EXPANDING STATES OF SELF-AWARENESS
LESSON 10
With this lesson we take up the third attitude to the psyche: the intensification of development, culminating in living in the north half. Before we enter into the detail of this third attitude, let us briefly review the background.
Each and every one of us functions on three levels simultaneously, but we think on a fourth level, upon which we cannot function. We called this level the mental, intellectual world, the private world. It is abstracted from the three levels upon which we do actually function. The highest of those three is called the Mind Level, the lowest level of that which we designate as Light's Regions. We function on that level by developing the Individualized Self, an Individualized Be-ing. What we call altruism is required to function on this level. We could call it impersonality, but it sounds rather cold to be impersonal. But when one is wholly unselfish, he does work, engages in activities without any thought, secret or otherwise, what am I going to get out of it, what does that mean to me? There is a universalization of consciousness, an all-inclusive functional state that brings satisfaction of having contributed something to the overall commonweal, to the general good, and motivated by an urge, a force, to do so.
The greatest sense of satisfaction that one can experience is when he is motivated by a welling up of a creative force that contributes to the general good of the whole. But at a lesser state of development it takes some sort of great catastrophe to bring out such altruism, whereas we should manifest it all the time. We don't, but let a catastrophe happen, floods, earthquakes, even war, and you find there is something deeper, intrinsic, that comes forth, even to the sacrifice of one's life. It has been said that self-preservation is the first law, but that is not so. Soldiers in various wars have proved it over and over again. They manifest a quick and instinctive welling-up of force to do something to save their buddies. "He who giveth up his life for my sake shall find it." All that sort of thing is involved. To me, that is the first law and the deepest force and instinct within us. We label it the telekinesical force that stems from that Power-to-be-conscious.
That impersonal, universal, altruistic motivating Power in us wells from a deep, intrinsic, fundamental level and motivates us to worship, to love the perfection and wisdom of the Christ conscious state. Relative to our ordinary, everyday objective and mentalized state upon which we function, we call this highest of the three levels the Individualized Self, which is an individualization of the Greater Self, the Logos, the Only Begotten.
Stepping down from this level, like an involutionary process, the next level can be described as a reflected light world. We label it the lunar cycle of development. If we were good aristotelians focused in objective identification, we would say the unconscious. That world in which we actually function at our level of development is called the psychic nature. The forces of that world motivate our feelings, desirings, emotions, even our thinking. The way we feel and the gunas, qualities of feeling, desiring, loving, and thinking can be described as the personality pattern.
That operates under the world mother, mater, the genetrix, the matter of that world. To describe it we borrowed the term lunar cycle from the Egyptians. Surely you have seen the symbolism of the Egyptian lore. Taurus, a fine looking bull with a moon between its horns, represents the driving force in the lunar cycle, the psychic nature. Here is a thumbnail sketch of the Egyptian story.
Osiris, the Power-to-be-conscious on Mind Level, was cut up into 15 pieces. The Egyptians symbolized the developmental process by the phases of the moon and they referred to this phase of the evolutionary process as the lunar cycle. The reason that they used the phases of the moon as a symbol is because the moon shines by reflected light. Similarly, the psychic nature only functions by reflection. Osiris, the one that was full-orbed, reflects the light of the sun. The sun represents Light's Regions, the intrinsic Higher Self. That was the pre-mental, intellectual state of evolution, where, according to the biblical story found in the book of Genesis, Adam (the generic term for man) walked and talked with God. Adam and Eve were in the garden. That is, they were innocent; they hadn't developed any values about anything in that pre-intellectual, pre-mental state. It's hard for us to realize that there was any such state. In the absence of all mental or moral values, they were purely amoral. That just means they didn't have such concepts as immorality or morality. That is symbolized by Osiris, the full moon.
