2012

Sunday, December 16, 2012
Thoughts on Alchemy

Voarchadumia, ars distincta ab Archimia et Sophia is the title of a work published by Giovanni Agostino Pantheo in 1530 in which the author attempts to create some order amongst various interpretations of the methods and aims of Alchemy. In 1518, Pantheo published Ars transmutationis metallicae and he was perhaps the first to relate the Alchemical Work (Cabalisticum archimicae artis magisterium) to the Kabbalah, by introducing the Hebrew names of the Tetragrammaton and Gematria into his treatises. With the term Voarchadumia he firmly specifies the difference between Alchemy, a term which refers to the ignorant and fraudulent and Archemy (from archè = principle and mia = one, therefore ‘the principle of unity’) namely, the True Art of the Transmutation of Metals and the Elixir of Life.

This treatise on ‘spiritual ‘metallurgy which inspired the greatest Hermeticists and alchemists of the epoch, narrates that Voarchadumia was also a Hermetic and Rosicrucian Society (probably of Portuguese origin though its most important general quarter was to be found in Venice). Custodian not only of esoteric mysteries and scientific knowledge (then heretical) but also practices of an alchemical, magic and tantric nature, it interwove occult relationships between Hermeticists and Scientists. It was often forced to remain hidden, along with the powerful of the time, in order to preserve and develop knowledge because of the obscurantism of the Church and the narrow mindedness of Aristotelian thinkers. Certainly the Jesuits, just as in the case of the Illuminati of Bavaria[1], sought, in every way possible, to obstruct these forms of spiritual search, free experimentation and circulation of knowledge. They even went so far as to produce counterfeit documents and certificates, many of which today, for example, are waved around as proof of the existence of a connection between the Bavarian Illuminati and the ‘Illuminati’ of conspiracy theorists, or those of the New World Order and its mysterious and powerful elite, behind which hide notorious alien hierarchies and ancestral families of hybrid terrestrials.

Without negating the existence of large scale political-economical influence, we need to neatly distance ourselves from conspiracy theories as they are presented today (most of all those with a disputable historical basis, which in turn trigger likewise disputable ‘Evemeristic’ reconstructions[2] of myths and human archetypes). Unfortunately, today the term Illuminati is now mostly used to definitively indicate this true or purportedly true global elite.

The Voarchadumia also seems to be linked with the so called ‘Hungarian Lodge’ (in its turn linked to the ‘Himalayan Lodge’) as well as a mysterious Secret Society operating in the XVI and XVII centuries in Europe, also noted in 1470 as ‘The Fog’ or the ‘Angelic Society’.

Such derivations lead back to more archaic fraternities like that of the (mythical) Naacal, however we must also bear in mind that all initiate societies seek to trace their origins back in time, sometimes alleging outlandish pseudo-historic concatenations to ancient Egypt, Atlantis and so on, rather than to Chaldean priests. Even though their historical attempts may prove to be inadequate, it is important to consider the symbolic and archetypical connections they have with such values at a spiritual level of elective affinities and magic revival.

The myth arising around this Rosicrucian Order with its bizarre name, talks of a document known as the Protocol of the Elders of Caldeirão, of Atlantean origins which is kept in the pyramids of Giza. The writings supposedly hand down the traditions of Agartha, a kingdom inside the Earth’s core governed by a ‘King of the World’, whose access is guarded by ethereal hyperborean guardians in strict alliance with the grand Masters such as: Hermes Trismegistus, John Dee, Nicolas Flamel, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and therefore M.me Blavatsky etc. Members of the Voarchadumia, included many artists, philosophers, scientists and Renaissance alchemists, the same John Dee (the Order widely used the method of evocation outlined in the ‘Keys of Enoch’), Giordano Bruno, Giorgione, Francesco Colonna and perhaps Galileo.

There exists an Alchemy of Living Forces, an Alchemy of Spent Forces and a series of successive classifications (Tantra, Alchemy of Characters, Alchemy of the People, Alchemy of Metals, Genetic Alchemy, Spagyrical, Temporal and so on).

In the Horusian tradition, the term ‘Spent Forces’ is used to describe the energies closed inside minerals, in the Earth, Air, Water and Fire – even though the latter possesses peculiar characteristics that distinguish it from other ‘spent’ elements. –

If material Form is individuated into basic elements (although this is described in very different terms in Eastern Alchemy), the distinctive parameters for all planes of existence are:

· The number of dimensions
· The level of density
· The temporal direction

It is clear how, at a certain level, Alchemy fuses with Esoteric Physics and the latter with Magic and therefore mysticism: the distinctions between such disciplines however, should only be seen as purely conventional and didactically useful.

All the forces that derive from life are ‘Living Forces’, those that originate from living, human, animal and vegetable Form, or of a subtle or divine nature.

‘Living Forces’ contain vital essence, the intrinsic quality of living Form, the emotional element, the function or specific ability, or else the particular state of consciousness expressed in a given moment, represented and supported by a simulacrum (witness) that can also be – but not necessarily – an animal, a plant or its parts.

The fundamental precepts of Alchemy are: To Know – To Dare – To Want -To Be Silent.

The Alchemist investigates and evolves him/herself by means of the world; investigates and evolves the world by means of him/herself. The true aim of Alchemy is in fact to realize the Complete Human Being or to reassemble the Primordial Androgen. The whole of the alchemical process is a ritual and it is necessary to be ‘initiated’: The Esoteric Order is in its turn an alchemical Atanor (crucible) of Living Forces.

The interdisciplinary investigation into the extraordinary relationship between alchemical allegory and the psychology of the inner self can be found in the admirable work of Carl. G. Jung. On this occasion it is important to know that in every pure alchemical element, expediently dealt with and conserved, precise equilibriums and priorities of derivative laws are combined in a fixed and immutable composition.
Knowing the specific dominances, in every element, the alchemist is able to indirectly manipulate the fundamental laws of our world by using alchemical elements, rather than operating directly on the time matrices which is the goal of Magic – although at a higher level – be it alchemical or magic/realizational. This relationship with reality is searched for inside the self, where the functions of the world are recognized as expressions of one’s own working Consciousness.

By Alchemy we are talking about operating on ‘maya’, of finding the correspondences for moving – by means of the essences – the fundamental constituents of the forces of Nature, while with Alchemy and Magick – the term used by Crowley to distinguish this high level of Magic from its lower and more distorted expressions – we explore the reflections of our world/consciousness on the real and vice versa.

When dealing with Alchemy it is necessary to mention an important concept that is often neglected: the Shadow element.

In this world where we forget
We are shadows of who we are,
And the real actions we perform
In the other world, where we live as souls,
Are here wry grins and appearances.
Fernando Pessoa

The existence of ‘something’ is always preceded by the idea of its absence, or else by its non-existence. After all, in our daily lives is it not true to say that we only realize the value of something when it is missing?

When a universe is born a counter universe, is also born as compensation (0 = (+1) + (-1)): the shadow universe, or ‘universe B’. It has nothing to do with anti-matter and is a profound and complete antithesis: an immaterial universe.

In fact, from the processes of the cosmic creation, described in the first chapter, the manifestation of the universe of Form not only emanates at various levels and existential planes, but also its ‘shadow’: a counter-universe whose door of access is represented on the Tree of Life, by the mysterious and controversial sphere of Daath. There we find the point of union (and separation) not between mass and energy, but between the Absolute and the Universe, between Empty and Full, between Creator and Creation, between Reality and Illusion, between Knowledge and the Abyss.

In the same way, when we ‘create’ an element in alchemical operations, we ‘extract’ it from the All and, as compensation, the corresponding counter-element is generated in the shadow universe.

For example, in Hebrew tradition, revived and re-elaborated by modern esoteric schools of thought, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with its Sephiroth, represents the universe as luminous and manifest. But another universe also exists, that of the shadowy and destructive Qliphoth: the dark side of that tradition.

The Alchemist has to manage both sides of reality harmoniously and elevate him/herself above duality and appearances.

[1] The Illuminati or to be more precise the Order of the Illuminati, is the name of a secret Bavarian society of the XVIII century. The name has been associated, for the most part wrongly, with numerous secret societies of occult origin. The Order of the Illuminati was founded in Ingolstadt (Germany) in 1776 by Johann Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830). At the beginning its members were just university students, with the declared intent of promoting the works of ‘Lumi’ inside the state of Bavaria, which prohibited many such writings. In reality, the thought of Adam Weishaupt which was much more occult, sustained that “Every man is capable of finding the Inner Light inside of himself… becomes equal to Jesus, that is Man-King…”. The society was formed as an alternative to the newly born German Masonry, maintaining its character of secrecy and hierarchical divisions on the basis of initiation. According to the judicial deposition of Professor Renner during the legal proceedings in Bavaria: “The Order of the Illuminati should be clearly distinguished from that of the Freemasons. But this difference is not recognized by simple Freemasons, neither by new initiates of the Minervale Grade. The Illuminati no longer fear to be recognized by this name”. From the Middle Ages to modern times various organizations have defined themselves as the ‘Illuminati’ for example: the Confraternity of the Free Spirit, the Rosicrucians, the Alumbrados, the Illuminés, the Martinists and the Palladists.
From the 1800’s, especially in the field of conspiracy theories, a widespread socio-pathological phenomenon for a couple of centuries if not more, the term ‘Illuminati’ has been generally associated with followers of secret societies inspired by occult a/o globalist ideas, independent of whether they were in fact really correlated to the Order of the Illuminati: Skull & Bones, Round Table, Pilgrim Society, Fabian Society, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations, Bohemian Club, Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation etc.
[2] Evemerism was a position on the philosophy of religion held by Evemero, historian and philosopher of the Hellenistic age who sustained that the gods represent deified human subjects.

Saturday, December 8, 2012
Thoughts on Magic

Magick takes every thought and act for its apparatus; it has the Universe for its Library and its Laboratory; all Nature is its Subject. […] There are a great many people who quite misunderstand the nature of Magick. They have an idea that it is something vague and unreal, instead of being, as it is, a direct means of coming into contact with reality.

Aleister Crowley – Magick in Theory and Practice

A universal science exists through which we can know and work on different planes of reality and different levels of Consciousness. Through it we can contact and connect together laws, entities, natural and spiritual forces of whatever order or grade, both inside and outside of us.

Today we might define it as the ‘ dynamic of the dimensions’, or the science of correspondence that – calling upon Hermetic principles[1]:

· through true Will
· applying the correct Knowledge
· employing the necessary energy

allows us to overcome the limits of space and time, acting ‘as Above so Below’, on ‘similar responds to similar’ and where ‘Thought creates’.

During the Renaissance, Magic was correctly referred to as the “Art of making things happen”. In fact in its most abstract sense magic was seen as a method of obtaining precise advantages from the relationship between Will, Knowledge and Energy.

More recently, in a certain sense, magic has also been defined as the unknown or forgotten ‘science’.

We can read in the Lemegeton, or The Lesser Key of Solomon, that “Magic is nothing more than the highest, most absolute, divine knowledge of Natural Philosophy, made to progress towards the complete efficacy of its wondrous workings through a correct understanding of the inner and hidden virtues of things…”.

Papus (Gérard Encausse, 1865-1916), in his Methodical Treatise of Practical Magic says: “Magic is the projection of vital energy driven by the human Will“.

Aleister Crowley writes, in his Magick:

Magick is the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will.
[…]
Man is capable of being and using anything which he perceives, for everything that he perceives is in a certain sense a part of his being. He may thus subjugate the whole Universe of which he is conscious to his individual Will.
[…]
Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one’s conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.

Effectively in the sixteenth century Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), in his De Electione Gratiae Questiones Theosophicae describes the determining mechanisms of the power of Will in this way:

The will is the ‘mysterium magnum’, the great mystery of all wonders and secrets, and yet it driveth forth itself, through the imagination of the desiring hunger, into substance. It is the original of nature; its desire maketh a representation; this representation is no other than the will of the desire, yet the desire maketh in the will such a substance as the will in itself is. The true ‘Magia’ is no substance, but the desiring spirit of substance; it is an unsubstantial matrix, and revealeth of manifesteth itself in the substance. The ‘Magia’ is a spirit, and the substance is its body. The ‘Magia’ is the greatest hidden secret, for it is above Nature; it maketh Nature according to the form of its will.

Another interesting definition is supplied by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism (1930):

Magic in its uncorrupted form claims to be a practical, intellectual, highly individualistic science, working towards the declared end of enlarging the sphere on which the human will can work and obtaining experimental knowledge of the planes of being usually regarded as being transcendental.

Today we can define magic as a form of active and aware mysticism. I would like to discuss those aspects of magic knowledge that can be found among the basics of the discipline of ‘Esoteric Physics’[2].

Aldous Huxley, citing the Philosophia Perennis of Leibniz, spoke of

A metaphysics that recognizes a divine consubstantial Reality in the world of things, lives and minds; it is a psychology that discovers in the soul something similar to divine Reality or even identical to it: an ethic which assigns Mankind as its final goal, the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Foundation of all that which is.

Spiritual realization does not consist of reaching any particular certainty but of a continuous openness to change, of the continuous capacity to ask questions, to search, to grow and to renew oneself.

Man is a microcosm: that is, an image (concentrated around the point of consciousness) of the macrocosm, or Universe. This theorem is guaranteed by the hylo-idealistic demonstration that the perceptible is an extension, or phantasm of the nervous system.

Aleister Crowley – Little Essays Towards Truth

According to all creation myths, the human being is a great primordial Consciousness that ‘decides’ to have a new experience by renouncing its oneness to reflect itself in a multiplicity of Form, renouncing all omniscience to explore unpredictability and therefore free will, to transform an existential mechanism into a conscious process. Mankind, forgets immortality to live in time and to experiment with transience and death, adventuring into the labyrinth of the possible to re-comprehend the cosmic sense of Self by means of life; our same life.

Form, worlds and every being are thus the pieces of a puzzle to be put back together according to a unitary and complete design that we conserve inside ourselves; that incorruptible memory of the All. We are Gods all intent on becoming human: we are humans in gestation.

[1] Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary figure from the Hellenic Age, venerated as a Master of wisdom and the author of the ‘Corpus Hermeticum’. The foundation of the philosophy known as Hermeticism is attributed to him. Hermes Trismegistus literally means ‘Hermes the threefold greatest’. With this name he wanted to assimilate Ermete, Greek god of logos, Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing, numbers and geometry. According to the scholar Athanasius Kircher of the XVII century: ‘The Arabs called him Idris, the Hebrews Hadores(…), the Phoenicians (…) Tauto, the Egyptians (…) Thot, but also Ptha, and the Greeks Ermete Trismegisto.’ Hermeticism had a notable influence over Medieval and Renaissance culture.
[2] ‘Esoteric Physics’ is a term that I still use as a result of the experience I had in Damanhur up until 2004, during which I was the author of numerous essays on the subject. Having left that Community experience many years ago in order to pursue my own research in a freer and more authentic way that was closer to my feelings, I have taken it up again, integrated, compared and developed it in a direction all of my own – having discussed with many researchers in the broadest of multi-disciplinary contexts the exploration of what is an exceptionally vast subject.

Friday, October 5, 2012
The Divine Spark and Free Will

We can define the ‘Divine Spark’ (Yechidah), as a fragment of the Primeval Divinity (Zureh) which is an active element of evolved species with a sufficient level of complexity. The active role of the divine spark depends on a natural process in which, having reached a determined level of structural complexity, a material Form ‘ascends’ and becomes an active expression of the development of Consciousness in the Universe. We could imagine that the divine spark magnetizes the various personalities around the attractor and establishes itself in each one.

In an incarnated soul structure it forms that divine principle which is potentially self-conscious and the bearer of free will. It is capable of self-perception, which is what distinguishes a ‘bridge-Form’ from other material Form.

It is important to remember that free will not only refers to the physical aspects of existence. Consciousness (God) distinguishes the world up to predetermined borders: Nature has its own laws just as the dynamics of our mind and body have their precise functions and in the same way define new conditions and social conventions.

What does free will consist of inside these preordained mechanisms?

Free will does not originate from divine, natural or social mechanisms; it refers to the ‘person’, to the added value that everyone produces and represents in terms of their own identity: that which goes beyond mere physicality to construct a higher and refined consciousness.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012
The Structure and Evolution of the Human Soul

What follows is a structural model that originates in many hypotheses, conceptions and conjecture on the human soul, evolution, the dynamics of death and reincarnation and on our transcendent and immanent nature. It is a perspective that can be looked at in more depth and applied to many fields, from avant-garde transpersonal psychology to speculations of a more theoretical, religious and esoteric kind, all of which have some interesting and significant ideas to offer.

