A vestige of this night

And to be sure, the Resurrection is a victory, but it is at the same time the emergence out of this night into the world that has no desire to understand.

Once again, the Lord enters into his relationship, not only with the Mother, but also with the disciples, who constantly fail to understand and constantly must be converted anew.

Of course, the Lord now carries the mark of the Resurrection, but the sign of the night remains, and at no time will the Mother forget how it looked beneath the Cross. And John will never recover from it; he is the witness, he knows what he saw.

And the others know at least what they heard about it. All of them carry in themselves a vestige of this night. And the fact that the Lord then ascends into heaven and sends out the Spirit and makes the disciples into true apostles, who are permitted to die as martyrs in the manner established by God, does not free them from the fact that the Son died on the Cross for them, it does not free them from this night and from the contemplation of this night.

They remain – and every believer and person at prayer remains – encompassed by the night, by a world that is not of this world, by a fulfillment that goes beyond any promise, by a mystery that does not belong to them, but to God alone.

Since the Son is both God and man at once, the contemplation of his essence and life can move in both spheres; but it must always pass from one over into the other. Neither sphere may be cut short on account of the other.

Adrienne von Speyr, Light and Images

Illuminating Fire

I call upon Thee, o living God, radiant with illuminating fire.

O unseen parent of the sun! Pour forth thy light giving power and energise thy divine spark.

Enter into this flame and let it be agitated by the breath of Thy Holy Spirit.

Manifest Thy power and open for me the temple of almighty God which is within this fire!

Manifest thy light for my regeneration, and let the breadth, height, fullness and crown of the solar radiance appear, and may the God shine forth.

Paracelcus

Life and Death are One

Then Almitra spoke, saying, we would ask now of death. And he said:

You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.

Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.

Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing but free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin the climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Birdsong

The world is full of implicit religion, and the inspired saints and poets, who say that the birds ‘praise God’ when they sing, are in no way mistaken.

Because it is in their tiny life itself which sings the ‘great life’ and makes heard, through its countelss variations, the same news which is as old as the world and new as the day: “Life lives and vibrates in me”.

What homage to the source of life is expressed by these small streams of life: the birds which sing!

Unknown author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XI, Force

Stars are the expression of Love

The farthest reaches of the etheric world lead out of and beyond space, into the spheres where the Gods have their abode.

And now picture to yourselves a certain inner relationship which may exist between one person and another and comes to physical expression. Picture it quite graphically.

You are caressed by someone who loves you. You feel the caress but it would be childish to associate it in any way with physical matter. The caress is not matter at all, it is a process, and you experience it inwardly, in your soul.

So it is when we look outwards into the spheres of the Ether. The Gods in their love caress the world. But the caress lasts long, because the life of the Gods spans immense reaches of time.

In very truth the stars are the expression of love in the Cosmic Ether; there is nothing physical about them. And from the cosmic aspect, to see a star means to feel a caress that has been prompted by love. To gaze at the stars is to become aware of the love proceeding from the divine-spiritual Beings.

What we must learn to realise is that the stars are only the signs and tokens of the presence of God in the universe. Physical science has much to learn on its path from illusion to truth!

Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships, Vol VII

Memory

Let us consider the domain of forgetting and remembering – the memory.

Memory is magic, in the subjective domain, which effects the evocation of things from the past. It renders past things present. Just as a sorcerer or necromancer evokes the spirits of the dead by making them appear, so does the memory evoke things of the past and make them appear to our inner mental vision.

The present remembrance is the result of the magical operation in the subjective domain, where one has succeeded in evoking from the black void of forgetfulness a living image from the past.

A living image from the past….imprint? symbol? copy? phantom? It is all of these at once. It is an imprint in so far as it makes use f my imagination to represent a reality which goes beyond its imaginary representation; it is a copy in so far as it only aims at reproducing the original from the past; it is a phantom in so far as it is an apparition from the black abyss of forgetfulness and in so far as it recalls to life the past in making it present to my inner vision.

