After-life - how is it?

[Antares]

I would suggest that alchemy is the only connect four that can work, will only work when three are attained seamlessly. The spiritual practice being 1. recognising the philophers stone (connect 3), 2. turning lead into gold (inherit from connect four.

Well... Here's few thoughts

Bit about a sacred or secret geometry. There is a triangle oriented upward, and a triangle oriented downward. When the two meet, you get something like the jewish star (where does actually this geometrical symbol come from?). 4 is, alikely, four points connected together in a specific way, thus forming the cross (another geometrical symbol, this time found in christianity).

The history of human kind gives us a lot of evidences of so many aspiring ascetics who "tortured" their bodies in order to achieve higher consciousness. This is how the triangle - without the bottom part - works. It is actually unbalanced, the yin part is missing. The whole-istic, balanaced approach is to involve all the ingredients.

I believe that trinity is a vertical thing: body-mind/soul-spirit. On each of those levels a horizontal order is also applied, typically meaning 4 (or 5 if the middle is considered) elements. Sometimes both - vertical and horizontal - seemed to be confused in the past. Balance should be achieved between all, however. People typically don't understand what balance means, what is it, and where it leads to. This is a very unbalanced society, and they pretend that the results (the Earth condition at this point) come... from somewhere else than them.
A global catastrophe seems to be near - I'd say the governments are happy with this, then they can have a justifications to their "horrible, but necessary" plans to be applied. This global way to "nothingness" (environmental disaster caused by unbalanced minds) is obvious, and people having their mind totally overwhelmed with media and propaganda cannot see where it goes.

Indeed, I believe the vertical phase is known as "ascension,"

Yes - only from a point of view of an aspiring human being to widen their consciousness or perception in its utilitary means.
Using geometry as a helpful mental tool, it is a "road" in which you can move upward, downward, as well as extend, and contract your consciousness. But even gods didn't work out moving through this road, as it seems. Using this "road" for one's own (evil) purposes is possible: for instance to enslave a species (like human kind) and keep it down, propagating the idea of hedonism, consumerism etc. so that no one was interested in things like consciousness (so they remain unconscious in large part) - to sustain their own "stuck" on some levels of that "road". It is also "wise" to keep control over people beliefs, like founding an official "church", create an inqusition, and kill and torture those who don't follow their - the only possible to apply - rules.
Hence, ascension from such point of view is just a fragment of the whole picture... More holistic view I think was held by the Egyptian apprentices or Chinese taoists: the body was essential part of the whole process, not an obstacle or unnecessary "component".

The Philosopher's Stone itself is a crown, to me... just as in the west a king wears a golden crown, in the east the pharoah has no face of yours either. The synthesis of east-west is the synthesis of philosophy east-west... all there is to it.

Now, the Lesser Stone bears reason love's way, so I find it heart-shaped. Because there are two levels to alchemy, internal and external, you can do anything with the love of life itself. Including nothing... but then again "nothing" becomes "everything" in good time. Interesting, isn't it .

The interesting idea about the world directions comes from the Mesoamerican ancient societies who believed that this is the cosmos which provides them with food! (Where such abstract thought could came from, while you could be certain that a "primitive", agricultural society thought that food just "grows", or "is born and run away" when you catch it???) They believed there are basically 4 types of food: eastern, western, northern and southern ones. It is very similar to the Chinese ancient idea of the world directions.