The basic concepts are to be found scattered throughout many traditions – from Hasidism[1] to Buddhism – and in the studies and analyses of many researchers and Masters who have frequently insisted on the complexity of our spiritual and existential nature. It is made up of psychological elements as well as those intrinsic to our nature as pluri-dimensional beings, as individuals who are searching for a lost spiritual integrity and striving to recover and develop a unitary and definitively authentic awareness of reality.
Among these researchers Aurobindo, Gurdjieff and Crowley particularly stand out. In his esoteric novel, ‘The Moonchild’[2] Crowley gives us a meaningful description of the phenomenon which I will be developing further here.

Having considered the hypothesis of our ‘fragmentedness’, or better still the fragmented representation that we have of reality and ourselves, we can focus on the fundamental integrity and uniqueness of our consciousness and on the re-assembly of our different parts. We need to consider our uniqueness as natural and the current conditions of loss, fragmentation and conflict as the result of a path gone astray, of an unnatural illusion, but one which nevertheless has to be our point of departure.

We can basically confirm that the human being has three fundamental natures or converging states which constitute its microcosm:

1. Physical body
2. Soul
3. Spiritual essence

Each of these bodies possesses a complex and organic structure: the physical body with its organs and apparatus, the soul with its multi-form expressions coloured by the divine spark in evolution and the profound spiritual component that relates the Microcosm to the Macrocosm (as above so below). The objective is to acquire full consciousness of these three bodies and of the existential dimensions related to them.

In the following table we can see this triadic principle according to different perspectives:

The three natures converge and define the individual in all its aspects, physical, subtle and spiritual. They are coordinated by the chakra which act as interfaces to the various states, refining and modulating the different spiritual, subtle and vital energies that are indispensable to existence.

The Structure of the Individual Soul

I do not know who I am, what soul I have. When I speak with sincerity, I do not know with what sincerity I speak. I am varyingly other than the I that I am not sure exists (or if it is that of others). I feel faith that I do not have. I feel multiple…plural like the universe… I feel I am living other people’s lives, in me, incompletely, in a sum of non – I s synthesized into a false I.

Fernando Pessoa

Let’s begin with this idea: the soul of each one of us is a complex and fragmented structure just as our perception of reality is complex and fragmented.

Aurobindo, Yogananda, Steiner, Bailey, Crowley, Gurdjieff, Jung, Krishnamurti, Raphael, Castaneda and Osho are perhaps the most quoted authorities on modern mystical-magic research. They have all confirmed and insisted on the necessary re-integration of the self and of a more coherent perception of reality, as an indispensable starting point for every successive evolutionary pretension.

The basic concept can be found in the fact that having lost consciousness of reality, which is much vaster than that which we currently perceive; we fluctuate confusedly between disassociated conventional states. These states are illusory and determine our likewise conventional, disassociated and illusory identity.

We fluctuate between different and always vague lines of an elusive reality, having lost our more powerful original completeness. A wholeness, which is longer-lived, broader and less dense in respect to the ‘impulsiveness’ that makes up our body in this impenetrable and fictitious reality[1]. And on these lines of reality parts of us are shattered and scattered, emerging in the course of life as diversified expressions of a confused identity, simply as a result of the casual fluctuation from one illusion to another and from one line to another[2]. But we do not have an inkling of it: it would seem that ‘here inside’ this ‘body’ there are different and disassociated personalities, in life as in death each one with its desires, character, whims and reasoning.

We are an incoherent and inconclusive collection of pseudo-lives caught up in the vicious circle of Samsara (cycle of incarnations). Asleep in our diving suits always calling ‘I’ that which confusedly surfaces, deluding ourselves that it is a real and consistent identity even though we are aware of our inner conflicts and apprehensions. And we continue to call the illusion of the moment reality just as we continue to call the personality of the moment ‘I’.

This is how from a certain point of view the many ‘packets of experience’, that we could define as ‘individual personalities’, distinguish themselves in a physical body: the developing experiences constitute a coherent structure which is incarnated in the same body, aggregated and organized in such a way as to allow the various parts to express themselves and even potentially to evolve.

Science, too, is beginning to discover that in various abnormal circumstances; totally different personalities may chase each other through a single body. […] and how, indeed, half – a- dozen personalities could take turns to live in one body. That they are real independent souls is shown by the fact that not only do the contents of the mind differ – which might conceivably be fake but their handwritings, their voices, and that in ways which are quite beyond anything we know in the way of conscious simulation, or even possible simulation.
Aleister Crowley – The Moonchild

Today, because of how we are made and because of how we perceive – in fact as a result of particular effects that we vaguely ascertain – we can theorize that many ‘individuals’ make up the complex physical-spiritual structure which is adapted to the ‘psycho-physical vehicle’ (our body); the consciousness of which is organized by mechanisms of awareness that are more or less evolved. The various parts are allowed to express themselves, to perceive and participate in some form of reality and therefore potentially evolve.
According to esoteric traditions, the structure of the soul begins to incarnate a short time before birth, to complete itself – like a sort of housing ready to be filled with human experiences – around seventy days later[3], with the first development of that experiential receptacle that we define as the ‘personality in formation’.

In fact alongside the ‘personalities’ that come together at birth (imagined as packets of experience that reincarnate to complete themselves), that originate from a more or less coherent formative path (other lives) an additional new developing identity or personality in formation is generated which refers to and represents the current existential identity and its specific meanings: the point of aggregation and the representative ‘I’ of the current experiential status. As far as we are concerned we are talking about our present life, the one we are ‘conscious’ of now.

Each individual soul is therefore a coherent structure basically composed of two parts:

1. A combination of personalities (or the soul considered as separated into different personalities that come together in the current identity or in a coherent global identity with regard to its formative path distributed through time).

2. A catalyzing element that, in the jargon of esoteric physics, is defined as the attractor, which constitutes the profound essence of our nature in as much as it is part of the All. It is the aggregate spiritual essence that assembles the different parts, including the personality in formation which is specific to a particular incarnation. The attractor is what we commonly define as ‘spirit’: an aspect of the Real, an absolute principle of intelligence which is equal in every individual (according to Hebrew tradition we have a psycho-physical body, Nefesh-Guph, the soul – the Ruach, and the spirit – the Neschamah).

It is called the ‘attractor’ in esoteric physics jargon because one imagines it attracting personalities to itself according to criteria of perfect reciprocal compatibility and evolutionary potential. The attractor is a principle of absolute intelligence in as much as it is an aspect of the Real that permeates every material Form. In fact, if in the transcendent the Real is Absolute Truth, its expression in immanence, fragmented into multiple relations between growing parts, it expresses itself as intelligence. We no longer have ONE absolute reference but the absolute capacity to process the multiple and changing partial truths that relate to one another and verge upon that ONE.

According to this ‘Theory of The Personalities’ the attractor, at the moment in which the soul structure is formed, just before the birth, attracts and assembles those individualities which are still incomplete in respect to their potential evolution (as if they were ‘amounts’ of experience) and which could represent the perfect synergic integration of a ‘wining team’ capable of deriving the best evolutionary result from the current incarnation, not just as a result of each individual but as a synthetic result; a new distillation.

Nevertheless – let’s not forget – we are always uniquely ‘us’ but because we participate in a fractional and discontinuous reality in space and time, our real identity is perceived and described as fragmented (and consequently in practice becomes so) in space as in time, even though it continues to be the head of a unique central spiritual essence. I say ‘in time’ because our incarnations are also nothing more than a limited perception of our simultaneous extensions as higher consciousness in dimensions of the possible. Just as our inner personalities are fragments of a central and immanent unity, in the same way our incarnations are nothing more than the fragmented perceptions of our transcendent identity.

The Counter-attractor
Another aspect worth mentioning, even though rather disturbing and the subject of a more in-depth analysis of those ‘Dark Paths’ (such as the Tiphonian Orders, the paths of the Qliphotic Kabbalah and Chaos Magick) that are certainly not easy to follow or describe, is that of the ‘Counter-attractor’ or the door on the counter-universe (Da’at) from which the compensatory forces of existence flow, the inertia that opposes life and evolution through a degenerative resistance on the psycho-physical and spiritual plane.

In spite of being negative, the ‘counter-attractor’ is also part of the great game of equilibrium and polarity but at a much higher level than the play of forces we normally refer to when we talk about positive and negative, good and evil, light and dark, yin and yang. It is thanks to the counter-attractor that the existent is able to affirm the phenomenon of Absolute Consciousness.

[1] In the process of recomposing reality like ourselves our psycho-physical vehicle will also probably change, perhaps recovering a more etheric and less material like state.
[2] The concept was admirably taken up by Vadim Zeland in his theory of ‘Reality Transurfing’.
[3] Just as after physical death the soul takes around seventy days to definitively leave the material plane.

[1] Hasidism is a Hebrew faction founded by Baal Shem Tov in the XVIII century.
[2] Aleister Crowley, The Moonchild, 1917, Chapter II.

Saturday, September 29, 2012
A Spiritual Approach to Healing and Well-being

Our biological body is the most complete alchemical laboratory in existence. The human being is able to synthesize thousands of substances in its body. Each element corresponds to a precise process that involves physical, emotive, subtle and spiritual aspects. A complex relationship exists between physical organs, vital energies, the senses and the different essences that comprise our soul. Every part of the human being is essential to all others and each one is at the centre of a complex network of physical, mental and spiritual correspondences. Not only can we ideally be the Master of ourselves but we can also be Healers of our own body.

Natural medicine, in fact, with the aim of re-establishing the indispensible equilibrium for the conservation of health and well-being, considers that treating the individual in his or her entirety and in relation to the environment, produces a better result than merely treating the body as the simple sum of its parts. This approach is defined as ‘holistic’

According to traditional concepts, disease originates from an energetic imbalance caused by different factors: such lack of balance has repercussions on the psychic and nervous spheres and results in influencing the physical.

From a spiritual point of view – but also psychological – a limited and confused awareness of ourselves and our bodies is already a kind of ‘disease’.

The body and the spirit are part of the same reality. Therefore disease in general terms, putting aside that which is severe, the result of particular circumstances, or of an extraordinary character – is ideally seen as a sign of imbalance and a lack of inner harmony. We can think of disease as the synchronic voice of our ‘inner master’ who provokes us to reflect on ourselves, our lives and values: the process of real healing therefore corresponds to a process of comprehension and personal growth.

According to traditions of ‘spiritual healing’ by ‘channelling Prana’ it is possible to re-establish the equilibrium that is indispensable to the conservation of health and well-being. According to spiritual traditions Prana arrives directly from the cosmos, from the sources of life: it is the archetype of well-being, the matrix of health. It corresponds to a state of vital, intelligent dynamic balance that can be simply identified with the ideal concepts of well-being and ‘feeling good’, without limiting the concept to a lack of disease but referring to it as a more complete sense of realization. Feeling ‘well’ in fact does not simply mean ‘not being ill’ but rather, attaining that cognitive, creative and spiritual potential inherent in human nature.

Prana is an energy that the healer channels in an ‘indifferent’ way, without using conjecture, the mind, or personal energy to interfere and without activating any personal capacity to heal, be it real or presumed.

The concept of ‘well-being’ – and the relative intervention – is more about prevention than therapy: the attention is all on the person, on life, on the expansion of well-being and not on the illness as such. Once having manifested, the illness requires suitable therapeutic measures, as non-invasive as possible, which take into account the type, urgency and severity of each case and the means that are available.

An intelligent integration of cures produces the maximum effect. The ‘healer’ in the guise of a mere ‘therapist’, which he is not really, should work in tandem with the doctor without disturbing the situation so that the process of healing can perfect itself because of the ‘upstream’ energetic intervention. In this way the disease does not reappear in different ways or places but is completely resolved.

The healer must not be a therapist but rather the ‘facilitator’ of a reawakening of consciousness, in which the client must be the responsible protagonist. A new found well-being cannot help but manifest as the natural consequence of this very radical process.

The work of the prana-therapist has therefore to be carried out in such a context and not end up in the plagiarism of diagnostic procedures and conventional medicine. Otherwise it risks only distinguishing itself in terms of the forms and instruments it uses and not from the concept. A concept which is focused on the organ, the symptom and the disease and therefore confirms an approach and therapeutic intervention that is basically physical (although working with bio-psycho-energetic instruments), rather than holistic.

The ‘healer’ – in a shamanic sense and I stand by my argument – is above all a bearer of Consciousness, who is also involved in a pathway of personal spiritual growth and is consequently able to help others to regain a state of harmony and conserve it. The healer acts on a spiritual, energetic and subtle plane, mostly preventative and eventually integrated and complementary, in perfect harmony with conventional therapeutic procedures. He/she does not enter into the merit of the diagnosis, or comment on the frame of mind of the doctor, or offer to specifically cure an illness, which could just be resolved through the natural consequences of a broader consciousness of the self.

This kind of ‘healer’ does not transmit their own vital energy, but channels the universal energy, to encourage a process of Consciousness: the conscious reawakening in the person of their own energies, of their sense of responsibility, of their ‘inner healer’. It is the process of understanding the self which is true growth and which leads to the well-being of mind, body and spirit. A process that the healer also has to constantly undergo by working on his/herself.

Being a ‘healer’ means becoming a channel for vital energies (Prana) to encourage harmony, vigour and health in oneself and others. ‘Pranic’ energy, or an ideal model of universal balance and holistic well-being, is called upon and projected without using instruments or equipment of any kind, just oneself as a living bearer of energy and well-being.

The Sanskrit term Prana literally means life, and was later seen as breath. It is the archetype of health or better still of existential equilibrium and harmony.

The channelling of Prana therefore does not envisage a diagnosis and does not consist of a specific therapy. It is the flow of vital energy, which through resonance enables the existential equilibriums that preside over the well-being and evolution of mind, body and spirit ‘upstream’, to be maintained (or to re-establish) themselves.

It is important to remember that the aim is to prevent and not to cure, although applications of Prana can, if necessary, be harmonized with all kinds of therapeutic procedures. In such cases the objective is to ‘reawaken the healer’ that each of us has inside and foster a holistic process of understanding, the betterment of life, the relationship with oneself, surrounding reality and others.

Ideally the person is rendered autonomous and in turn becomes a Prana channel by learning and adopting certain meditation and breathing techniques.

In shamanic tradition the medicine-man sustains and transmits his ‘power’ by extolling his personal charisma, with the help of suggestions and expedients. In Africa, I personally attended some very bizarre methods practiced by a tribe of the Cameroon; afterwards the sorcerer confided his real opinion about the phenomenon of healing to me, describing it as a phenomenon of consciousness: “The healer always lives inside of you, and in each case indirectly triggers a process of understanding in the person who is ill: this is what really happens, all the rest is just theatre”.
And even more interesting from the point of view of our metaphysics is the spiritual concept of ‘reconnection’ when applied to therapy. By removing the causes behind the disease the person moves to a new line of reality which also modifies the past: in this way, it is not that a person is ‘healed’ but rather that they move to a new line of existence in which they were never ill in the first place.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012
The Vital Energies

The complete and controlled expression of our inner faculties cannot be omitted from the reintegration of our identity, the harmonious reawakening of our chakra and the correct and aware use of our vital energies.
Almost the entire sum of our vital and spiritual energies originates in the sexual sphere (a much broader concept than simply ‘having sex’). The sexual energy that I am referring to can express itself directly or indirectly in forms that are more or less controlled and harmonious.

The indirect expression of sexual energy includes all our creative expressions, above all artistic ones, but also expresses itself in relationships which draw on sexual energy as a source.

The direct expression of sexuality, from an esoteric point of view, distinguishes itself for the most part in an active humid path[1] and a contained dry path[2].
There are different spiritual and operational magic traditions – setting aside evaluations of a moralistic kind, for freely and consciously experimenting – always in the sphere of tradition and magic-mystic discipline – with different forms of individual sexuality, be they hetero/homosexual or in plural contexts, which in turn follow different formulas.

In the context of such traditions, the mature and aware individual is considered free to relate or not, to any partner on any level, thus completely transcending sexuality by fully living it or sublimating it.

Sexual Magic is the most important aspect of the Alchemy of Living Forces.

The energy can be directed inside oneself (for example to reawaken the chakra or Kundalini or to achieve an androgynous state) and outside the self, to create and nourish thought forms or entities, or even to act upon events and synchronicity according to very complex formulas.

The directing of sexual energies is a magical and spiritual possibility of great importance because it corresponds to the conscious use of the great energetic potential that is contained inside each and every one of us.