What is the force at work in the subjective magical operation of remembering? There are four types of memory that one experiences: mechanical or automatic memory, logical memory, moral memory and vertical or revelatory memory.

Vertical or revelatory memory is not a memory of the past in the sense of the horizontal line: today, yesterday, the day before, but rather in the sense of the vertical line: here, higher, still higher. It is a ‘memory’ which does not link the present to the past on the plane of physical, psychic and intellectual life, but which links the plane of ordinary consciousness to planes or states of consciousness higher than that of ordinary consciousness to planes or states of consciousness higher than that of ordinary consciousness.

It is the faculty of the lower self to reproduce the experience and knowledge of the higher self or, if you like, the faculty of the higher self to imprint its experience and knowledge upon the consciousness of the lower self. It is the link between the higher eye and the lower eye, which renders us authentically religious and wise, and immune to the assaults of sceptism, materialism and determinism.

It is also this which is the source of certainty, not only of God and the spiritual world with its hierarchical entities but also of the immortality of our being and reincarnation, wherever it is a matter of reincarnation. “Dawn is the friend of the muses” and similar proverbs relate to the benefits of vertical memory form which one benefits in the morning, after the return of consiousness from the plane of “natural ecstasy” or sleep.

Meditations on the Tarot, Unknown Author, Letter XIII, Death

Getting Out

The second main occasion for conscious exploration beyond the body happened during the daytime, one Saturday or Sunday afternoon, while I was sober but (if truth be told) recovering from excessive drink the night before. My fragile physical state induced me to lie very, very still, very, very quietly, on my own, on the bed. It was actually quite pleasant.

As my body slipped down as if towards sleep I absentmindedly listened to the distant and disparate sounds of a lazy afternoon, which drifted both in through the open window and down from the living room, where John was watching television. At a certain point I recognised that I had fallen into a meditative state of almost total relaxation, but had managed to retain mental consciousness.

Avid adolescent reading of Carlos Castaneda, tales of the Happy Hunting Grounds, physical transformations, the hand of God, etc, had inspired me towards achieving the zen-like state of being and awareness for many years, precisely so that I could attempt an out of body experience without dying. For this reason I already had an idea of which barriers needed to be overcome. I had come close to my aim on other occasions and recognised certain signs as being my prelude to ‘astral projection’.

One of the signs I’d come to recognise over time as a herald of impending separation from my body, was a peculiar scenario regarding my right arm. In order to let the body sleep whilst the mind remains awake I find it essential to have a focus requiring no mental effort but which stimulates sufficient interest to distract me from other physical functions, such as: Blinking, twitching, scratching, snuggling, or any other dozy activities.

In this regard, ambient sound is often more conducive than silence, which tends to bring about complete relaxation to the point of sleep. An audible focus, on the other hand, allows the mind to drift, although the noise should not be so stimulating that it actually becomes arousing.

On several occasions prior to this one I had found that this drifting of the mind was often followed by a strangely vigorous movement, a ‘waving of my arm’, which seemed to behave quite independently of my body as a whole. Even stranger was the fact that I could never quite ascertain whether my arm was physically and actually moving, or it was my dream arm flapping anxiously for no good reason that I could fathom.

At such times I tended to wonder whether people would be worried if they could see me, as I realized that if I was physically moving I might have appeared to be having a fit. Maybe I was having a fit, but whatever the case might have been, it usually ended up with me just falling asleep anyway.

This time, however, I seized the moment with a bit more determination and instead of wondering what it was all about, I concentrated on the surreal action until I was able to control it. This took quite some effort: The rest of my body was still dormant but the arm seemed to have a life of its own, as if it were strong but struggling to grasp something. After around quarter of an hour I began to see that I might be able to use it as a kind of lever in order to climb out of my physical shell.

With this in mind and with a great effort of will, I made a powerful swinging motion from my shoulder in an attempt to get out, and was able to direct the movement quite successfully. I was surprised, though, at the amount of resistance I felt, in that my dream or ‘astral’ body seemed to be attached to my physical self by a really thick and springy cord, rather like a bungee rope.