But a shadow came over the consciousness of that pure state. The shadow gradually crept over until Osiris, the Power-to-be-conscious on the Mind Level, in Light's Regions, was obscured. What was this power that gradually crept over the psychic nature, symbolized by the shadow? It was the power of the genetrix that obscured the pure reflection, out of this process Horus was born of the world mother, the genetrix, called Isis by the Egyptians. When Horus grew to young manhood, he asked about his father. (I'm talking in symbols now.) And Isis, the mother, replied, "He was cut up into 15 pieces and buried in the south half," (the lower psychic nature). Horus said to Isis, "Let us go and find those pieces." So Isis, and Horus went on that great pilgrimage to find the pieces. And out of total obscurity they found a piece. And each time they found a piece they took it from the south half to the north half.
Each part of Osiris, each part of the true Self on Mind Level that they discovered, they removed from the south half as fast as they could. Then they went back to the south half and searched and found another part, and another, etc., until they had recovered 14 pieces. When they had taken each one as they discovered it back up to the north half and put them together Horus, the son born of the genetrix, was metamorphosed into Osiris, and thereby Osiris became alive again.
But they never could find the private parts of Osiris-that piece was missing. When all of the parts are rediscovered the genetrix is absent out of the consciousness. Hold that in mind. In the overall field consciousness, sexual energy is all brought up to a higher level and changed into a spiritual force, if you will permit the use of the term spiritual. That regenerative force completes the individualization on the Mind Level. The Be-ing, like Osiris, becomes alive and in possession of his vehicles.
The third level upon which we function is called the configurational level. In the old terminology it is labeled the physical organism. But it is a configuration of dynamic units of energy, a dynamic process, not a static creation or 'thing'. That configuration of units of energy in which we function as a vehicle is a representation of the state in which the Individualized Self is conscious of itself plus the qualities that have covered that true Higher Self. The true Individualized Self on your and my highest level upon which we function has been obscured by greed, avarice, and selfishness, the qualities of the lower psyche, of the animalized influences of the genetrix. Thus, the configuration is not only a representation of the state in which the Power-to-be-conscious on Mind Level is conscious; it also represents the obscuring qualities that have overlaid it due to functioning under the genetrix. This gives us the background. We must not overlook the steps, the gradations, the degrees, through which we must to pass in order to attain consciousness on the Mind Level.
This point is extremely important, even though it goes against all your idealizations and all your mythologies, and trying to preserve your myths that will get you deeper and deeper into obscuration instead of bringing you into Light. What I have said, and I repeat in other words, is this: we have to take a journey to get to Light's Regions. Let us get a good road map in order that we can take that journey with the least detours, cul de sacs, blind alleys, etc.
Those who have not entered upon the work of consciously functioning in this process can take all that we are describing here as roadmap making. Have a good intellectual, mental roadmap, until you get ready. I do not mean until you think you're ready; I mean until the time comes that is becomes impossiblenot to take the journey. If you are motivated by a hunger and a love and an urge for Light and truth and perfection that is greater than all other urges, including the great urge of the genetrix, it tops that urge and throws it into obscurity. When you are motivated by a hunger for light and truth you are ready. When you no longer can fight it out of you, you are ready. When you work against it and you want everything else under the sun first, and then that last, when that becomes predominant and you want it over and above everything, then you are ready. Now I am not talking down to you. I am just trying to describe a process that you have gone through, that you're in, or that you will go through. Let me return to the important point I want to stress here. I do not believe that it is valuable or conducive to the fulfillment of the evolutionary process to focus ones attention too high. I believe in focusing attention on the next step. When that is accomplished, then take the next one, then the next, etc. We'll arrive that way, but we will not arrive by trying to jump onto a high level that we don't know anything about. We don't know what it would do to us and we'd be scared to death of its power and dynamism and Light if we achieved it. If it were suddenly revealed to us we would flee in terror. So little by little, step by step, we must become conditioned to it until we reach it easily and can handle it and be adjusted to it and conditioned in it when we get there.
Now we come to the third attitude we should have toward the psyche. In my humble opinion, and I'm speaking generally, racially, the time has not only arrived, the time has passed when we should be taking that next step into the discovery of that which constitutes the pattern of our personality. In other words, the time has not only arrived, it is past due, when we should understand the forces by which we are motivated instead of abstracting mentally, justifying, manufacturing alibis and excuses to keep hidden the forces by which we are motivated. I believe the time has arrived for us to ferret out and get rid of that which cannot be used in the higher phases of the evolutionary process. We must get rid of all of that which cannot be used and preserve that which can be utilized to the further perfection of the Individualized Be-ing. Either you are a weathervane, wafted around by every breeze that blows, or you are going to gain control of all of the forces by which you are driven.