However, it is important to remember that we are talking about an alchemical discipline that requires seriousness, maturity and elevation in the way that it is lived, not only in terms of sexual relationships but also as regards the emotions and feelings involved. Only in this way can our sexuality, whether it is expressed or contained, be consciously directed towards a spiritual reawakening, the completion of the self, magic, theurgic and generative alchemical operations or the reawakening of subtle, spiritual energies and faculties. These forces, that we nevertheless express in our ordinary lives (even though in an unconscious and casual form), have to be used in a constructive way, or else they suffer from the limits of our conditioning and our more base and egoistic instincts, transforming themselves into deformities of the mind, obsessions and parasitic entities.

In Tantra the realization of the androgen happens through the relationship with a partner, in the context of a relationship that is elevated to priestly dignity (ierogamìa): in woman, man finds a reflection of his own feminine aspects, just as woman finds a point of reference in man to reawaken her masculine aspects. These are operations that above all demand that indispensible premise, the full recovery of ones femininity and masculinity in line with ones current psycho-physical nature, its functions and most authentic virtues. A nature that is often (think of the conditions of women), profoundly repressed or perverted.

In European culture the figure of the androgen first appears in Plato’s description in the ‘Symposium’: in the dialogue, Aristophanes speaks of this third gender, not as a child of the Sun like men, nor a daughter of the Earth like women, but as a son of the Moon, which the nature of both participate in. The myth says that self-sufficient completeness makes androgynous humans arrogant enough to imagine they can scale Mount Olympus, and Zeus (not wanting to destroy them and deprive Olympus of their sacrifices), divides each one in half, reducing them to just masculine and feminine.

That which Elémire Zolla calls the never placated ‘human nostalgia for wholeness’, is the root and in someway the constraint on love (« to the brama and to the pursuit of wholeness, well, touches the name of love»). In Hindu metaphysics, the masculine polarity represented by Śiva (the destroyer) and that of the feminine represented by Shakti (Parvati, the divine energy), need Ardhanarishvara, or the androgen in order to fuse together.

In the West’s platonic narration, the androgen’s persistence and its use in successive culture, such as alchemy, signal the archetype of the ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ in the androgen. Nourished by Neo-Platonism and alchemical studies, the men of Humanism and the Renaissance turned the figure of the androgen into one of great importance.

The modern image of the androgen aims for completeness and integration, not only on the religious and mystic plane but also on the psychological plane and in terms of image. Such completeness also implies, apart from the integration of essences on alchemical and metaphysical planes, an integration of the perception of the world. This is achieved thanks to the contemporaneous and complete employment of the right and left hemispheres of the brain, that is: rational-masculine processing and intuitive feminine processing. A heightened awareness of our own profound dimensions can then be celebrated along with an integration of the individual personalities of the soul structure.

In certain tantric traditions, but also in those of the Middle East, it is not taken for granted that a man will express his masculine aspect in a predominant manner or that a woman will express her feminine aspect; this does not detract from masculinity or femininity and the value of heterosexual relationships. Theories exist however, in which the rediscovery or the completion of our complementary aspect does not necessarily have to correspond to relations with the opposite sex: it is worth saying that the completion can also occur between individuals of the same sex.

The androgen would be a forewarning of the so-called Alchemical Nuptials: the union of our human aspect with that of the divine.

During sexual relations, at the moment of union, a moment of ‘presence’ can be experienced, an instant in which one intuits a sense of completeness, during which cosmic and divine energies may flow. According to certain schools of thought, the practice of Sexual Magic can be used to achieve a special physical conception. It is employed, in fact, in operations to program incarnations, or to encourage the incarnation of selected and evolved souls in the body of the unborn baby (Avatar Magic) also, directly or indirectly, by means of alien or higher entities.

The ‘dry path’ could be more appropriately considered as the containment or sublimation of sexual expression. The monk, male or female, from an esoteric point of view, has the task of directing their energies through abstinence: the monk aims for the same objectives of spiritual realization and the completion of the self but this does not happen by means of ‘the other’ but through an individual process that is personally guided and or exclusively directed towards higher forces or ideals. Historically many Orders of Knights assumed a monastic investiture to best express their role as defenders or pursue sacred values.

In many Orders a ‘short-term’ or temporary monastic period is practiced in which certain rules typical of monastic life are observed, for example: celibacy, prayer, a vegetarian diet and so on. Often it is a period of reflection and spiritual retreat, or a phase of preparation before assuming a special role in an initiatory context.

From an esoteric point of view, the permanent couple – exclusive and stable – and the path of abstinence correspond to precise sacred pathways, in as much as they are very extraordinary choices, especially if the contract is intended for an indeterminate amount of time (something that is rarely encountered in the esoteric field). Besides being an authentic sacred pathway, such choices are considered dangerous because – if not channelled by conscious motivation and discipline – they can lead to repressive and restrictive implications that consequently deform human nature[3].

A path of inner search does not have to – and certainly not straightaway – focus on Tantra and sexual magic. They are complex and difficult themes to deal with if the mind has not first been purified of moral taboo and the malice that ensues.

Greatly welcomed however are moments of personal reflection on this theme, with a partner and later perhaps in a group context, with psychological and meta-psychological support, to open the mind and heart to greater equilibrium. It goes without saying that all of this requires great maturity and purity of mind.

Whether or not, we feel inclined towards this Path or particular need, one that many consider a ‘minefield’, in the deepening of our inner relationship with the Self, it must be said that a healthy or serene sex life, that is free but most of all aware, is the basis for an overall harmony that certainly renders the examination, the emancipation, and the expression of the Higher Self, smoother and more effective.

Even though I do not want to enter too much into the merit of traditions and practices for reawakening and consciously managing sexual energies, it is useful at this point to say a couple of words about the so called ‘Left-hand way or path’.

Tantrism and the Left-hand Path

In the Hindu tradition, while the word Yoga means ‘Union’ – with one’s own soul, the cosmos, with God – and includes many different techniques of a physical, mental and spiritual kind (to achieve awareness, meditation, devotion, conscious action, and the truth), Tantra means ‘Loom’, or also ‘thread’, ‘continuity’ and communion. Tantrism consists of many esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhist philosophy and is considered a sort of ‘short cut’ to the full Realization of Consciousness, Enlightenment.

In Tantra we distinguish between two principal paths: the ‘dakshinachara’ (or ‘samayachara’), the Right-hand Path, and the ‘vamachara’ (or ‘vamamarg’), the Left-hand Path. These terms were adopted and abundantly used by Western occultists, often in the wrong way or distorted by a hinterland of Catholic moralism.

Tantra, in all its different possible expressions, is not to be seen as Vedic tradition. The rituals of the Tantric Left-hand path, in particular, are often rejected or considered extremely dangerous by orthodox Hinduism. However, in Tibetan Buddhism, Tantrism plays a central role and is totally harmonized with Yoga thanks to the Buddhist code whose ethics mitigate the most dangerous aspects of tantric practices.

Certain practitioners search for the union of masculine and feminine principles inside themselves, through paths of sublimination and union with spiritual forces. In other cases the union, or rather the completion, comes through sexual practices, during which the divine union of Shiva and Shakti is celebrated. In tantric practice Mantra (formulas), Yantra (vehicles) and Mandala (patterns) are also used. Sexual practices carried out in a ritual form are not only an aspect of tantric alchemy but are without doubt central to Vama-marg Orders.

The conscious management of sexual energy is the basic element in this practice and there is quite a distinction between working white and working black.

In white work, the energy, in order to be directed towards the reawakening of higher consciousness cannot be discharged by ejaculation while in black work it is achieved through the completion of the sexual act.

In the first case we have a form of separation from desire, in the second its exaltation. In each case the sacred objective remains the same, though neither path is exempt from all kinds of deviance when not sustained by the necessary knowledge and spiritual maturity.
The most important Tantric Schools are the Kaula and Vamachara Circles.

In the West Tantra has been assimilated as the use of sexuality in the context of magic (or mystical) experiences and appears in many different operative and theoretical formulas. For example, what we can learn about Tantra from Crowley, Grant, Reich or Osho, may appear very different and yet the various approaches can and should be reconciled, given that they are all complimentary depending on their path.

The Right-hand Path and the Left-hand Path are two different approaches to achieving the same result. Generically, the Right-hand Path concentrates on the observance of a precise code of ethics, morals and devotion towards one or more divinities, while the Left-hand Path pursues the exploration and evolution of the Self before any other objective.

All in all, from the Thelemic and neo-Gnostic point of view, it is a false dichotomy but one which indicates two very different paths. The second path, with its emphasis on the Super-Conscious Self, has often meant and been wrongly considered as egoistic, therefore associated with ‘Satanism’ or ‘black magic’: the devil, evil, the dark, evil portents, hell and to the overwhelming power of the feminine, that power which has to be – as the sad story of the Inquisition teaches us – subordinated and condemned. Such moral condemnation originates not only in the influence of Judaic-Christian patriarchy and the reactionary culture of Catholicism – and more recently from a certain syncretistic ‘gnosis’ which is rather pretentious abstruse and bigoted – but also from inside the same esoteric movements. This often occurs in a contradictory way as in the case of Blavatsky who described certain practices as immoral, even though in certain of her lesser known works (for example in the magazine Lucifer), she does not refrain from considering certain magic–mystical aspects of the tantric-sexual tradition of the East. Also Crowley, when he refers to the ‘Black Brothers’ speaks of the Brothers of the Left-hand Path, but with a very different meaning, referring to those who have failed and who have not gone beyond the enticements of the ego. Those whose presumption rather than leading them to Genius, has lead them to Madness and a loss of control, who are engulfed by the profound forces within that they themselves have reawakened. When confronting the Abyss they then do not know how to offer all of themselves in order to be reborn as shinning Stars (image of the Higher Self).

The Left-hand Path is considered as the most direct and rapid path to enlightenment but it is also the most dangerous, given the unexpected potential expressed by the energies involved and reawakened.

Today it is often referred to as the Draconian, Qliphotic or Dark Path of the Kabbalistic Tree although in this case, there are also many different methods and schools of thought.

The Magick of Crowley integrates the two paths into a complete magical-mystical process without placing too much emphasis on their distinction unlike the work of Kenneth Grant which clearly highlights the differences.

[1] As far as this is concerned on the ritual-operational plane we talk about Sexual Magic, while on the more mystical plane we use the term Tantra.
[2] Various forms of monastic life.
[3] In effect, even though commonly accepted (opportunely conditioned by the seats of socio-political and religious powers with the aim of controlling and subjugating), the formula of the couple united in holy matrimony, just as that of priestly celibacy, can often result in hypocrisy and psychological problems or even dangerous perversion.

Saturday, September 22, 2012
Inner Faculties & ‘Astral Travel’

The five accepted normal senses are not much use for perceiving how to select the frequencies of reality and determine the physical boundaries of our plane of existence. This means that our ability to describe natural phenomena and to understand reality is in fact proportional to the senses and logic we are able to employ.

On average at this level of existence, our current power of perception/determination is considerably reduced in respect to the real possibilities of our senses.

These powers of perception include those ESP faculties that para-psychological studies talked about at great length in the 1970’s – 80’s for example: telepathy, clairvoyance or clairaudience, pre- (or retro) cognition, the sensitivity and the properties of the aura and the astral body, the thaumaturgic and psycho-kinetic faculties of mediums that are part of a lost potency but ideally form part of our natural capacities.
There is nothing ‘paranormal’ about it at all. It is we who now operate below normal capacity, so much so that when we occasionally exercise those faculties or hear them talked about they seem to be something miraculous, if not to be feared and repressed.

Of a different nature though are the faculties that are specifically ‘spiritual’, those that have something to do with an extra-dimensional sensitivity in respect to our plane of psychic and physical existence, even when they are simply considered at their different and more extended vibrational and dimensional levels. Such capacities are linked to mystic phenomena and investigated specifically by magic and shamanism.
The optimum expression of our spiritual faculties, now merely a potential, is strictly related to the esoteric concept of thought, that substantial external entity that is not produced by the activity of our brain.

The human being participates in a multi-dimensional eco-system of energy-thought: it receives thought which has been processed by ‘lower’ species and then processes that thought-food for higher species, inside a real ‘food chain’. In our present condition we not only do not produce thought, we are unable to process reality in real-time.
When we consider that we are perceiving and thinking, we are in fact just remembering the perceptions and the processing of ‘something’ that the mind has already had time to adapt to its limits, or its system of beliefs and prejudices. This places us in the narrow-minded confines of a very convincing illusion.

Taking another look at the fundamental question that Gurdjieff insisted upon, if we live in an illusion of the mind, how can we ‘be’ and therefore ‘act’?

The perception of the present, the border between the memory of the past and the forecast of the future according to preconceived and habitual patterns, is illusory. We live in the distorted memory of ourselves and in a reality that is just as retouched, conventional and restricted. Our system of thought is spoilt even more and distorted further by collective programmes of manipulation both cultural and scientific. Furthermore, as regards the latter, we need to ask ourselves, if apart from the intrinsic damage (medicinal, additive, chemical, vaccines, ELF waves etc…) there isn’t perhaps some conscious planning behind it all which is the fruit of a hidden agenda.

We have to abandon our current system of thinking and completely rebuild our psychic habitat: perhaps phenomena connected to 2012 (and more widely related to the rise of a ‘New Era’) will stimulate our energetic centres, our endocrine system (pineal gland) and upgrade the Matrix, perhaps rendering the present system vulnerable. We could then avail ourselves of a reset in the flow of thought and take the opportunity to renew the layout of reality. An opportunity that will not be automatic but will need to be grasped at an individual level, by being suitably predisposed, emancipating from old patterns and above all mistrusting occasional ‘redeemers’.

Re-adapting to the completeness of our senses we will perceive our world and ourselves more consciously, accessing a reality of a much higher level that we ourselves have determined.

However, even at higher levels we will only be managing the ‘power of maya’, or power over the illusion and not power over the spiritual reality that subtends every manifestation relative to the Absolute Being. To access that higher level of awareness, the so called ‘nagual’ perspective of existence, we have to reawaken our divine identity and its faculties.

Such ‘superior’ faculties are really the prerogative of those beings that host the active spiritual principle: the divine spark. These ‘senses’ are in fact divine attributes which are able to supply us with a holistic vision of the natural and spiritual eco-system in which we are immersed.

In the course of the book I will be briefly describing certain basic faculties that according to esoteric traditions were lost by the earthly human being in the course of a rather intricate epic. The story is told in the chronicles of ‘alternative’ history through the figures of ancient myth: a history that is rich in references and which projects the human being way beyond this dimension.

A real comprehension of spiritual faculties presupposes their reawakening, so for now, we will have to settle for expressing ourselves in metaphor and using limited examples which of necessity lead us back to our current sensorial experience.

If the physical senses filter and determine the hologram-reality that surrounds us, the inner senses extract and project a transcendent meaning which leads human experience back to the divine and absolute source from which everything comes. As Don Juan, the Yaqui sorcerer and protagonist of the tales of Castaneda would say “The first, see things on this side of the bridge; the others see things on the other side: the first, have a tonal perspective while the others, a nagual perspective”.

Nagual contrasts with tonal, which is seen as everything that can be explained and understood through the rational. The Nagual is a reality which transcends the purely intellectual and of which one can only be a witness: it is all that is found outside the dominion of the word and the concept. It is that inexplicable spirit of which one can only have direct experience.

For example, from the shamanistic point of view, dream is the capacity to perceive states of being which are beyond the physical. It is the eye of the transpersonal planes, as described by Ken Wilber in his No Boundary. It is the ‘seeing’ of the shaman.

For example Dream – not to be confused with the functions of dreaming as commonly intended[1] – is the sense that allows us to consciously move on the astral, subtle and spiritual plains. There we enter into contact with a more authentic essence of ourselves and all things, perceiving that their origins and nature are the same and sensing their evolutionary direction.
Dream allows us to explore the intermediate dimension between the material world of Form and the Real, from the dimensions of thought-forms to those of the emotions, from the astral planes to the dimensions of disincarnate souls, from subtle worlds to divine provinces.

But these are also nothing more than conventions for allocating the various possible ‘significances’ of reality value on a scale: from those closest to the material word to those which are more mysterious, ideal and spiritual.

All of this can be represented as transcendent and contemporaneously immanent and beyond, but it is also inside. The rehabilitation of the sense of dream can be encouraged by the use of astral travel, hypnosis and lucid dreaming techniques in a state of profound relaxation (today the subject of study through Reconnection and Theta Healing techniques), aimed at reducing the exercise of the external senses and encouraging the emergence of subtle perceptions[2].

Let’s summarize some of the basic concepts of the phenomenon of astral travel.
The term ‘astral’ – borrowed from Theosophical traditions – is reductive in respect of the concept of out of body experiences or better still, ultra-body because we are not talking about ‘relocation’ as such but rather the extension the self and personal sensitivity.