‘Getting out’ was actually more difficult than one would imagine. I had always assumed that it would be like serenely floating away, although I also had an idea that one could be ‘sucked’ out of the body forcibly by an external force.

Rainbow

It was clear from the start that the work was more brilliant than any other I had encountered and as the story unfolded I drank it in like nectar, the most sublime poem that had ever been written. I tried to commit the piece to memory but so perfect was the arrangement of words that my mind could barely comprehend their beauty, let alone learn them completely. Only one word would I remember, and this stood out as clearly as the others eluded me:

Rainbow

This is the only thing that I remembered for sure from what I read, that an early or integral part of it was of a rainbow, sign of God’s covenant with the Earth. But if the words were veiled, the meaning of the writing was evident at once.

I held in my hands the most heart-breaking love story that had ever been written by one (a male) for the other, at one and the same time human and divine, natural and supernatural. The character of the author was laid bare by the words but the object of his love seemed to have been absent from his existence for an eternity, or no longer present, except as a memory or product of the imagination. A tale of lost or unrequited love.

In this tale I beheld the power of love, as if tears that sprang from a broken heart had fallen from the eyes of the beholder and transformed themselves directly into words on a page. This was a passion so great that I wonder how I even bore witness to the fruit of its longing, beauty and sorrow combined with infinity and sown as a microcosm of nature.

So deep was this love that from the pain had been born the work of creation, which encompassed the whole of nature and found fragile first expression in the rainbow, wherein may be seen the depth of love as a blend of enlightenment and tears.

As I read on, enthralled and governed by the power of these words, they were seamlessly transformed into a pictorial continuation of the scene being described. I was completely taken up with what I saw, which seemed to satisfy every yearning for understanding within myself, even though the complete meaning was beyond my realm of knowledge.

I found myself in the outer limit of deep space, truly the middle of nowhere, suspended by the unseen force that was author of the magical words I had just been reading. Below me I saw planets, but mostly was aware of simply the infinitude of space – the infinity he had to cross in order to reach her. Where had she gone and why – was she lost, had she run, did she die – what terrible catastrophe had befallen them to rend asunder the love that created the universe.

The whole of this space was the filled with the hymn of God to his lost love and my gaze was fixed on this impossible expanse of nothing, the overwhelming sorrow that was wholly without end; how I arrived there I shall never know.

When I became conscious of his mission – his determination against all odds to find her – the scene at once changed and I found my self upon the ground, but not within my room. I saw green fields appearing in front of me as if I were standing at the edge of a botanic kingdom. At the centre of this world was the largest and most wonderful tree I had ever seen. Could this have been the tree of life, I wondered, or the tree of knowledge of good and evil, perhaps?

Knowledge of the Powers of the Netherworld

Since the time of Descartes, the brain has been considered the source of thought and feeling, but always some people have refused to accept this view. D H Lawrence expressed this reluctance as follows:

Man is a creature that thinks with his blood: the heart dwelling in a sea of blood that flows through the body always in two inverse tides is where chiefly lies what men call thought.

And to quote Norbert Wiener, one of the originators of cybernetics:

Messages which cause conditional or associative learning are carried by the slow but pervasive influence of the blood stream. The blood carries in it substances which alter nervous action directly or indirectly.

Compare now these ultramodern theories with the view expressed by a Memphite physician over 4,500 years ago.

The seeing of the eyes and the breathing of the nose bring messages to the heart. The seeing of the eyes and the hearing of the ears and the breathing of the nose bring messages to the heart. It is the heart which causes all decisions to be made, but it is the tongue which reports what the heart has thought. Thus is all action, whether simple or complex, carried out. The manipulation of the hands, the movement of the legs and the functioning of every limb. All is in accord with the command which the heart has devised and which has appeared on the tongue. Thus is determined the specific nature of everything.

These few ancient phrases summarise extraordinarily accurately the concept of mind-body relationship and its role in evolution which our contemporary behaviourist biologists are now struggling to formulate.