We must control the forces by which we are motivated in all of our feelings and desires, in all our lovings and our thinkings, secret and otherwise. It is time we were waking up and making that discovery, and through the discovery gaining control instead of being blown around willy-nilly by some propaganda line, personal or general. This is the way to mastership, the way to perfection and fulfillment.
So this is the third attitude we must have toward the psychic nature, the personality pattern. Eventually the personality must be surrendered and given up in order to make that higher grade, identification with the Power-to-be-conscious in Light's Regions. Many try to surrender a personality before they have completed the development of it. And they say, "I will give up everything to the Infinite, to the Divine Mind," when they haven't yet developed anything to give up. Talk about flown away virtue! That attitude has a sort of sweetness and light quality to it-until factuality, life facts, appear, till that one comes face to face with something he is motivated by and can't overcome or get out of, and he is driven to do this or that which mentally, in his private world, he didn't want.
Then comes the conflict between the mental idealization and the motivation that he succumbs to, and must succumb to. And the result of the conflict can be a breakdown-not of the motivating force-but a breakdown of the mental, the opposition. We can hardly build institutions fast enough to take care of people with such problems resulting from the conflict. And what causes that mental idealization that is so fantastic and far removed from factual reality? Psychoanalysts who can evaluate the Victorian and the Puritanical period in our occidental culture can supply the precise answer. Such substituted forms of expression while denying the motivating force were never perpetrated in any oriental country. It took our occidental civilization to do it. And yet that is so tenacious, so entrenched, that it is said of anyone who attacks it, "He's immoral, he's bad, he's a danger, he's a threat." From where I sit it looks like the Anthony Comstocks will see 98% of our people go into mental institutions before they'll yield an inch and face factual reality, face the world in which we actually function, not the mental world that justifies the substituted forms of expression due to the repression of the motivations of that world.
When you were children you were given pap, and when you were grown up you were given strong meat. And I'm going to ask you, is this too strong a meat for you? If you've understood the implications of everything I've just said, is it too strong? It's very difficult for me to talk calmly and quietly about it, without getting too warm under the collar about what the myths have done to us. I trace the causes of all the world wars to it as well as the devastation, destruction, and the overall global, racial, substituted outlets for what should be normal and natural and beautiful and wholesome. We should live in a veritable felicity of creative life and love and oneness and unity by developing self-expression true to our state of consciousness, not by idealizing that state and creating substituted outlets.
That's enough background. Now let us get a picture of what we mean by entering into the psychic nature, the personality, and developing a personality that we can offer to the Greater Ones, the Christ conscious state. Let us develop something to offer Him as an instrument through which He can function, not as something to be destroyed. Every higher level is a synthesis of all the lower levels of all that is germane to the evolutionary process. Everything that is natural order is synthesized on each higher level until we reach the ultimate Greater Self, the consciousness that we call the Logos. Then we are all things unto all in our consciousness. Not all men, but all, down to the plant and the animal world. When we reach this synthetical state we contain all qualities, gunas, in our consciousness. The multiplicity has become one, just as that one has become many differentiations. So it is not like a laminated layer cake, where we occupy one plane, one level, then we destroy that and get on a 'higher' plane. It doesn't work that way at all. We preserve everything that is natural order as we expand consciousness to a higher level, and a higher level, and a higher level. It is like concentric spheres. Each wider, larger sphere contains all the lesser spheres within it.
If we had a fine oil painting as large as this blackboard, and if we covered that painting with a canvas and then cut a hole in the canvas and looked through that hole we would see a small part of the painting. The part we would see through the hole would make sense. Let us say we saw a house, the trees, a fence, children playing. But now let us cut a larger hole. That house and the trees and the fence and the grounds are still there, but against what we see in the widened picture, in the widened consciousness, it appears changed and altered, but it's still there. Now let's cut a wider hole, and keep on cutting holes until no canvas remains. "We see now through a glass darkly." Take away the canvas and we see the whole cosmic process and we see that it is our own consciousness. It is not something objective to us, but it is our own consciousness that has expanded into a cosmic process.