Here are some useful parameters to focus on:

· It is not a power in itself, or a faculty, but a way to observe, interpret and describe a determined dynamic, that has something to do with our true nature in as much as it is infinite consciousness.
· It normally triggers during nocturnal sleep in a spontaneous and unconscious way.
· The experience is often translated into dreams through common or subjective symbolism, which are sometimes remembered and sometimes not.
· It can happen in altered states of consciousness caused by trauma, coma, drugs, the taking of psycho-active substances, meditation, fainting, anaesthesia, hypnosis and near-death experiences.
· Such dynamics are used to energetically regenerate the mind and our subtle bodies and re-order and metabolize experiences and information.
· Consciously directing the experience of astral travel constitutes an instrument for expanding the senses and the consciousness and for positioning oneself in a broader spiritual scenario.
· When the dynamic happens spontaneously and we are unaware of it, its energetic management and defences necessary are automatically triggered by our mind. However, when we train ourselves to consciously generate it, we have to re-learn how to direct it; in this case the techniques of relaxation or sleep/dreaming serve to lower the ‘volume’ of the physical senses in such a way as to activate an ‘alternative’ sensitivity that we can focus our attention and awareness on.
· The fear we experience is that typical of the unknown: besides, it is good to remember that when we find ourselves in ‘alternative’ dimensions, they are not aseptic, therefore if an individual has not worked on their energies, emotions and perceptions they may encounter something unclassifiable, that will then be removed by the conscious mind or clad in projections. What remains, even after the removal has occurred is the sensation of fear, regardless of the nature of the experience.
· Once the method has been mastered, there are various levels of practice: from the perceptive expansion of our own current dimension to the use of astral travel to explore other dimensions and finally, the expansion of consciousness as a natural extension of the self in the wakened state.

This journey is a moment of attenuation of our incarnation: a moment of re-connecting with our higher Self and therefore with all the parts of our soul, throughout the dimensions and time. Now is the moment to overturn concepts and move our ‘point of union’ or our centre of gravity towards our real identity and re-formulate the concept of ‘astral travel’ just as we need to reconsider numerous other subjects in the light of new paradigms.

We are already a Consciousness that divides itself up among many planes in order to explore this material dimension and evolve. When we assert ourselves to travel on the astral planes we are doing nothing more than …returning home a little.

An interesting question we might ask is: which part of us ‘separates’?
Which part ‘exits’ to explore? And as a result, what corresponding dimension is reached? Therefore, which part of ourselves do we have to train to reach precise dimensions, to have this true experience of spiritual growth?

This thought is also valid for mediumistic experiences: it is obvious that we ‘vibrate’ on the frequency of our level of consciousness and we are therefore in tune with the phenomena, events and dimensions that correspond to it. This is the result of the law of attraction – similar attracts similar, or the concordance of complexity (temporal concordance), today referred to as the ‘law of attraction’, a phenomenon much more complex and intriguing than simply attracting positive or negative events to yourself.

We tend to relate to organizations and worlds – to be precise to the teachings – that ‘belong’ to us. But it is not necessary to pursue para-Gnostic explorations, learn mediumistic techniques or various methods for inducing out of body experiences, what we really have to do is reawaken the different levels of our true identity.

If we get used to considering everything that we are the authors or spectators of from an exquisitely spiritual point of view, we will discover in ourselves and what surrounds us, our true divine nature; and on this path we can and must identify with all the infinite possibilities of creation.

Gustavo Adolfo Rol

In Thelemic tradition, which in this case draws on the explorations of John Dee, out of the body journeys lead to the concept of the Aethyr, or the 30 levels of the astral plane positioned between the physical plane and divinity, which have to be re-ascended through complex techniques of a magical-mystical character.

At this point we have to consider a further specific faculty: the sense of dimensions, or the ability to translate a system of laws into something else. Exercising this faculty means being aware of interacting with many dimensions at the same time and of travelling from one world to another, from one possible dimension to another, just as is part of our nature.
This faculty is indispensible for understanding experiences which are very different from our current perceptions.

Our psycho-physical vehicle is not the ‘original model’, just as this reality (which derives from it) is not the one originally attributed to our level of complexity. We currently live in much more limited and conventional lines of reality, passing casually from one to another.

Because of this – according to various psychological and metaphysical models– our soul is described as likewise fragmented into diverse and confused personalities, or into many ‘I’s as was proposed by Gurdjieff. Our soul lacks a complete and unitary sense of the reality that constitutes the scenario of our experience of consciousness and, as a consequence lacks the perception of us as beings that are likewise complete and unitary: it is a vicious circle. But rather than work on the integration of our illusory ‘I’s (a model that still insists on the separation of ourselves), we have to work on the integration of reality and put the concept we have lost back together again. Our soul is unitary and yet infinitely versatile, so much so it has us believe that we are many souls! It is not the personalities in themselves that are separate and move around inside of us, but it is the fluctuation of our vague and confused perceptions on the lines where we have fragmented reality that induces us to perceive ourselves as similarly confused and fragmented, mind based and deceived.

We have already seen that the major part of our ‘unconscious’ corresponds to the universe that we do not ‘see’, because even though we determine it, we are not conscious of the fact nor do we perceive or control it, not being conscious, perceiving or having control of ourselves.

If we let this ‘iceberg’ emerge, then both reality and our soul personalities would reassemble in a linear and coherent dimensional picture: we need a sense of unity, of ‘soul’ to be precise, regardless of the current expressions of our fragmented identity.

Leaving aside theories on the structure of the soul, we have to consider the fragmentation of the spirit throughout the dimensions and time like various facets of an essential unity that needs to be retrieved in order to achieve a more authentic sense of ourselves and life.

Such an objective can be pursued with the use of another inner faculty of fundamental importance which results in an awareness of the self: True Will (or the faculty of Intent).
The sense of True Will is the quality of knowing how to use the power of your own True Will, as Crowley called it, which leads us back to the most authentic part of ourselves, and consciously guides our evolution in harmony with the evolution of everything else.

The ‘Will’, with the exercise of this sense, becomes the ability to define and direct your own plane of existence, namely your own line of evolutionary reality through the conscious use and power of free will, assisted by a progressive knowledge of the authentic mechanisms by which reality functions.

True Will does not limit itself to the expression of choice, but actively creates events and synchronic opportunities. We have to re-appropriate the power of the Will: not the Will tied to the fickle desires of our illusory identities but the True Will that is moved by our divine identity and its evolutionary project.

However, if to do, you need to be, then to will you need to know what it is you really want, or better still, you need to know who you really are and awaken your True Identity which is hidden behind multiform expressions of the ego.

Consciousness of the Divine Self corresponds to the faculty of being fully aware of one’s origins, nature and real essence. Perceiving one’s divine essence is an act of profound awareness and ‘communion’. It coincides with the shifting of the barycentre of our illusory masks to a more authentic and radical expression of the Self.

Whilst the Will is the sense of evolutionary direction which corresponds to the real mission of our Consciousness immersed in time and the material world, the sense of the Divine – another inner faculty – leads us to the natural perception of everything being a part of ourselves. We are actually talking more about a sense of participation than a sense of perception. In fact of communion, of love.

Will and love, metaphorically speaking are the vertical and horizontal axes of our divine centre. We can also interpret the equivalent functions of Yoga and Tantra in the same way: the first means ‘union’, it supplies the sensation of travelling along the vertical axis: the union of the earth with the sky, of the material with the spiritual, of the human self with God. Therefore it represents the evolutionary direction and educates the Will to identify the Principle with the Goal.
However, Tantra, which literally means ‘fabric’, creates an image of the weft of reality, of communion, sharing, or of the extension of the horizontal axis; that sense of union and participation in all things. Although diversified into differing levels of self-awareness, every material Form contains the same divine nature.
‘Feeling’ the divine unity in all things means being ‘in communion’ here and now, just as everywhere and for always. It signifies to love.

Of this sense of the divine, which we could even define as of the sacred because through it we participate in the sacrality of each and every thing, we all conserve a subtle memory, much, much more so than for other inner faculties. This memory manifests as the yearning of every individual for the transcendent, for the absolute, but also to self-questioning, to asking “Who am I?” It is the inexplicable and precious inquietude which persists even though we have absolved our physical, intellectual and emotional necessities. The sense of the divine puts us in tune with higher forces and values inside and outside of ourselves.

Such inquietude is transformed into evolutionary energy by religion, in the most correct meaning of the word, while historical religions have suppressed, if not exploited that yearning often for very grim ends.

The ‘sense of Self’ cannot limit itself to awareness and therefore to the mere contemplation of who it really is, but must be applied to the reality that we are now called upon to explore, or to our reality which is the evolutionary project of that self same Consciousness. The awareness of Self is completed by not forgetting who it is and in the experience of the material world. In fact our experience of being human has to be redirected towards this real identity so that it is not just a vain illusion. This result is achieved through the practice of remembering the self, or the immersed Higher Self, which is adapted to and active in our life.

All this corresponds to the magic significance of Memory defined as the awareness of our real identity and our extension in time.

Through the reawakening of the sense of memory we can perceive our ‘temporal body’, that is our real and simultaneous extension throughout time: in short all our lives, including those that we generically define as ‘previous’, which are in fact parallel or even future lives, given that all lives are contemporaneous.

The sense of memory is awareness or participation. Each one of us is the sum of all the experiences we have lived and will live, in different forms, in different bodies, in different times and dimensions. We are a ‘point of attention’ in which everything is PRESENT. We are a consciousness that incarnated in Time, even before it incarnated in space and all its possible dimensions.
Rather than talking about reincarnation as a process of reawakening we should call it reconnection. Reawakening the sense of memory we will certainly recall previous lives but not because we access a mnemonic recording but because we are living them contemporaneously: we are the essence that accumulates them and employs them as if they were probes in time and matter. These are our lives, our ‘incarnations’: the probes, the tentacles of consciousness that give shape to us.
We do not access the memories but the awareness of our life, of its real extension, which transcends its current bodily identification in space-time.

From the moment we remember who we truly are and perceive our true multi-dimensional body; we can finally identify and determine which line of existence corresponds to our mission. It is from that moment that we determine not only the present and the future of our soul personality but also our previous lives. It is therefore necessary to overcome the definitions and the logic that sustain research into past lives, those processes, including regressive hypnosis, that are not based upon the exploration of ourselves in our current life and from there open up to all the rest as a natural consequence of the Reawakening.

Identify with yourself and feel the real extension of yourself, throughout time and in all dimensions where the consciousness-that-you are, is found simultaneously, in the past, present and future.

There is no difference, there is no distance. That is your ‘body’, that is your real identity, in which every life is nothing but a sense, a limb, a window on the worlds of the possible that we are here to discover, in order to discover ourselves. Use the breath, use all of the body to feel this expansion and to perceive the new awareness.

Other faculties exist which we can conventionally classify in different ways: from the para-telepathic faculties to those of our clairvoyant mind, from the perceptive sensitivity of our aura to the faculty of the heart as en emotional sensor. When dealing with the faculties linked to highly subjective explorations and personal life experiences, the most valid guide for a more in-depth examination is personal sensitivity.

[1] Besides constituting a mental dynamic studied at length by psychoanalysis, from the esoteric point of view it is a gateway to the lower and higher levels of our being. It is very important to learn to dream and practice remembering and guiding dreams with the use of oneiric and interpretive techniques, beginning from a personal perspective and symbolic ability. However, the spiritual faculty of the ‘sense of dream’ is a different level again; it can be considered as one of the soul’s senses.
[2] States of dreaming or relaxation are, however, no longer indispensable for exercising the spiritual faculties once we have complete command over ourselves. In fact, at that point we can participate consciously and contemporaneously in different states of being, simultaneously exercising all our senses. In other words we participate in a more expansive reality in virtue of our increased breadth of Consciousness.

Saturday, September 22, 2012
Inner Faculties & ‘Astral Travel’

The five accepted normal senses are not much use for perceiving how to select the frequencies of reality and determine the physical boundaries of our plane of existence. This means that our ability to describe natural phenomena and to understand reality is in fact proportional to the senses and logic we are able to employ.

On average at this level of existence, our current power of perception/determination is considerably reduced in respect to the real possibilities of our senses.

These powers of perception include those ESP faculties that para-psychological studies talked about at great length in the 1970’s – 80’s for example: telepathy, clairvoyance or clairaudience, pre- (or retro) cognition, the sensitivity and the properties of the aura and the astral body, the thaumaturgic and psycho-kinetic faculties of mediums that are part of a lost potency but ideally form part of our natural capacities.
There is nothing ‘paranormal’ about it at all. It is we who now operate below normal capacity, so much so that when we occasionally exercise those faculties or hear them talked about they seem to be something miraculous, if not to be feared and repressed.

Of a different nature though are the faculties that are specifically ‘spiritual’, those that have something to do with an extra-dimensional sensitivity in respect to our plane of psychic and physical existence, even when they are simply considered at their different and more extended vibrational and dimensional levels. Such capacities are linked to mystic phenomena and investigated specifically by magic and shamanism.
The optimum expression of our spiritual faculties, now merely a potential, is strictly related to the esoteric concept of thought, that substantial external entity that is not produced by the activity of our brain.

The human being participates in a multi-dimensional eco-system of energy-thought: it receives thought which has been processed by ‘lower’ species and then processes that thought-food for higher species, inside a real ‘food chain’. In our present condition we not only do not produce thought, we are unable to process reality in real-time.
When we consider that we are perceiving and thinking, we are in fact just remembering the perceptions and the processing of ‘something’ that the mind has already had time to adapt to its limits, or its system of beliefs and prejudices. This places us in the narrow-minded confines of a very convincing illusion.

Taking another look at the fundamental question that Gurdjieff insisted upon, if we live in an illusion of the mind, how can we ‘be’ and therefore ‘act’?

The perception of the present, the border between the memory of the past and the forecast of the future according to preconceived and habitual patterns, is illusory. We live in the distorted memory of ourselves and in a reality that is just as retouched, conventional and restricted. Our system of thought is spoilt even more and distorted further by collective programmes of manipulation both cultural and scientific. Furthermore, as regards the latter, we need to ask ourselves, if apart from the intrinsic damage (medicinal, additive, chemical, vaccines, ELF waves etc…) there isn’t perhaps some conscious planning behind it all which is the fruit of a hidden agenda.

We have to abandon our current system of thinking and completely rebuild our psychic habitat: perhaps phenomena connected to 2012 (and more widely related to the rise of a ‘New Era’) will stimulate our energetic centres, our endocrine system (pineal gland) and upgrade the Matrix, perhaps rendering the present system vulnerable. We could then avail ourselves of a reset in the flow of thought and take the opportunity to renew the layout of reality. An opportunity that will not be automatic but will need to be grasped at an individual level, by being suitably predisposed, emancipating from old patterns and above all mistrusting occasional ‘redeemers’.

Re-adapting to the completeness of our senses we will perceive our world and ourselves more consciously, accessing a reality of a much higher level that we ourselves have determined.

However, even at higher levels we will only be managing the ‘power of maya’, or power over the illusion and not power over the spiritual reality that subtends every manifestation relative to the Absolute Being. To access that higher level of awareness, the so called ‘nagual’ perspective of existence, we have to reawaken our divine identity and its faculties.

Such ‘superior’ faculties are really the prerogative of those beings that host the active spiritual principle: the divine spark. These ‘senses’ are in fact divine attributes which are able to supply us with a holistic vision of the natural and spiritual eco-system in which we are immersed.

In the course of the book I will be briefly describing certain basic faculties that according to esoteric traditions were lost by the earthly human being in the course of a rather intricate epic. The story is told in the chronicles of ‘alternative’ history through the figures of ancient myth: a history that is rich in references and which projects the human being way beyond this dimension.

A real comprehension of spiritual faculties presupposes their reawakening, so for now, we will have to settle for expressing ourselves in metaphor and using limited examples which of necessity lead us back to our current sensorial experience.

If the physical senses filter and determine the hologram-reality that surrounds us, the inner senses extract and project a transcendent meaning which leads human experience back to the divine and absolute source from which everything comes. As Don Juan, the Yaqui sorcerer and protagonist of the tales of Castaneda would say “The first, see things on this side of the bridge; the others see things on the other side: the first, have a tonal perspective while the others, a nagual perspective”.

Nagual contrasts with tonal, which is seen as everything that can be explained and understood through the rational. The Nagual is a reality which transcends the purely intellectual and of which one can only be a witness: it is all that is found outside the dominion of the word and the concept. It is that inexplicable spirit of which one can only have direct experience.

