view the world without this concept, given to us in thinking, we become
incapable of explaining what the common sense of sight reveals to us (light,
the enabler of sight, itself is also a spectrum of frequencies that belong to
the entire electromagnetic spectrum). Another way of describing this would be
to say that an invisible concept given to us in the capacity to think is being
used to describe something else invisible yet that invisible something can be considered
real because it produces a visible effect. Following this line of reason if an
invisible ghost has the effect of assuaging and removing  “the pain…so terrible…. the terror coming from her sight, the loss of all hope”(Canto 1, 52-54) then why should this be
considered any less real. I am labouring this point, because anybody who considers
thinking to not be real can only do so by being completely asleep to forces in
the inner life, be they Lovers of Lucy or Adorers of Harry.

To defeat the she-wolf, the evildoer whose avid appetite is never slaked Virgil tells
Dante that:

This hound will not be fed with land or pelf,
But rather feed on wisdom, love, and valour.
He will originate in folds of felt.

(Canto 1, 103-105)

Wisdom imbued thinking, love imbued feeling and a valient willing can deliver him from the
dark forest. With the exceptional state the focus is initially on the thinking
aspect of this trinity, though as will be seen the life of feeling and will are
essential components of this path.

If we are to make thinking the object of our thinking then this cannot be done without
the active participation of the will and memory. Already here we stumble upon
facts that are deeply inconvenient for lazy people. There is nothing in outer
life that compels me to remember for example the train of thoughts that passed
through my consciousness whilst for example eating breakfast. However, it is
exactly this type of exercise that we need to perform if we are to get to know
this activity that is with us in every waking moment. Again we are presented
with a paradox here, because we are being encouraged to remember something that
is of no consequence for the rest of the world and also exert our will to do
something that seems in no way to contribute to the outer life. This all seems so
unreasonable, yet the promise of the exceptional state is that it will slowly lead
us to an experience of the inner life that is beyond the possible experiences
of the Lucys and Harrys of this world.

We need to start asking ourselves the question: What is it that is thinking in me? And then seek to experience this being and how it reveals it essential nature. Here we use
the scientific method of observing phenomena to build an increased awareness
and understanding of this being.

If we practice prayer, meditation, contemplation or concentration then we have to use
our will to hold a chosen thought, prayer or image. Also here we have a direct
experience of how something beyond me lives in me. Despite the efforts of our
will another kind of thinking seems to insert itself as a foreigner into our mental
exercises, distracting us from the chosen mental content. Through practice and
application we gradually become better at sticking with the chosen content,
though even this can fluctuate greater depending on what has happened during
the rest of the day, especially if it engaged the feeling life. This process is
similar to applying thinking to an everyday situation and allowing the
essential nature of thinking to illuminate it, improve understanding whilst not
being distracted by other thoughts presenting themselves to my consciousness in
what could be described as a weird type of attention competition. However, the exceptional
state refers specifically to submitting the process of thinking itself to the
activity of thinking to illuminate it and reveal aspects of its nature. As this
process matures we begin to sense the invisible rays of a light filled being. In
the exceptional state we can come to know the essential part of our being that
transcends itself and that is not subject to the entropy that ensues at the
time of death The spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner offers us the being of
Anthroposophia and a vision of the Etheric Christ in the astral worlds as
further stages along this path of development towards rediscovering the
universal I, the Logos in everyday experience.

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