The whole and every part of the whole is in us. Carry that image, because it is not like a laminated layer cake, "I'm on a high level, you poor boobs down there." See? You never have any such feeling in true development. You feel at home with the dogs, the cats, and the chickens and even with plants and minerals. Have you ever sat near a massive rock and felt a kinship? It's all there in your consciousness, but you have a wider field in which you function, a greater space. There is the process. How do we get to that perfection? that fulfillment? By taking the next step, then the next step, and the next, until we have arrived, even there at the Great Christos, under whom function the Archetypal Gods, the creators of galaxies. What is our next step? To learn how we function in our personality self. That's our next step.
The story is told in the orient of a guru who had a few young men in training. The guru had to send a message three miles up a mountain trail to another man with whom he could not communicate without a written message. It was a dark and stormy night, not fit for man nor beast. He gave the message to one of his chelas and said, "Take this message up the trail and give it to that man (he called his name)." The chela said, "Master, it is so dark and stormy! I can't see the way up there." The master took a lantern down from the cabin wall and lit it and told his chela, "Come outside. Take this lantern in your hand. See? It shines three feet, doesn't it? Walk that three feet. See? It shines three more feet, doesn't it? Walk that. See? It shines three more feet. Walk that. It shines three more feet. You do not have to see that whole trail all the way up there. Walk three feet."
In this work in the School of the Natural Order we're asking you, if you want self-development badly enough, walk three feet. Because then you will see three more feet. You will see more of that picture. The first three feet represent this attitude toward the psychic nature. The psychic world is very large-much larger than this objective world is to your objective, neural, physical sense. It's high and wide and deep, but a real world, highly peopled. It's populous, with manifold activities going everywhere. That world ranges from the lowest levels of the south half, which is very dark and filled with slithering, noisome creatures, imps and evil influences, forces. There are devils, demons, and earth-bound ones that are obsessed with some desire of some kind going around like incubi, to possess the consciousness and even the body of anyone they can get in on. That is only in the south half. Don't think that is the whole psychic world. It goes on into what could be called the middle regions. The Indians had a pretty good understanding when they described it as the happy hunting grounds. The manifestations of that level can be recognized in acts of loving kindness, concern for all humanity-the well-being and cooperative feelings we have one with another in the spirit of kindness, helpfulness, and working together for good. At this state the reflector has turned. We no longer seek possession of objects in themselves. We are no longer persuaded, influenced and conditioned by lower motivations. The reflector reflects Light's Regions long before we reach the birth of the Christ and the power of Being in Light's Regions. Long before we reach that identification we can reflect it, until we can calm and still the perturbations of the feelings, desirings, and emotions. We can calm and still the perturbations of the waters, substance of the psychic world, until we stand on the glassy sea where not 144 persons, but 144 force centers in the psychic nature have become purified and clear. (I use purified here in a chemical sense, not a moral sense.) Pure substance reflects Lights Regions, and we live in that reflection as we perfect the steps that lead into the full identification. That is the process, the next step in development.
Now we come to the most important point of this whole course of lessons, the key whereby it is done. The key to the doing is the understanding of the seven major centers. The seven golden candlesticks, seven angels before the throne, are symbolical ways of referring to them. Today, with the development of technology and the general understanding of modern physics, we liken these centers to generators. They generate the force by which we function. This is the key. This used to be the most hidden, esoteric wisdom. In olden times it was so secret, esoteric, that they symbolized it with astrological signs. We are going to go through those signs and see how remarkable the symbolism is. This does not mean exoteric astrology. It means esoteric astrology. There is a law of correspondences. Every area of the three-story man has its correspondences in the macrocosm. The three-story man is labeled the microcosm, and every area in the microcosm has a correspondence in energy force relationships with areas in the overall cosmic process, the macrocosm. That is a profound study, and it has nothing whatever to do with exoteric astrology, nothing. It is inner force relationships between the epitomization, microcosm, and the macrocosm, the cosmic process. Man, in his intrinsic and essential nature, is the epitomization of the whole cosmic process. What goes on in a given person is going on in the whole; and what is going on in the whole interplanetary, galactic, macrocosmic representation is going on in the epitomization, the microcosm. There is a corresponding force relationship, therefore these symbols are most appropriate.