For example, from the shamanistic point of view, dream is the capacity to perceive states of being which are beyond the physical. It is the eye of the transpersonal planes, as described by Ken Wilber in his No Boundary. It is the ‘seeing’ of the shaman.

For example Dream – not to be confused with the functions of dreaming as commonly intended[1] – is the sense that allows us to consciously move on the astral, subtle and spiritual plains. There we enter into contact with a more authentic essence of ourselves and all things, perceiving that their origins and nature are the same and sensing their evolutionary direction.
Dream allows us to explore the intermediate dimension between the material world of Form and the Real, from the dimensions of thought-forms to those of the emotions, from the astral planes to the dimensions of disincarnate souls, from subtle worlds to divine provinces.

But these are also nothing more than conventions for allocating the various possible ‘significances’ of reality value on a scale: from those closest to the material word to those which are more mysterious, ideal and spiritual.

All of this can be represented as transcendent and contemporaneously immanent and beyond, but it is also inside. The rehabilitation of the sense of dream can be encouraged by the use of astral travel, hypnosis and lucid dreaming techniques in a state of profound relaxation (today the subject of study through Reconnection and Theta Healing techniques), aimed at reducing the exercise of the external senses and encouraging the emergence of subtle perceptions[2].

Let’s summarize some of the basic concepts of the phenomenon of astral travel.
The term ‘astral’ – borrowed from Theosophical traditions – is reductive in respect of the concept of out of body experiences or better still, ultra-body because we are not talking about ‘relocation’ as such but rather the extension the self and personal sensitivity.

Here are some useful parameters to focus on:

· It is not a power in itself, or a faculty, but a way to observe, interpret and describe a determined dynamic, that has something to do with our true nature in as much as it is infinite consciousness.
· It normally triggers during nocturnal sleep in a spontaneous and unconscious way.
· The experience is often translated into dreams through common or subjective symbolism, which are sometimes remembered and sometimes not.
· It can happen in altered states of consciousness caused by trauma, coma, drugs, the taking of psycho-active substances, meditation, fainting, anaesthesia, hypnosis and near-death experiences.
· Such dynamics are used to energetically regenerate the mind and our subtle bodies and re-order and metabolize experiences and information.
· Consciously directing the experience of astral travel constitutes an instrument for expanding the senses and the consciousness and for positioning oneself in a broader spiritual scenario.
· When the dynamic happens spontaneously and we are unaware of it, its energetic management and defences necessary are automatically triggered by our mind. However, when we train ourselves to consciously generate it, we have to re-learn how to direct it; in this case the techniques of relaxation or sleep/dreaming serve to lower the ‘volume’ of the physical senses in such a way as to activate an ‘alternative’ sensitivity that we can focus our attention and awareness on.
· The fear we experience is that typical of the unknown: besides, it is good to remember that when we find ourselves in ‘alternative’ dimensions, they are not aseptic, therefore if an individual has not worked on their energies, emotions and perceptions they may encounter something unclassifiable, that will then be removed by the conscious mind or clad in projections. What remains, even after the removal has occurred is the sensation of fear, regardless of the nature of the experience.
· Once the method has been mastered, there are various levels of practice: from the perceptive expansion of our own current dimension to the use of astral travel to explore other dimensions and finally, the expansion of consciousness as a natural extension of the self in the wakened state.

This journey is a moment of attenuation of our incarnation: a moment of re-connecting with our higher Self and therefore with all the parts of our soul, throughout the dimensions and time. Now is the moment to overturn concepts and move our ‘point of union’ or our centre of gravity towards our real identity and re-formulate the concept of ‘astral travel’ just as we need to reconsider numerous other subjects in the light of new paradigms.

We are already a Consciousness that divides itself up among many planes in order to explore this material dimension and evolve. When we assert ourselves to travel on the astral planes we are doing nothing more than …returning home a little.

An interesting question we might ask is: which part of us ‘separates’?
Which part ‘exits’ to explore? And as a result, what corresponding dimension is reached? Therefore, which part of ourselves do we have to train to reach precise dimensions, to have this true experience of spiritual growth?

This thought is also valid for mediumistic experiences: it is obvious that we ‘vibrate’ on the frequency of our level of consciousness and we are therefore in tune with the phenomena, events and dimensions that correspond to it. This is the result of the law of attraction – similar attracts similar, or the concordance of complexity (temporal concordance), today referred to as the ‘law of attraction’, a phenomenon much more complex and intriguing than simply attracting positive or negative events to yourself.

We tend to relate to organizations and worlds – to be precise to the teachings – that ‘belong’ to us. But it is not necessary to pursue para-Gnostic explorations, learn mediumistic techniques or various methods for inducing out of body experiences, what we really have to do is reawaken the different levels of our true identity.

If we get used to considering everything that we are the authors or spectators of from an exquisitely spiritual point of view, we will discover in ourselves and what surrounds us, our true divine nature; and on this path we can and must identify with all the infinite possibilities of creation.

Gustavo Adolfo Rol

In Thelemic tradition, which in this case draws on the explorations of John Dee, out of the body journeys lead to the concept of the Aethyr, or the 30 levels of the astral plane positioned between the physical plane and divinity, which have to be re-ascended through complex techniques of a magical-mystical character.

At this point we have to consider a further specific faculty: the sense of dimensions, or the ability to translate a system of laws into something else. Exercising this faculty means being aware of interacting with many dimensions at the same time and of travelling from one world to another, from one possible dimension to another, just as is part of our nature.
This faculty is indispensible for understanding experiences which are very different from our current perceptions.

Our psycho-physical vehicle is not the ‘original model’, just as this reality (which derives from it) is not the one originally attributed to our level of complexity. We currently live in much more limited and conventional lines of reality, passing casually from one to another.

Because of this – according to various psychological and metaphysical models– our soul is described as likewise fragmented into diverse and confused personalities, or into many ‘I’s as was proposed by Gurdjieff. Our soul lacks a complete and unitary sense of the reality that constitutes the scenario of our experience of consciousness and, as a consequence lacks the perception of us as beings that are likewise complete and unitary: it is a vicious circle. But rather than work on the integration of our illusory ‘I’s (a model that still insists on the separation of ourselves), we have to work on the integration of reality and put the concept we have lost back together again. Our soul is unitary and yet infinitely versatile, so much so it has us believe that we are many souls! It is not the personalities in themselves that are separate and move around inside of us, but it is the fluctuation of our vague and confused perceptions on the lines where we have fragmented reality that induces us to perceive ourselves as similarly confused and fragmented, mind based and deceived.

We have already seen that the major part of our ‘unconscious’ corresponds to the universe that we do not ‘see’, because even though we determine it, we are not conscious of the fact nor do we perceive or control it, not being conscious, perceiving or having control of ourselves.

If we let this ‘iceberg’ emerge, then both reality and our soul personalities would reassemble in a linear and coherent dimensional picture: we need a sense of unity, of ‘soul’ to be precise, regardless of the current expressions of our fragmented identity.

Leaving aside theories on the structure of the soul, we have to consider the fragmentation of the spirit throughout the dimensions and time like various facets of an essential unity that needs to be retrieved in order to achieve a more authentic sense of ourselves and life.

Such an objective can be pursued with the use of another inner faculty of fundamental importance which results in an awareness of the self: True Will (or the faculty of Intent).
The sense of True Will is the quality of knowing how to use the power of your own True Will, as Crowley called it, which leads us back to the most authentic part of ourselves, and consciously guides our evolution in harmony with the evolution of everything else.

The ‘Will’, with the exercise of this sense, becomes the ability to define and direct your own plane of existence, namely your own line of evolutionary reality through the conscious use and power of free will, assisted by a progressive knowledge of the authentic mechanisms by which reality functions.

True Will does not limit itself to the expression of choice, but actively creates events and synchronic opportunities. We have to re-appropriate the power of the Will: not the Will tied to the fickle desires of our illusory identities but the True Will that is moved by our divine identity and its evolutionary project.

However, if to do, you need to be, then to will you need to know what it is you really want, or better still, you need to know who you really are and awaken your True Identity which is hidden behind multiform expressions of the ego.

Consciousness of the Divine Self corresponds to the faculty of being fully aware of one’s origins, nature and real essence. Perceiving one’s divine essence is an act of profound awareness and ‘communion’. It coincides with the shifting of the barycentre of our illusory masks to a more authentic and radical expression of the Self.

Whilst the Will is the sense of evolutionary direction which corresponds to the real mission of our Consciousness immersed in time and the material world, the sense of the Divine – another inner faculty – leads us to the natural perception of everything being a part of ourselves. We are actually talking more about a sense of participation than a sense of perception. In fact of communion, of love.

Will and love, metaphorically speaking are the vertical and horizontal axes of our divine centre. We can also interpret the equivalent functions of Yoga and Tantra in the same way: the first means ‘union’, it supplies the sensation of travelling along the vertical axis: the union of the earth with the sky, of the material with the spiritual, of the human self with God. Therefore it represents the evolutionary direction and educates the Will to identify the Principle with the Goal.
However, Tantra, which literally means ‘fabric’, creates an image of the weft of reality, of communion, sharing, or of the extension of the horizontal axis; that sense of union and participation in all things. Although diversified into differing levels of self-awareness, every material Form contains the same divine nature.
‘Feeling’ the divine unity in all things means being ‘in communion’ here and now, just as everywhere and for always. It signifies to love.

Of this sense of the divine, which we could even define as of the sacred because through it we participate in the sacrality of each and every thing, we all conserve a subtle memory, much, much more so than for other inner faculties. This memory manifests as the yearning of every individual for the transcendent, for the absolute, but also to self-questioning, to asking “Who am I?” It is the inexplicable and precious inquietude which persists even though we have absolved our physical, intellectual and emotional necessities. The sense of the divine puts us in tune with higher forces and values inside and outside of ourselves.

Such inquietude is transformed into evolutionary energy by religion, in the most correct meaning of the word, while historical religions have suppressed, if not exploited that yearning often for very grim ends.

The ‘sense of Self’ cannot limit itself to awareness and therefore to the mere contemplation of who it really is, but must be applied to the reality that we are now called upon to explore, or to our reality which is the evolutionary project of that self same Consciousness. The awareness of Self is completed by not forgetting who it is and in the experience of the material world. In fact our experience of being human has to be redirected towards this real identity so that it is not just a vain illusion. This result is achieved through the practice of remembering the self, or the immersed Higher Self, which is adapted to and active in our life.

All this corresponds to the magic significance of Memory defined as the awareness of our real identity and our extension in time.

Through the reawakening of the sense of memory we can perceive our ‘temporal body’, that is our real and simultaneous extension throughout time: in short all our lives, including those that we generically define as ‘previous’, which are in fact parallel or even future lives, given that all lives are contemporaneous.

The sense of memory is awareness or participation. Each one of us is the sum of all the experiences we have lived and will live, in different forms, in different bodies, in different times and dimensions. We are a ‘point of attention’ in which everything is PRESENT. We are a consciousness that incarnated in Time, even before it incarnated in space and all its possible dimensions.
Rather than talking about reincarnation as a process of reawakening we should call it reconnection. Reawakening the sense of memory we will certainly recall previous lives but not because we access a mnemonic recording but because we are living them contemporaneously: we are the essence that accumulates them and employs them as if they were probes in time and matter. These are our lives, our ‘incarnations’: the probes, the tentacles of consciousness that give shape to us.
We do not access the memories but the awareness of our life, of its real extension, which transcends its current bodily identification in space-time.

From the moment we remember who we truly are and perceive our true multi-dimensional body; we can finally identify and determine which line of existence corresponds to our mission. It is from that moment that we determine not only the present and the future of our soul personality but also our previous lives. It is therefore necessary to overcome the definitions and the logic that sustain research into past lives, those processes, including regressive hypnosis, that are not based upon the exploration of ourselves in our current life and from there open up to all the rest as a natural consequence of the Reawakening.

Identify with yourself and feel the real extension of yourself, throughout time and in all dimensions where the consciousness-that-you are, is found simultaneously, in the past, present and future.

There is no difference, there is no distance. That is your ‘body’, that is your real identity, in which every life is nothing but a sense, a limb, a window on the worlds of the possible that we are here to discover, in order to discover ourselves. Use the breath, use all of the body to feel this expansion and to perceive the new awareness.

Other faculties exist which we can conventionally classify in different ways: from the para-telepathic faculties to those of our clairvoyant mind, from the perceptive sensitivity of our aura to the faculty of the heart as en emotional sensor. When dealing with the faculties linked to highly subjective explorations and personal life experiences, the most valid guide for a more in-depth examination is personal sensitivity.

[1] Besides constituting a mental dynamic studied at length by psychoanalysis, from the esoteric point of view it is a gateway to the lower and higher levels of our being. It is very important to learn to dream and practice remembering and guiding dreams with the use of oneiric and interpretive techniques, beginning from a personal perspective and symbolic ability. However, the spiritual faculty of the ‘sense of dream’ is a different level again; it can be considered as one of the soul’s senses.
[2] States of dreaming or relaxation are, however, no longer indispensable for exercising the spiritual faculties once we have complete command over ourselves. In fact, at that point we can participate consciously and contemporaneously in different states of being, simultaneously exercising all our senses. In other words we participate in a more expansive reality in virtue of our increased breadth of Consciousness.

Thursday, September 20, 2012
CHAKRA

Image courtesy of: http://solawakening.com/chakra-vibration/

The principle connection points between one state and another of our being are constituted by the chakra whose access can be found along the spine to the top of the head and beyond (the Onios Channel). Knowledge of the Chakra belongs to the Hindu, Jainist and Buddhist traditions spread throughout the West by Theosophy. However certain Western treatises exist in which one can presume there was also a knowledge of these ‘centres of force’ on the part of alchemists and mystical Christians such as Jacob Bhome (1575-1624) and some of his pupils, in particular Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710), author of Practical Theosophy (1727)[1].
Every chakra is a multidimensional energetic node, a vortex of vital energy and a refinery of substances and faculties which correspond to specific physical organs, certain ‘powers’ and aspects of our way of being.

This is a simple reference table for the seven traditional chakra with some particular correspondences that I feel are useful for practical purposes[2].
Many Schools propose models based on a greater number of chakra (let’s not forget that there are hundreds of chakra in the body: many researchers also consider that there are many more ‘major’ chakra than those represented by the Tradition)[3].

At the end of our current examination we will consider eight basic chakra. The eighth chakra – mentioned in various practical studies – is the resultant product of the other seven which are in harmony with one another. It is also defined as ‘mobile’ because it moves around according to determined stimuli and functions. Its principle function is that of ‘turning on’ the other seven, according to specific working methods. Other traditions have identified these fundamental points of force by overlaying the human design with the Sephirotic Tree in different ways.

To conclude, the chakra process and transform our vital energy on the basis of necessary functions. They connect the different physical, psychic, subtle and divine states that constitute our being, nourishing the exercise of our senses and higher faculties. By the latter we mean those inner faculties that originate in the divine spark, which allow a higher awareness to be projected on reality, emancipated from the constraints and the ‘outward appearances’ of the physical senses.

Image courtesy of: http://technoccult.net/archives/2004/12/20/qabalachakra8-dimensions-of-consciousness-mapped/

[1] The doctrine of the chakra was fully presented for the first time in the West by Sir John Woodroffe, when in 1917, under the pseudonym Arthur Avalon, he published ‘The Serpent Power’, or the translation of the Indian texts Sat-Cakra-Nirupana and Padaka-Pancaka.
[2] Note the use of the musical scale intonated on A=432 Hz, which corresponds to the entire musical scale intonated on the basis of frequencies in tune with universal and cosmic harmonies, as were employed before the reforms of the 1950’s enforced tuning to 440 Hz, which in fact distorts the use and reception of sound provoking disharmonious effects on the environment and the body.
[3] Today it is perhaps useful to consider 12 chakra, 12 threads of DNA and 12 ‘rays’. However as it is still in the personal experimentation stage, I feel it is premature to speak of it here. On the question of DNA readers can consult my previous book Nothing but Oneself. Meanwhile, for further information on ‘rays’ – which represent another system of reading reality and physical and spiritual energies – I suggest specific Theosophical and post-Theosophical texts (in particular the works of H.P. Blavatsky, Alice Bailey and Douglas Baker).

Monday, September 17, 2012
Meridians, Microlines and Temporal Flows

The meridians (the 72,000 Nadi) have been carefully investigated by Eastern traditions and even today are of interest to a major part of traditional medicine such as acupuncture, Shiatzu and chromo-puncture. They are energetic and bio-magnetic flows and by working on them it is possible to re-establish particular equilibriums that will stimulate certain faculties and help individuals achieve a state of harmony and health. Disease is basically interpreted as a problem in the body’s internal communications system. From this view point, using the correct instruments or massage, it is possible to ‘unblock’ certain channels of energy flows and encourage the re-establishment of natural correspondences between the subtle and the physical and thereby recuperate – and conserve –an optimum state of health.

