From an email to a fellow researcher, Louis, also writing about Whitley Strieber at that time (mid 2008).
I would like to suggest that, in your investigations into these apparently “external” matters, you always consider how they reflect and thereby draw attention to an internal order or dynamic at work.
I have also been working hard to apply this same method to the teachings of Steiner, regarding Ahriman, Lucifer and Christ, and tho I can’t share this with you just yet, I will say that I think it is a key to your own explorations also.
The “external” trinity is this: Ahriman, Lucifer, and Christ. All are aspects of Man, internally experienced as mind, heart, and soul—or intellect, feeling/imagination, and will.
It’s clear when we speak of the inner trinity that there is no clear dividing line between these functions. Intellect overlaps with feeling and imagination, and feeling-imagination is, you might say, the dormant or passive side of will. Likewise, the fusion of mind with heart consciousness leads to an awareness of Soul.
So it stands to reason that the same “overlap” applies to the apparent “external” “entities’ of Ahriman, Lucifer and Christ. Each is a shadow or a forerunner of the next, which is a more evolved or complete expression, you might say, of what comes “before” it.
The key is to bring them into harmony as a triangle of forces, i.e., a single force with three aspects: negative, positive, and—for lack of a better word—“transcendent.” This can only come about, however, by first aligning the forces, as separate functions within us, with the Impersonal, while simultaneously “grounding” or earthing the Archetypal forces (entities) in the personal, i.e., humanizing them, allowing them access to our normal awareness, thereby transforming it.
I would say that both Pinchbeck and Strieber, in their different ways, are stuck in the Ahrimanic realm, i.e., that of intellect. They have so far failed to align their hearts, their imaginations, with the Impersonal (Lucifer). What this means is that they have expanded their intellects to encompass the Imaginal phenomena of “aliens,” and such like, but are unable—save intellectually—to take their understanding into the realm of imagination and will.
This then determines the actual nature of the “beings” which they experience. So it’s not that these beings are Ahrimanic, but that this is the only aspect of them that is being experienced. And even if Strieber can conceptualize, and so speak about, the other two aspects, his Knowing is incomplete. Although Strieber is describing Lucifer (heart) and Christ (soul) qualities of the experience, he isn’t really communicating it, because he isn’t able to integrate his various understandings at a personal level.
There are in fact two trinities, making a total of nine combinations:
Mind, Heart, Soul is combined with the trinity of personal, Impersonal, and Archetypal: so you have personal mind, Impersonal Mind, Archetypal Mind, and so on, making nine aspects in all, which need to be integrated into a single, geometric picture of the interaction between Self and Other.
You may recall Strieber became obsessed with nine knocks which he heard, and the idea that the Visitors communicated their lessons according to the number 9, the ennead.
>“They [the visitors] are physically real. They also function on a non-physical level, and this may be their primary reality.” You may ask where the Body comes into all this. I suspect the body—which potentially houses all three aspects of Mind, Heart, and Soul, and of personal, Impersonal and Archetypal being, is like the page upon which these forms and structures are drawn, the foundation upon which they are built. Potentially, when the Body is fully integrated into these forces, or vice versa, perhaps it will become the fourth aspect, and so create a quaternary? If so, then there is an aspect of being beyond the Archetypal also, so eventually the complete sequence will be 4 X 4, with 16 aspects in total.
But for now the Body is as it were “asleep,” a dumb, brute animal, ruled by Ahriman and so under the dominion of Death and not Life.
Is this why the Visitors cannot materialize physically without being “corrupted” (trapped, limited, distorted) in the process?
>“They [the visitors] have the ability to enter the mind and affect thought, and can accomplish amazing feats with this skill.” Because the mind/intellect is the only part which we have begun to integrate—as a species—with the realms of Impersonal and Archetypal?
>"We may be part of a triad that includes the visitors. They may be the aggressive force, entering us, enforcing our passivity, seeking to draw from the relationship some new creation." This is a complex area. Since it seems we are already somehow entwined with the Visitors (i.e., they are an aspect of our Totality, and we of theirs), I think perhaps the whole hybrid “reptilian babies’ view of this interface may be a case of a too literal (intellectual), and hence lmited, grasping of Imaginal reality.
>The visitors, I think, are a very potent “force,” and, like us, possess both a negative and a positive side. Terrifying alien abductions are a good example of positive (or dark side) visitor activity, while crop circles are a good example of positive visitor activity. The former, I think, is an Ahrimanic influence. As for the latter, I’m not entirely sure – perhaps Lucifer. I note your curious typo in which you have two positives and no negative! Are you in denial of your Shadow, Louis? ; )
>The visitors have something we need, and we have something they need. Our evolution depends on them, and vice versa. But, because they function primarily on a non-physical level, and we function primarily on a physical level, we are unable to form a proper relationship with each other. Through writing about the visitors, and helping to convince humanity of their existence, Strieber – who is a shaman/medium – is assisting their entry into our dimension. He has been chosen, in other words, as a “focus” through whom the visitors can make a full physical manifestation on this plane (the physical plane). Once again, the intellect is the bridge. As it is being absorbed into the Impersonal and Archetypal realms, our task then becomes to bring these forces down into the personal—hence abductions, crop circles, and so forth. Then, in order to deal with these intellectually terrifying, or at least baffling (mind-destroying), experiences, we need to open our hearts and imaginations to the Impersonal, and repeat the whole process at the next level; at the end of which, we will have fused the negative-positive of mind/heart, and be ready to activate our wills and have full “knowledge and conversation” of the Angel or Other, as the Totality of our own personal/Impersonal/Archetypal Selves.
>But, in order to do this correctly, and “take the species to a whole new level,” Strieber must “balance between dark and light…” Integrate the shadow into the light, the personal into the Impersonal.
>What “comes through” the medium largely depends on the medium’s own character, as well as their ability to “filter” this information. Which is itself determined by the degree to which the medium has “surrendered” his or her personal self to the higher forces that wish to communicate through them. Only by essentially becoming one with these forces (and beings) can we relay a pure communication, because otherwise there will always be separation between subject and object, between message and medium. This allows the intellect, feelings, and personal will to interfere with (interpret) the transmission, and to shape and distort it to personal (though often unconscious) ends.
> For humanity to form a triad with the visitors – a balanced triad, that is (which results in the production of a fourth force) – Strieber needs to act as an effective (and discerning) medium…Actually, wait a second, this theory doesn’t make sense (which is why I need to work on it more). It doesn’t make sense because: a) to be an effective medium Strieber must cease to be a medium at all and become the message; and b) WS is only one guy. Like Castaneda, he seems to be showing us more how the process can go wrong than how it needs to go.