Egypt symbolised [the] vision of life energies driven by a symphonic celestial tuning in its well-known texts concerning the twelve divisions or hours of the day and night and of the Dwat, commonly called the Netherworld, or the world of transformations, in which transformations are depicted occurring everywhere – in food, flesh, energy, mind and spirit.

The Dwat is the inner region of transformation beneath or within appearances….The introductory text of the Book of What is in the Dwat, which is divided into twelve chapters, corresponding to the twelve hours of the night reads:

This is the knowledge of the powers of the Netherworld. This is the knowledge of their effects, knowledge of their sacred rhythms [or ritual]. To Re [the Solar Deity], carrier of the knowledge of the mysterious power [or unconscious drive], knowledge of what is contained in the hours as well as in their Gods…[concluding]…O Flesh, who belongest to Sky, but who liveth on earth, O Flesh, Glory to thee. Come Re in the form of the Living One, breath through me here in the Netherworld of the Hours…Transverse the field [or region], O Protector of the body. He shines, the great Light-giver Re drives away darkness.

Here we encounter a blending of physiology with cosmology, the transformative living field of the body expanded into a vision of cosmic transformation. Rhythms set forth in galactical space, passing through hereditary levels, are transmuted into rhythms of incarnate life and mind.

Robert Lawlor, Ancient Temple Architecture, Rediscovering Sacred Science, edited by Christoper Bamford

IO PITAR

What is Jupiter? Jupiter is found in Roman, Greek, Latin mythology. Greek = Zeus, Roman = Jupiter, Latin = Io PITAR

IO was, is and will always be, the symbol of the two polarities. I = positive masculine force, O = feminine force. These two forces in combination create. IO is always related with androgyny. Andros (Greek) = man, Genica = woman.

We are not talking about the male of feminine physical body, but talking about polarities. IO means male of female forces out of form. IO is the Divine Androgyny. PITAR, the Pitaras, is related to parents.

In this case it is the forces that create; therefore they are called parents, not man and woman, but male and female forces. Divinity has no form but is the symbol of the parents or God, who is both female and male energies.

Jupiter is the Father of the Gods – referring to the first couple, the forces that created the universe, the representation of God in each one of us. In Kabbalah, we find the word Jehovah, which is again Androgynous. Iod Heve = IO = Male and Feminine aspects of Divinity. Jehovah Elohim is also the God of Gods, and is the origin of life – he made man and made him male -female in his own image.

The first man created was also androgynous. Adam was not a physical being with masculine sexual organs, but was androgynous, with both sexual polarities at the same time. Jupiter is the superior part that is above the Spirit. Our own Spirit emanated from Iod-Heve, Jehovah, Jupiter, IO PITAR.

Jupiter is in Christianity the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is also an androgynous force – meaning that it polarises itself into masculine and feminine. The forces of the Holy Spirit, when descending from above to the physical plane, express themselves through the sexual organs of all the human beings, all the animals, all the plants, all the minerals.

So these forces of the Holy Spirit are everywhere – everywhere is light and life. The Holy Spirit is called the Giver of Light an Life. Kabbalah in Christianity: the Sacred Family – Joseph, Mary and Jesus. These are also related with Initiation. In the word Joseph with find – IO – and Cephas (stone).

And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jonah: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone. John 1.42

this stone is the Philosophical Stone of Yesod, it is the Ninth Sphere of the Tree of Life. This stone is the sexual organs. When we say IO – SEPHAS, we say “the power of IO in the Stone” – this is Joseph. Mary – Miriam – but esoterically we say RAM-IO, is the symbol of the feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit. This is represented in woman.

This is how the pentagram is being born in each one of us. When it is the right way up, it represents Jesus, because Jesus is the perfect man. The perfect man is written with five letters – the Pentagrammaton. This is the Sacred Family in relation to Divinity, in relation to Jupiter. Therefore, all Solar Initiates are children of IO-PATAR, IO-PETER, IO-Piter, the forces of IO within the Stone of Yesod.

The World of the Klipoth, Samael Aun Weor