The Nadi are subtle inner pathways which are thought to be the conductors of the vital energy, Prana. The three most important Nadi are: Ida, Pingala and Sushumna.

They are set out like a caduceus in as much as Sushumna is the centre channel while Ida and Pingala flow respectively to the right and left, crossing it at determined heights.
Ida is connected with the feminine polarity while Pingala is connected to that of the masculine.

Eastern traditions state that when meditators withdraw their attention from their surroundings and retreat inside the self, striving through psychic and physical practices to recover the mystery which lies within, reawaken the Kundalini, the cosmic potency sleeping inside those who have forgotten their true essence.

This reawakening – which in certain circumstances can also happen spontaneously or be caused by particular circumstances (for example the phenomena of mysticism) and often eludes the comprehension or control of its protagonists – is usually accompanied by a blast of energetic heat and considered rather dangerous.

There are many schools which prefer a more progressive and harmonious road to reawakening rather than a direct and vehement one, this permits the Kundalini to reawaken in a natural way so that the energy derived from it can be consciously managed.

At various heights on the vertebral column we find the chakra, also defined as Padma (lotus), which supervise the body’s activities. They function in relation to the body’s psychic sphere and in its universal processes and also in relation to the identity which exists between the microcosm/Mankind and the macrocosm/Universe.

Trying to achieve expanded consciousness by working directly on the reawakening of the Kundalini is very dangerous because this latent cosmic force if it is well channelled invigorates and transforms, but if an individual is not ready to deal with its impact, can burn, overwhelm and even result in madness and death

If however it is correctly controlled, Kundalini transforms the human body into a ‘divine body’. The tangible manifestations of such a process, appear to be the so called Siddhi, the ‘perfections’, or those supernatural powers realized by the human being that have full control over baser instincts.

The nadi as illustrated in traditional Indian and Chinese texts

The microlines, whose position in the body is very different to that of the meridians, constitute a more subtle an essential network of flows of vital and spiritual energies and ‘interface’, as it were, our superior consciousness with the reality of events or with our current dimension.
The microlines allow our subtle bodies to move according to their different needs. They form in the fourth month of pregnancy and can form and develop by means of their own inner faculties.

The microlines flow on the body and in the body, both on the surface and at different depths and intensify in the hands, the ears and by correspondence in the eyes. Vital energies flow in the microlines first and are later processed by the chakra.

Sometimes the microlines assume positions which are partly external in respect to physical posture, enough even to project themselves outside of the aura. They tend to arrange themselves harmonically in respect to the movement of the body and usually coordinate themselves by anticipating the physical movements of the body itself.

Particular dances exist (think of all the sacred dances of the world from the tribal to the religious, from types of bio-dance to yoga, from the dances of the Sufi to the Tensegrity that Castaneda talks about) and specific techniques of ‘harmonization’ through which we can direct the circuits of the microlines to maintain, receive or exchange energy. We are talking about archetypical movements and positions of great importance that allow the centres of vital energy to be stimulated.

The microlines do not position themselves on immovable tracks but modify their positions following a kind of (bio) rhythm that lasts around seventy days.
It is also important to note that individual choices, above all those of a spiritual nature, can modify the subtle design of the person (and vice versa).

The microlines are nourished by vital energy, so it is important to maintain a harmonious contact with life: eat naturally and healthily, live in contact with nature or regenerate every now and again in a natural environment, for example by taking a long walk in the woods. A healthy and natural life has much more value than meditation techniques (and medicine). Precise massage techniques also exist which can be practiced by pregnant women to promote the harmonious development of the subtle bodies of the unborn child.

The microlines find a correspondence in the Synchronic Lines of the planet and are sensitive to the lines to which they are geographically closest. Just as with the Synchronic Lines, the microlines are divided into major and minor lines and microlines of different intensity can also be distinguished in the human body.

The chakra constitute the nodes of the major microlines and correspond to the planetary synchronic nodes that can be imagined as the chakra of the Earth. If we want to draw parallels we could think of a standing stone which functions as a kind of acupuncture on the body of the planet.

The microlines are closely related to the major Synchronic Lines: in theory by acting on the Synchronic Lines we can act by correspondence on somewhere else in the world: we create a correspondence in the people who live in that place by means of their microlines. We are talking about a rather complex level of alchemy which is currently being investigated by certain centres of power, ready to exploit its potential in order to control and manipulate the masses. But the opposite is also true: by working properly on oneself it is possible to produce changes on the planet at a synchronic level.

In order to interact with the subtle and vital reality that surrounds us, we project our lines of force by means of thirty-three valves positioned in the aura which correspond with precise points on the subtle geometries that surround the physical body. These lines are perceived by magicians and shamans during their altered states of consciousness and are ‘seen’ as blue currents of energy that project in and from the body (as testified by various magicians during my stay in Cameroon).

We can also say that we emit these lines of force from the ‘nodes’ of our microlines which then connect with the geometry of events. They create a sort of energetic cobweb, attracting or repelling energies, forces and thoughts that are more or less in tune with our nature and our will.

In effect, by moving our ‘point of union’ (the assemblage point as Castaneda called it) we can create or give shape to the reality which surrounds us through our system of microlines and lines of force.

Another system of currents known as temporal flows, is acknowledged by certain Eastern schools, although perhaps not in these terms. Through this particular system we are connected to the structure of time. Time is not a dimension linked to the world of material Form but develops its own ‘field’ and is governed by autonomous laws. It is a dimension with its own reason for being which regardless of the world of Form constitutes the indispensible ramifications of ‘support’ on which the material dimensions (space and Form) manifest.
Time is a complex, intelligent and independent eco-system, we could even say ‘living’, with which the diverse possible manifestations of existence are in strict symbiosis. We ourselves are, more than anything else, all temporal beings and relate to time through a special connection: the temporal flows to be precise. The most important thing to remember is that by means of the temporal flows a ‘substance’ reaches us that is fundamental to our evolution: that substance is called thought.

As is well explained in the Treatise on Living Thought by Massimo Scaligero, thought is not something that we produce through the dynamics of the mind but a substance in which we are immersed and that we are limited to processing only at our own level of awareness. There exists a strict correlation between the density of the temporal fabric and the quantity of accessible thought, furthermore our reality it is qualitively proportional to the quality of the thought substance that we ‘inhale’. However, this thought is also the target of programmes that condition our minds.

A correct method of breathing is a useful procedure for the purification and detoxification of such conditioning. It is also a way to activate Prana channels and access a level of interaction with thought and the universal mind which is way above our current possibilities. By applying special massage or breathing techniques, we can balance and regulate the flow of thoughts that pass through us along the temporal body flows, notably improving the quality of our elaboration. This process reflects upon how we interpret ourselves and reality itself.
Let’s not forget that in ancient civilizations, in particular that of Egypt, the different functions of thought were positioned in more than one part of the body, in particular, besides the brain, in the intestine and the heart. Many meditation techniques have been individuated to develop the capacity to process thought, from the use of lateral thinking to emotive intelligence, but the most important role is that played by Art.
Art is the best instrument for the glorification of our talents and our creativity but most of all our ability to reawaken the intelligence of the body which is much more complete than that of the ‘rational’ mind.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Subtle Energies and Electromagnetic Prisons

The universe of Form manifests according to precise patterns: from ideas to archetypes, from archetypes to numbers and from numbers to dimensions and material phenomena.

Material Form and events represent the multi-dimensional manifestation of a holographic universe whose fundamental geometries are recognizable in the infinitely small just as they are in the infinitely large.
Through these recurring geometries every expression of the universe is by correspondence, united to all others, regardless of dimension, temporal and spatial distance.

The aura is not only that bio-radiant body that can be verified through the use of the Kirlian Camera, but something much more complex and subtle, that can be seen by employing a higher level of sensitivity.

Our physical body, in turn constituted from its more external parts (subtle and soft) to its bone structure, is the central massing of a system of subtle bodies in movement. As if it were interpenetrating crystals mounted on a pivot and made to rotate. In the same way our subtle geometries rotate around the body following directional flows, speeds and different rhythms, generating a particular ‘optical’ effect that is typical of a spinning top: a halo in the shape of an egg.

This is the aura that clairvoyants perceive by translating the results of their perception into colours (into the sense of vision) which, in fact leads to other senses which do not translate into ocular vision as such.

All subtle structures are profoundly linked to our mind and to the functions of our body. They have been classified differently according to the perspectives and needs of individual schools of thought. The model most frequently referred to is that of Theosophy, of which an infinite number of re-elaborations have been made.

Theosophy (think of the specific treatises of Arthur E. Powel) – elaborating on the Hindu tradition but also that of neoplatonic-Hermeticism – describes a series of ‘bodies’ or ‘vehicles’ of consciousness that interpenetrate and envelop the physical body. In each one dwells the divine principle, at different levels of self-awareness and which nevertheless expands beyond them.

Image courtesy of: http://www.viveremeglio.org/0_meditazione/merkaba/merkaba.htm

The Etheric body (bio-magnetic)
The first of the subtle bodies that lies outside the physical body is its ‘etheric field’. It is the home of the vital force that sustains the life of the physical body and acts as a matrix for its metabolic functions. It is on this that different kinds of bio-energetic therapies intervene. It is the halo that can be seen with the Kirlian Camera.

The Astral Body
The ‘astral body’ is a sort of mental or psychic (sometimes defined as the inferior mental body), it is this that we refer to when we talk about ‘Out of Body Experiences’ (OBE) or ‘astral travel’. The personalities of the soul’s structure are for the most part connected to this body. The word astral is used in a traditional sense to codify our behaviour and the nature of our personalities through astrology. When the aspects of a lower and more materialistic nature of the human personality are referred to, the astral body is defined as the ‘body of desire’, home to instincts and drives often judged as ‘lower’, not because they are typical of animals but because they often lead to emotivity and egoistic needs.

The Mental Body
This is the body of thoughts and the intellect. After death, it is the survivor of the ego, the central individuality that has evolved best during physical life: it is the personality in formation that identifies the individual in his/her most evolved and integrated aspect, the basis of that everlasting identity that we will later define as ‘intelligent spirit’.

The Mental or Causal Superior Body
This is the body of higher spiritual inspiration which corresponds to the crown chakra. It is the ‘spirit’: the part in each one of us that leads back to the All, or to the Absolute Being in its totality. It is also our centre of consciousness: The divine identity that we are but which is reawakened through the human experience in the material world of Form.

Each of these subtle bodies corresponds to a particular plane or world of existence. For the ‘astral body’ there is the ‘astral plane’, just as for the ‘mental body’ there is the ‘mental plane’ and so on.

Shown below an interesting image found on various web sites which illustrates the idea that what we consider to be ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of us is really a mirror image.

The subtle bodies are generated and nourished by our system of beliefs and our convictions about ourselves and life. They are therefore in line with our mental dynamics which, from a certain point of view, generally correspond to the characteristics of the electromagnetic field of our materialness. They are however, more specifically linked to planetary ‘electromagnetism’, which is currently being subjected to manipulation through advanced instruments of global control.

We are sensitive to and conditioned by streams of thought, by fluctuations in the density of time-space and magnetism. If something should disturb the Earth’s magnetic equilibrium in 2012 it will without doubt have repercussions on our perceptive-existential system and, even though for some it might be an apocalypse, for others it will be an opportunity to benefit from a moment of vulnerability in the ‘matrix’ and liberate themselves from the deception of the mind and this pseudo-reality.

We have been so conditioned by a fear of the void and death that we cling on to the illusions that have been instilled into us, even to perceptions about what it means to exist: if we think, we exist, if we have ideas and projects and a recognized role. Otherwise we do not. This is a terrible form of blackmail.

This is because we only identify our state of existence with a sensorial perception of the physical world, without knowing – or even intuiting – that by doing so we distance ourselves even more from true being and real happiness.

Humanity is at a crossroads: we either find the core of our identity and therefore a profound sense of life and reality or we degenerate into the irreversible madness of self-destruction and inevitable narcosis: intimately controlled by the structure of an ordered and conformist society, robotic and hypnotized by the latest and increasingly banal syncretic forms of a new hypocritical religion of well-being and universal goodness. If such a destiny fulfils itself, the dissolution of Mankind and its society will quickly follow. The Universe, by means of its laws, will then re-establish the equilibriums that have been contaminated by Mankind which are necessary for life and evolution.

That new equilibrium is on the horizon and if we do not want to be swept away by history, we need to shake off the apathy and torpor that originates from being dependent on a hyper-dynamic and hyper-productive state of reality that is increasingly disconnected and inconsistent.

The Light Body
Today one hears talk of faculties and ‘bodies’ that are reawakened, enlightened and brought into consciousness, or built through particular meditation techniques in order to access the spiritual possibilities that the New Era will open up to the human population of Earth. It is a term that is often used but ‘Light Body’ is certainly not a new term to esoteric tradition.

Traditionally – in Western magic practices – the Light Body corresponds to the conscious body that is used by the ‘magician’ to travel between the dimensions of time and space and, beyond such dimensions into the ‘astral’ worlds to reach the higher planes of Self-Awareness and Absolute Being. It is a kind of ‘astral body’ but much more evolved and sublime as a concept.

Today we talk of the Light Body instead of referring to our being in a state of complete awareness, in all its physical, subtle and spiritual constituents. In fact, according to the most commonly accepted concept of ascension, it is our physical transubstantiated body at a superior level of existence and awareness, that will effectively permit access to a more authentic and more ‘luminous’ level of reality that is more real and less obscured by the psycho-physical illusions in which we are now ensnared.

Sunday, September 9, 2012
Subtle Bodies and Energy Flows

Man is capable of being and using anything which he perceives, for everything that he perceives is in a certain sense a part of his being. He may thus subjugate the whole Universe of which he is conscious to his own individual Will.
Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one’s conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.

Aleister Crowley – Magick in Theory and Practice

Just as our planetary system is reached by cosmic currents through the Synchronic and Telluric Lines (leylines) and is sensitive to morphogenetic fields, our body is also traversed by as many currents and lines of energy.

To be precise we are considering a series of traditions and perceptions, of a sensitivity which does not form part of Western materialism, which have been reported in esoteric accounts and spiritualistic visions of human reality. It would be incongruous to reduce such concepts to the terrain of today’s accepted science: it is not possible and perhaps it is not pertinent. Such concepts cannot be approached with the logic and instruments of our so called ‘orthodox’ modern science. We can however, perceive them at a personal and subjective level or find them described in accounts and traditions which are considered primitive and superstitious and are perhaps undervalued.

We are in fact talking about the cultural heritage of humanity which deserves our respect and should not be hastily cast aside on the basis of current scientific dictates.

In Eastern tradition, in particular that of India, the chakra represent the principal meeting points of all our energy flows, or more exactly of the massive network of information and energy that courses through us. They are the points of convergence and connection between all our different natures: psycho-physical, soul (emotive, mental, emotional), spiritual and divine. Our endocrine system is associated to them, our physical apparatus and organs and all aspects of our way of being and living.

Every chakra is the engine, filter and valve, of the system of subtle energy flows found inside and outside of the body.

Bearing this in mind we can make a distinction between:

· Meridians and linear chains
· Microlines
· Lines of force
· Temporal flows
· Subtle geometries

Just as our reality – and the Form that is part of it – can be, in the final analysis, reduced to three fundamental states of being (physical-subtle-spiritual), in the same way the human being can be considered as the point of convergence of three fundamental natures:

1. The physical body
2. The soul, seen as a structure made up of different experiences and individual personalities and from another point of view, perceivable as a complex of
thoughts/sensations/experiences described in the form of bodies and subtle geometries
3. The spirit, the profound aspect present in all things which leads back to the All. In the case of a bio-psycho-spiritual complex (bridge-Form) such as ours, the spirit is the gateway and transmitter of the divine spark, understood as a superior active identity capable of self-awareness and transcendence.

Metaphorically speaking we can say that the body is like a tape recorder, the spirit is the magnetic tape, the soul is the recording and consciousness is the act of listening to the recording.

Friday, September 7, 2012
The Functions and Archetypes of our Universe

Our universe is a balanced field of functions (laws) that originate in broader pre-universal mechanics. They are not yet the fundamental laws discovered by physics but something further upstream. The fundamental functions of our universe could be associated with the creative aspects of the Sephiroth – or, if you prefer, the Trigrams of the I Ching – and in microcosm with the system of the chakra.