The key, again, is to get acquainted with the centers. Five of them belong to the psychic nature. Two of them, the sacral and the conarial centers, belong to the individualizing process on the Mind Level. The sacral-conarial axis and the positive and negative poles belong to the autonomous field, the pneumatic ovum. The five centers between those two poles pertain to the psychic nature. They are symbolized in the Christian Bible as the five wise virgins who preserved the oil in their lamps. By preserving the oil in their lamps they were ready to go forth and meet the bridegroom, the True Self, when he was ready to come in and take possession of the vehicles that had been evolutionarily prepared for him. Those who wasted the oil in their lamps, exhausted their energy on one or other of the five levels, had nothing with which to function when the bridegroom came. They had nothing with which to stand up and go forth, triumphantly, to meet him. They were devitalized, sound asleep, when they could have been awake when the bridegroom came. When that hour strikes, the True Self takes possession of all your vehicles. It is your Real Self taking possession of yourself. When that hour strikes, no man knows. It knows, but no one else on any other level knows. It will come like a thief in the night, at the most unexpected time. You might go here and intend to do all sorts of things that you want to do and Bingo! something hits you and you don't do it at all. You go and do something else. The spirit moves when it moves, according to its own plan and design, because we have built it up to do that. Then it gets ready and does it, so we needn't be surprised.
A long time ago a whispering campaign was begun by those who wanted to preserve the secret wisdom of the opening of these centers. Don't think that whispering campaign was started by the representatives of darkness. It was started by those who wanted to preserve the wisdom. And that whispering campaign was this: "Don't have anything to do with those centers. When anyone talks to you about the awakening of those centers, don't have anything to do with it. It's bad medicine. It's dangerous." But now the veil in the temple has been rent and the truth has to be given. Today it is dangerous not to know how those centers function.
I wish that I had the comprehensive ability to tell you how the ignorance is being commercialized, and the medical profession is getting wealthy by reason of the ignorance of how these centers operate. In my more than 45 years of work I have had many a person come to me and say, "I felt that my heart dropped out of place. This down here began to beat, beat, beat, but I could still feel my heart beating. Then this would beat like I had two hearts. Beat, beat, beat, thump, thump, thump. The heart was lub-dubbing, and here is this other beat, beat, beat. I told the doctor, 'Something is wrong, something is beating in here. Something's wrong.'" The doctor "lifts up the hood, checks out the ignition system and the carburetor." And he says, "Organically, you're all right." (If he tells the truth.) "There's nothing wrong." That's just one example. Hundreds and hundreds of people are going to places and getting solar plexus knockout blows, becoming so sick they have to go outside and vomit, or find someplace to relieve themselves quickly. Or they may become bloated with severe gas attacks. What's causing all of that? Go to the doctor. Physiologically, organically, there is nothing wrong. Good aristotelians, might say, "It's all in your imagination."
That isn't all. What is causing the epidemic of heart attacks, people suddenly dropping dead. Do you know the destructive influences they have exposed themselves to, that have gotten into the unprotected heart center? I am only enumerating a few things, not talking about the substituted and compensatory forms of expression due to the repression of the motivating, creating urges in the psyche. That's the whole realm of psychoanalysis and modern psychiatric practice. I say it is dangerous not to know how these centers function, so that you can intelligently take care of yourself instead of all of it remaining in ignorance, in nescience, in the unconscious, and living in your mentalized private world. But you can't function in it. You can only think in your private world, but the functions are going on.
That brings me now to the work that lies ahead of us on this third attitude toward the psyche. It will probably take me two or three more lessons to cover the description of that work.
-Vitvan, Tape series dated 1955 - 1956 -Marj Coffman, ed., 1998