Using other methods, perhaps more direct and radical, native populations and shamans describe, the same dynamics that we are summarizing here in their first-hand experience and ‘visions’ in altered states of consciousness[1], representing them through an archaic symbolism which is mysterious and yet immediate and absorbing.

According to Western esoteric tradition there are thought to be eight fundamental functions which once translated into time matrices and physical laws relate to one another by means of 24 archetypes.

There are various numerations and classifications: based on 2 or 4 (usually applied to the material and human world), based on 12 (on a cosmic scale, in the case of the eons of Gnostic tradition), based on 3 or 7 (usually applied to the divine dimensions in relation to human ‘types’) or based upon the omnipresent sequence of Fibonacci (applied to Sacred Geometry and the so-called Golden Section) and all their possible combinations. It is useful to take a look at those aspects which more or less act as a background to all the others.

One of the most significant hermetic compendiums, the Kybalion[2], lists the following seven fundamental principles:

1. Principle of mentalism, or ‘all is mind’.
2. Principle of correspondence: there is always a correspondence between the phenomena of various planes of existence (physical, mental and spiritual), in deference to the principle ‘as above so below’.
3. Principle of vibration: nothing is still, everything is in movement and vibration.
The differences between the material, the mind, energy and the spirit can be reduced to vibrational disparity: the higher the evolutionary level the higher the vibrational frequency. The All (the Absolute, the Supreme Mind) has an infinitely high vibrational level. The art of mental transformation rests precisely in the art of modifying the vibrational state: a result that is achieved through the exertion of the will.
4. Principle of polarity: everything is dual, everything has two poles, and everything has its opposite. Every thing ‘is’ and ‘is not’ at the same time, every truth is nothing more than a half truth and half falsehood at the same time. Opposites share the same nature but in different degrees, extremes touch one another and all possible paradoxes can be reconciled.
5. Principle of rhythm: in all things there is movement similar to that of a pendulum. This principle explains how there is a rhythm in every pair of opposites or poles and is therefore closely linked to the Principle of polarity.
6. Principle of cause and effect: there is a cause for every effect and an effect for every cause. Chaos does not exist: ‘chaos’ is just the name given to non-identifiable or perceivable causes.
7. Principle of gender: everything has a gender, masculine or feminine. This concept has nothing to do with sexual gender. Mental gender is in fact free and independent of the sexual or physical gender of a person. The masculine gender is active, projected externally, and its key word is ‘Will’. The feminine gender is receptive, creates new thought and ideas and its key word is ‘Imagination’. There has to be a balance between the two genders: In fact, the masculine if not balanced by the feminine, acts indiscriminately and inclines towards chaos, just as the feminine if not balanced by the masculine tends to stagnate. Masculine and feminine together create sound action that leads to success.

To these seven fundamental principles, which are obviously developed from the classical hermetic principles attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, I would add a more implicit, or if you prefer occult eighth: Synchronicity. The 24 archetypes are without doubt related to, but not only, the 24 Major Arcana of the Tarot (therefore not 22), a profound knowledge of which can be found by beginning with the classical deck of Eliphas Levi and then later studying the 22+2 Arcana of Crowley.

It is necessary to awaken the Consciousness in ourselves – or better still to wake up to that Consciousness. In order to do that we have to recover the lost archetypes, rehabilitate our Energy and our inner faculties and reconnect our spiritual parts to our soul. We have to recover the hardware (archetypes) and the software (energy, senses and faculties) emancipating ourselves from every limit and received conditioning through a process of transformation which is both mental and corporeal.

We can thus explore and evolve through the manifestations of reality, and all that is set out here will be seen as natural and evident. Our objective however, is not to become programmers of the illusion but to understand reality through all its possible illusions.

The eight functions or universal laws, set out in a conventional and logical sequence should be related to the principles listed below with their corresponding hermetic attribute:

1. Frequency – the principle of vibration
2. Interaction – the principle of cause and effect
3. Sacred Geometry – the principle of correspondence
4. Immanent consciousness – the principle of mentalism
5. Correspondence – the principle of rhythm
6. Synchronicity – the hidden principle
7. Chaos – the principle of polarity
8. Arrow of Complexity – the principle of gender

Every universe has its own ‘local’ laws, which in the case of our universe we calculate as being eight. Outside our field of interest it makes no sense to number something other than for allegorical representation. There is no point in numbering the primeval laws or the laws of another universe or the primeval emanations of Consciousness. At those levels the concept of numbers loses all significance.

From the eight basic functions, all the successive energetic, dimensional and space-time dynamics are triggered and therefore the laws that on our specific plane of existence are described, for lack of a more elegant and all encompassing formula, as electromagnetic, gravitational and strong or weak nuclear forces.

These metaphysics are a kind of pre-quantum physics rather than a transcendental physics.

Now consider the following table, which will be looking at again in the course of our assessment. You will see the fundamental functions of our universe (derivative laws) listed and their correlation to certain elements of different esoteric disciplines.

For a more in-depth look at the nature and functions of each derivative law please consult my book ‘Soul and Reality’, Appendix I. – http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/dorofatti

[1] It would be true to say that the most altered state of consciousness is really that of our daily lives which is absurd in comparison to the states of ecstasy and meditation that undoubtedly correspond to more authentic perceptions of the self and reality.
[2] We are talking about an essay of Hermetic philosophy published in the United States in 1908, the work of ‘Three Initiates’, formally indicated as written by anonymous authors even though it is almost certain that they were William W. Atkinson (who had already published work under the pseudo name of Yogi Ramacharaka, (a name borrowed perhaps from his former oriental master), Paul F. Case (member of the Golden Dawn and founder of a schismatic movement) and Mabel Collins, the noted Theosophist and pupil of Helena P. Blavatsky, author of the fundamental occult treatise Light on the Path.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Esoteric Physics and Modern Physics

In contemporary Physics strings[1] are infinitesimal particles of matter. Scientific research, with the use of increasingly powerful accelerators, has obtained an immense quantity of data on the constitution of matter. String Theory proposes that all particles emerge from different types of interaction between strings and are held in four constituent families of matter. However, in contracting, stable or infinitely expanding models of the universe, the quantity of matter necessary to justify its existence does not meet with experimental observation. The missing part, defined as ‘dark matter’ still awaits the right theoretical setting, which may or may not result as definable. Therefore it will not necessarily be rational research that justifies the nature of existence and or its reasons for being. We can also assume the burden of such research and claim the right to adopt a different approach to its problems; alternative methods can be just as dignified as classic ones if conducted with common sense and enthusiasm.

In its current state it would seem that less than 5% of the universe comprises normal particles, protons and neutrons leaving the rest of the universe made up of, as yet, unrevealed constituents. Looking at it in extreme synthesis, we can say the theory of ‘dark matter’ states, of all the matter-energy in play in the cosmos only 4-5% is visible: the galaxies, planets, we ourselves, and the light and heat of the stars. More or less 23% is formed from dark matter and the remaining 73% by dark energy. The parallel between an awareness of reality and an awareness of ourselves becomes clearly evident. It is said that we use only 5% of our brains, 5% of our DNA (scientists are asking themselves what the rest is for, or even if it is ‘waste’!) and we are only conscious of ourselves 5% of the time and, that is on a good day. It is natural that in such conditions, we only perceive 5% of reality: all the rest is ‘dark’.

Paradoxically, however, it is We (that is our constantly active and operating consciousness) who create reality. All of it.
Always and entirely with the totality of ourselves, whether we are aware of it or not.

A precise correspondence exists between the awareness of what we are and the perception of the reality that surrounds us, given that the latter is nothing more than an extension of ourselves! English novelist Henry M. Tomlinson said that: “We see things not as they are but as we are ourselves”. This is what we do on our plane of existence, at the level of our current consciousness, which is limited, vulnerable and programmable. Therefore the un-conscious with all its hopes and fears is nothing more than the unsuspected extension of ourselves in the ‘Great Beyond’, with all its angels, demons entities and monsters: it is nothing more than our own dark matter, with all its aliens and mysteries! And for those who are interested in global control and manipulation, the unconscious must always remain in a limited state; otherwise we would reawaken to the infinite consciousness of which we are all the expression and fulfilment!

This is why – in as much as we are human beings – we are so important, so unique: because it is within our power to create reality, any kind of reality. So important in fact that, those who are signalled out by the various esoteric cultures as our jailers (subtle, dimensional, alien etc…), actually have great need of us because the power to forge reality was only given to us humans, though at a higher level of awareness than our current one.

Therefore all ‘they’ have to do is encourage us to create the most suitable reality for them. It is made strong through of our lack of conscious awareness and they nourish themselves on it, prospering from the reality that we have created. We are totally brainwashed by their systems of persuasion, which slowly assign us the role of dominator on the one hand and dominated on the other.

The concepts of parallel worlds, echo-worlds and ultra light, contemporary and interpenetrating planes of existence have always been part of ancient cosmogonist traditions and likewise the complex conception of the human being and its soul.

Some recent considerations by modern astrophysicists, on the problem of the missing mass (in which the effects of gravitation are revealed), lead us to consider the possibility of interference from hypothetical, parallel or hyper-compressed worlds, which perhaps in turn constitute a multi-dimensional super-world: This is the Real as seen by physicists. Contrary to prevailing theories of physics our kind of metaphysics privileges a coherent and undulatory vision of reality that is not at all indeterministic.

In the infinitely small – just as at all scales – the mechanism of creation and universal evolution renews itself. It is well known that matter consists of more void than content and according to esoteric thought, in every atom, in every quark and even in the tiniest particle of matter that we might care to consider, it renews itself continuously, instant by instant, on all planes from inside the dynamics of the void, energy and creation.

Every object, whether it be living or inanimate, infinitesimal or gigantic, elementary or complex, has its own material parts, energy, subtle bodies, soul and spiritual essence at a level of self-awareness in proportion to its biological and existential complexity.

Inside the material world the clash between the void and time is renewed, the fundamental laws are modulated on various scales and, just as the macrocosm is sensitive to the ‘Mind of God’, in its smallness, every object is sensitive to the mind of the inner god in each one of us when opportunely conscious and operative.

The power of the mind lies in the power of creation and the transformation of the universal hologram at different levels, from illusion (the power of Maya, as the Hindus call it) to the intrinsic reality of all things. Transformations are achieved when we ourselves apply our reawakened consciousness to reality and know how to lead it back to the Absolute Being, to the One, to the Real.

The Mind, or better still the use of real Thought, creates and determines everything moment by moment. It creates and determines the One and each and every single part in simultaneous harmony. That Mind, that Power, permeates all things: it is everywhere, it operates everywhere. We, you and I, each one of us is a channel for this power which creates everything.

Rol, the famous Italian psychic, maintained that he was able to enter into contact with the ‘intelligent spirit’ of each and every thing and to have therefore discovered the true secret of the Universe, in virtue of his reawakened spirit, by overcoming the barrier of physical laws. This was basically the secret of his power over the material world.

Just as the derivative laws are consolidated around the primordial essence (the peak) and in order to climb, mass on successive levels of reality (time matrices, natural laws etc.), our identities (divine, mental, astral, biological etc.) collect around our inner spiritual essence, similar to the constellations of the zodiac – not by chance adopted by the ancients to reflect our characters – around a central Sun.

From the real to the transcendent, from God, who creates and transforms the infinite, to you who are creating and browsing this site, the same mechanism is expressed. The same power.

[1] In physics, ‘String Theory’ is currently under development and aims to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity and seems to have all the necessary characteristics for becoming a ‘Theory of Everything’. It is founded on the principle in which matter, energy and under certain hypotheses, space and time are manifestations of physical entities below which, according to the number of dimensions they develop in, they are called ‘Strings’.

Monday, August 20, 2012
Behind the ‘Scenes’: Entities and Aliens

The Spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain.

Aleister Crowley

We conventionally call ‘psycho-creatures’ all those intelligences that, following a certain esoteric terminology, distinguish themselves as:

· Divinities
· Egregors
· Guardians, angels and angelicity
· Demons
· Energized thought forms and subtle creatures (or extra-dimensional beings that manifest in
the same manner)
· Disincarnate presences and helpers
· Planetary spirits, elementals and those of nature
· Larvae and ‘shells’ or phantoms.

All these entities make up a complex multi-dimensional and spiritual ecosystem, as well as the energy food chain in which we are immersed and participate regardless of whether we are aware of it or not.

In general terms we can say that each one of these:

· Originates from a human aspect or from a personal a/o collective human projection
· Represents more or less active and intelligent ‘information’
· Superimposes itself or presides over an energetic/physical field, influencing its dynamics at various levels
· Nourishes itself on vital a/o psychic a/o spiritual energy
· Can enter into communication with the human being for different reasons and in different ways
· Its manifestation can determine itself or be determined with great holographic versatility, influenced by the thought and suggestions that are applied to it.

Every psycho-creature contains and manages forces of a lower level, directing events in order to safeguard the territory from which it receives the energetic nourishment used for its own maintenance and development. The most complex entities ‘know’ how to cultivate their own resources by creating a suitable spiritual and subtle habitat, more or less in symbiosis with the human being and its evolution. The entities of a lower level often create a parasitic relationship with the energies or Form with which they enter into contact.

The human being is part of this spiritual eco-system and, as a bridge-Form, should be its evolved interpreter in relation to the material world.

If we are living in an eco-system, it is normal that beings from many other dimensions enter into contact with us or even make ‘use’ of us. According to esoteric tradition, extra a/o multi-dimensional Forms exist and continuously interact with us even though we do not realize it.

Perhaps in a previous phase of evolutionary human immaturity these entities – of different orders and degree – might have eventually constituted a scale of values towards the Real and Consciousness. Today, however, the psychic, astral, subtle or divine planes, as we often call them, are populated by entities that have absolved themselves of their function and now cloud and distance the human being from his essence and the reality of things, be they devils, spirits, angels or ‘God’.

The time is right. We need to proceed with a change in consciousness, to purify, liberate and acknowledge that which lies in each one of us: our most profound Essence.

Incidentally, from this point of view ufological phenomenon and contactism can be considered part of a much wider scenario of the esoteric sciences or of those disciplines that study the link between our inner and outer worlds. There is no real demarcation between our consciousness and the object perceived by it. In the evaluation of UFO phenomena, extraterrestrials and aliens, and certainly before we push ourselves to classify races and draw conclusions as to their ‘agendas’, we have to establish if these entities are connected to ‘alternative realities’.

The ufologist and classic contactee do not usually concern themselves with this.
Even less so the abductee[1], with good reason, if acting on good faith with interpretations of phenomena (because here we are only talking about interpretations) that insist on terrifying scenarios. They exclude – perhaps because they do not know – keys to reading that take into account vaster perspectives. For example the disciplines of trans-humanistic psychology, esoteric physics, the anthropology of the sacred and in the final analysis, reality and consciousness.

The UFO phenomenon seems to interact with the collective psyche and if the collective psyche ‘takes on’ certain forms, it might well take on those forms that make themselves available. If at a collective level we were to modify such a paradigm, we could verify if such phenomena assume different connotations just as physics theorizes on how phenomena behave according to the conditions of observation.

UFOs – the genuine manifestations – appear when they find the right psychic contents that will give shape to them, including solid form.
I know that it seems simplistic to reduce them to manifestations of consciousness but in the current context it helps if we consider other mechanisms from a higher level of observation.

For now, though, let’s limit ourselves and begin with the idea that we are talking about a Form which is given energy that is part of an aspect of reality we have yet to discover.

The UFO phenomena represents a window on the beyond and also encourages us to investigate just how much is alien inside of us or at least to recognize how tightly we are bound to what we have been taught to believe the world is all about.

Adopting a dualistic scheme (good-evil), reality assumes those self-same connotations. The forces of evil perceived as real and hostile and perhaps also materialized through UFO phenomena, could in reality be entities generated and nourished by us. They could be an effect of human behaviour that has lasted for millennia and not the historical cause of our status[2].

The awakening has to begin from inside of us. It is we who lend ourselves to games of illusion, deceit and pillage. There are many political, social, religious and cultural realities that tend to perpetuate what is a mechanism of energetic ‘vampirism’. This is certainly one of the causes of Evil and it has been generated by Mankind itself. Continuing to perceive reality in terms of a good-evil dualism results in modifying the structure of what is real. We are capable of creating all the hells and paradises that we want. If we leave behind the idea of sin, the devil, the messiah and the enemy or the sheep-shepherd-wolf paradigm and the need to be continually reassured and saved (concepts of the Judaic-Christian matrix that have distorted the values of the New Age itself), the phenomenon would probably change

A metaphysical hypothesis with regard to the UFO phenomenon has already been explored by Carl G. Jung. In fact the pioneer of psychology often concerned himself with the UFO phenomenon in his writings and in particular in his celebrated essay A Modern Myth: the things that one sees in the sky, interpreting them as unconscious psychic representations linked to collectively relevant events.
After Jung, the scientist Jacques Vallée, who worked as an astronomer and collaborator with NASA in the 1970’s took up the theme again but was fiercely opposed by the international ufological community. Its researchers were relentless in their desire to give the phenomenon – be it physical or psychic – a connotation of an interference that is somewhat ‘other’ in respect to our reality, preferring to place it on the physical rather than para-physical plane.

Nevertheless, in that same period, psychedelic experiences – the main interest of neuro-physicians, anthropologists, botanists and a plethora of ‘flower children’ (the roles often coincided!) – later brought to the attention of a wider public by Carlos Casteneda[3], seem to give serious credit to a far from simple interpretation of the question.

We should also not exclude the effect on reality a/o the psyche provoked by experiments with time and holographic technology, whether they be of this world or another.

Terence McKenna, in True Hallucinations, affirms with great optimism that: «… The UFO is a reflection of a future event that promises humanity’s eventual mastery over time, space and matter.[…] I am even more convinced that the answer to all of these mysteries that shake our classic view of the world is to be understood by looking inside ourselves.[…] The paths of the heart lead to nearby universes, full of life and benevolent feelings towards humanity. »

I feel it is important not to underestimate the para-physical (and esoteric[4]) interpretation of a phenomenon, that is certainly and undeniably becoming more ‘frequent’, in the search for the key to its manifestation.

The universe is a product of our consciousness and a projection of our senses: we are at one with the Absolute which, for some reason, presents itself in the form of different frequencies of energy and consciousness. They relate to one another and create, in our case, the image that constitutes our plane of existence and which appears to be three-dimensional and oriented in uni-directional time.

According to some, we (and our lives) are Maya, illusion, as portrayed in the film ‘Matrix’; according to others however, doubt cannot be cast upon our existence or at least our form of existence, which is significant in itself.

Reality could be positioned somewhere in between: we find ourselves in an illusion (and it is always good to remember that) which is nevertheless our reality (so we cannot possibly deny it).

All things considered it is better to not be hasty in drawing conclusions about the UFO phenomenon and the nature of ‘alien’ interference or even pretend to have definitively understood its nature or intentions (or ‘agenda’). The origin of such interference is not yet clear and definitive, just as the nature of the reality that we define as ‘physical’ and ‘material’ is not yet clear, especially when related to the dynamics of our psyche. And as William Shakespeare so aptly says in Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

We ourselves can be said to exist on a certain plane of existence, which is manifested and projected through dynamics that are not yet completely decoded. This ‘existing’ is nevertheless confined inside rather limited parameters and our current existence will in all probability result as being fictitious when compared in a broader sense.

Those wider parameters could relate to our nature which is likewise much more expansive than we realize and what is currently considered as supernatural or alien could, on another level, be the natural expression of reality and ourselves.

Our existence is played out in a sensorial circuit that we need to control and decrypt in order to give reality a chrism of truthfulness despite the fact that our senses are vibrating and testing that reality on the same frequencies. Although our senses give us the sensation of reality in all its physicality, it is only equivalent to its existential ‘plane’.

We are living at a historical moment in which culture and values are being re-examined and the same esoteric dimensions are being mixed together to reformulate a concept of reality: in this sense we are perhaps on the threshold of great changes.

We will go into the themes inherent in parallel worlds and the ‘separation of the planes’ in Appendix II. It is increasingly obvious that the certainties of our global village which have been consolidated up to now, be they material or spiritual, are disintegrating and re-organizing according to potential schemes that could take off in many different directions[5].

To describe their form I scatter rhymes no more,
reader, for other expense binds me
so, that in this I cannot be lavish.
But read Ezekiel, for he depicts them
as he saw them come from the cold quarter
with wind, with cloud, with fire;

Dante Alighieri – Purgatorio Canto XXIX, 97-102

[1] ‘Abductions’ (or close encounters of the fourth kind, according to the classification of the astrophysicist Allen
Hynek), the presumed kidnappings of human beings by alien entities, represent one of the most interesting and controversial aspects of the ufological phenomena. The problem was brought to the attention of researchers at the beginning of the 1960’s when the American academic John Fuller published a book The Interrupted Journey on the now famous experience of the married couple Barney and Betty Hill. They were placed under regressive hypnosis by the noted Boston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon and re-evoked a kidnapping episode on the part of small humanoids who, having led them on board a flying saucer, subjected them to a series of medical examinations.
[2] We should perhaps ask ourselves if abduction phenomena (with their many testimonials, memories emerging under hypnosis and implants) are not in their turn a deceptive cover up – or the opportunity seized and exploited to a fine art to conceal experimentation and military strategies which are tragically terrestrial!
[3] See also the accounts of Terence McKenna and the more recent studies of Luis Eduardo Luna and Graham Hancock regarding the psycho-active properties of psilocybin and DMT (dimetyltryptamine) in relation to phenomena of consciousness. I would also like to mention an interesting observation regarding this by William Braden (the father of Gregg) who, talking about the ‘drug problem’, in his book ‘The Private Sea: LSD and the Search for God’ (1967) writes: ‘The real danger of acid is not that it will damage the brain, or that it will cause young people to drop out of society. We already live with drugs such as alcohol which produce effects like that. No, the real danger of acid is that some of its users claim that LSD puts them in contact with the illusory nature of the material world. The real danger of acid is that some freak will journey to the centre of things, discover the movie projector that is producing this illusion, and turn it off!’
[4] Actually Crowley was amongst the first to experiment with peyote (which he took from Mexico to London) for magic purposes at the beginning of the last century!
[5] The position of the renowned academic and populariser Igor Sibaldi is also significant as regards this point – he talks about the nature of the Angel and Spirit Guides as ‘higher’ aspects of our own nature and of our trans-human psyche, individually and collectively. This perspective obliges us to re-examine the concept and practice of mediums (contactism or channelling if you want to call it that) and consider such phenomena as an instrument of transpersonal introspection. I will also take this opportunity to quote the following observation from Sibaldi: “The goal to aim for is a new dimension of existence in which each person dreams to set foot and finally be themselves, no longer prisoners of rigid, dangerous everyday schemes, no longer at the mercy of absurd prejudices and arid ways of thinking that stop them from being happy”.

Saturday, August 18, 2012
The Threshold or the Beyond

The extension of the self towards Awareness passes through an intermediate dimension between material Form and the Real that we can define as the ‘Threshold’, the Beyond or if we prefer the ‘Other Side’. When we dream or travel on the astral planes or carry out explorations on the frontier, as in ‘between one life and another’, we find ourselves in this Half-way World. Just as entry into the material world of Form passes through the world of numbers, the way out passes through the Threshold: in the first case realty fragments, in the second it reassembles.

We can imagine the Threshold as:

· Beyond our material world
· As an interregnum between parallel worlds
· Between the universe of Form and the Real.

We are talking about a hyperspace in which disincarnate souls arrive and withdraw: it is not ‘somewhere else’ but rather the extended projection of a growing being.

Our incarnate physical body is therefore only a dimensional fraction of the greater reality that constitutes the complex soul/body.

Following the logic of reincarnation, we can say that the Threshold hosts the passage of those packets of experiences known as Souls which, by means of one incarnation after another ideally complete themselves.

The sequence is usually thought of as: The Material World -The Other Side – The Absolute, or as Form-Threshold-Real.

Nevertheless everything is also reflected inside each and every thing: so let’s not limit ourselves to the representation of transcendent directions, but complete it with that of the – perhaps more significant – immanent.

The Real is therefore that which is beyond but also inside.

Take a look at these illustrations of levels of reality – created at different times using different logic and a diagram taken from the book No Boundary by Ken Wilber that I warmly recommend you to read.

My diagram represents reality ‘from high to low’; however the two extremes touch each other, without solutions of continuity. The most reduced level of reality is relative or individual (quasi-real), it is the point of departure on the scale of significance that continuously extending, leads to the Absolute. A reality in which through every single thing – on the various scales of interaction/perception/consciousness – one rediscovers the All.

We have to remember that the All is not ‘somewhere else’ in respect to where we find ourselves. Everything is Here and Now. It is necessary to acquire a new level of Consciousness to recognize and participate in the All through every idea and thing no matter how small or simple.

This diagram illustrates the development of reality according to three fundamental references: Being as the Subject, the Real as environment (object) and Consciousness intended as perception, knowledge and awareness applied to the various levels of possible reality. It is important to note that the distinction between Being, Real and Consciousness assumes a formal and non-substantial role.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The Absolute Being and Us

Being is infinitely transcendent and immanent: it is ‘beyond’ but it is also ‘every’ thing and ‘in every’ thing at every level (universe, planet or microbe). Recognizing the All in every single part is a question of awareness since the Absolute Being is always and everywhere.

We are now living in a perceptive convention, of space, matter, the past and the future. The priority of perception in respect to the phenomenon itself leads to the perceptive nature of that said reality, thus the phenomena of physics (but also that which we call ‘memory’ and ‘history’) are only real in proportion to our ability (and willingness) to conceive of them.

It is we ourselves – each one of us – that defines the frontiers and therefore the limits of reality or the line of reality that we decide to access. It is we who decide to activate what is ‘true’ with its laws and mechanisms, its past and future!

It is we who, here, right now, moment by moment, regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not, establish the sequence in which we stand, our subjective reality of reference: the pertinent quasi-real. It is we who establish in which suggestion of reality we live, individually and therefore collectively.

Consequently we establish what is true and what is not, what has been and what will be, along with all the mechanisms of reality that we want to reveal and the laws that we want to function. We set out what can exist and what cannot, what we want to discover and what cannot be discovered; in the present or in the past.

Can we heal with our vital energy? Perhaps yes, if we decide that it is so; or absolutely not, if we do not want to open up that line of possibility. Did Atlantis exist? Perhaps it did if we want to access a certain line of reality and then we find its archaeological remains; or not: and we do not find anything. Or for someone else Atlantis still exists. The mechanism is for the most part consensual but the nearer we get to the centre of our real identity the more this process of determining the truth becomes localized and personal. Someone sees and someone else does not, someone can and someone else cannot: and both are right! And perhaps the year 2012 – give or take a year – will be a watershed for different levels of humanity and reality. But no one will notice the change, each person having constructed their own level of subjective reality.

The real does not have a structure of its own that is distorted by our mental interpretations: all of our being has to agree on the determination of ideal reality; it has to be in tune with that part of ourselves and our faculties that we are unaware of and that lie latent.

If we do not move our barycentre towards our real identity, we are subject to the reality of our mind rather than the determiners of it: the reality of the mind which, if we are unable to do anything else, invents the stage, play and characters of a drama without purpose.

It is important to bear in mind that when we observe our universe ‘from the inside’ we can interpret each phenomenon only and exclusively in relation to how much it is part of our awareness and with the means and senses at our disposal.

Reality is much richer and more eloquent than we are used to settling for, just as our nature is more expansive and expressive. Material Form and its continued transformation as we perceive it in time (cause and effect) is nothing more than the three-dimensional reflection of the fractals of a complex interaction of phenomena, energies and forces operating in an extremely vast multi-polar and multi-dimensional universe.

God savours Himself. In the act of savouring himself, He savours all creatures, not because they are creatures but because they are God. God creates this entire world absolutely in this instant.

Meister Eckhart

Friday, August 10, 2012
Our Reality

‘Our world’ is a dimension which exists inside our current plane of existence but which belongs to a much wider possibility of lines of reality that are nevertheless part of the same ‘dimension’.

Our plane of existence appears solid and three-dimensional because we perceive things are solid to the touch and that time has a certain speed, which we measure in proportion to our perception of celestial dynamics.
These parameters determine the world of space-time-mass-energy that physics, astronomy, chemistry, the natural sciences and mathematics wish to interpret and exploit.

Inside a plane of reality or the reality that is commonly accepted as such, every individual develops their own personal dimension. Opinions and subjective meanings make up the individual ‘quasi-real’ (almost real), as defined by Theosophy.

The investigation of subjective dimensions is the concern of the human sciences, of psychology, sociology, and the arts and it is there, that mental and emotional dynamics, more than the perceptions of the senses, determine what is real.

Each one of us, beginning from our own quasi-real and our capacity to give significance to things can construct a bridge which reunites human experience to the All.

Let’s look at it in more depth and examine what lies ‘beyond’ our subjective representation of reality and beyond the conventional plane of our material, human and earthly existence.

Beyond the veil of the quasi-real and the consensual suggestion that delineates the borders of our plane of existence (or our physical three-dimensional reality), we find a more complex ‘supporting structure’ that constitutes a much broader dimensional reality.

This wider level of reality or rather the combination of the band of frequencies in which our specific frequency is to be found, constitutes our dimension (our plane of existence), along with other possible frequencies or lines of reality that are dimensionally compatible with one another.
This dimension is our ‘world’, one of the numerous possible parallel worlds to be found among numerous dimensions and bands of possible frequencies.

The universe of material Form as a whole consists of our world united to many other worlds-dimensions, defined as ‘parallel worlds’. They are also described as such in the models of the universe explored by mathematics and physics.

The multi-world theory is not new; the first to introduce it was Hugh Everett in 1957. There are worlds, multiple worlds in our universe and each one develops on the basis of the dynamics derived from primeval energies and forces. For this reason we define and codify them as derivative laws. I use the term ‘laws’ even though it would be more appropriate to call them ‘phenomena’: the world is not made of ‘laws’ but of phenomena and we tend to codify them on the basis of our ability to interpret reality.

These same derivative laws, that we can imagine ruling our universe, become something even more specific at a dimensional level: In every world-dimension the fundamental laws correspond to a specific version of themselves and then by specializing on each plane of reality they become the ‘physical laws’ that we know of as gravity, electromagnetism and nuclear forces etc.

We can see that as we slowly descend into the material world the same dynamics are repeated but on different levels and scales. It begins with the primeval laws at the level of the ‘multi-verses’; from there universal functions (derivative laws), are generated that function inside every specific universe. In the possible dimensions of our universe the derivative laws apply themselves to time, or better in time, seen as a flow from the past to the future and are known as ‘time’ (or temporal) matrices.

These matrices, which are different in every dimension, finally become the physical laws of each plane of existence, or the reality that is perceived at our current psycho-biological level.
The sequence is therefore as follows:

The ‘parallel worlds’ – just as all possible states of being – are not ‘from somewhere else’ but, vibrating on different frequencies, they are all contemporary and interpenetrate.

In every temporally oriented world the derivative laws combine in a different way. Just as the respective time matrixes that operate on the dimensions are different, so too are the ‘physical’ laws that operate on each specific plane of existence.

Let’s look at the diagram which begins from the individual ‘quasi-real’ and slowly rises.

1. Subjective reality is the plane of existence filtered by the individual quasi-real
2. The plane of existence is a dimensional world filtered by the senses of a species (consensual reality)
3. A dimensional world (or parallel world) is the result of the Universe filtered by time matrices (or, alternatively by the senses of more complex entities)
4. The Universe as a whole is the multi-verse filtered by derivative laws (or by the senses of higher entities) and the final one is the ‘REAL’ filtered by primeval laws (or by the senses of higher ‘Consciousnesses’)
5. In the end (everywhere and always) we have the REAL, the Absolute; unmediated Being.

To sum up: the existent is not traceable in different ‘places’, but through the analysis and the differentiation of ‘filters’ and ‘vibrations’. The REAL, everything, is here. Now, at this moment.

Our physical senses serve to define the reality that surrounds us, or better still our field of possible experiences. They are calibrated in such a way as to filter our field of reality.
They are not used therefore to perceive but rather to limit perceivable reality which is then processed by our respective conscious and mental patterns.

Aldous Huxley, in his Doors of Perception offers us a very interesting view of this idea:

According to such a theory[1], each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and the nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us stay alive on the surface of this Particular planet.

Our specific plane of existence is therefore determined by two main filters: the senses and the personal mind. However, in this historical-evolutionary moment, we find ourselves in a condition of severe handicap, which does not allow us to truly live the reality that should be our ‘province’.

Our incarnation ought to correspond to a level of reality– and therefore be structured by our vehicle of consciousness – that is much higher than that currently found on this planet, in this line of material reality.

[1] A reference to a theory of Bergson according to which ‘The function of the brain, the nervous system and the organs of the senses are principally eliminatory and not productive’.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012
The Concept of Reality

Therefore I offer you my contemplations on the infinite universe and the innumerable worlds.

Giordano Bruno

The entire creative process happens instantaneously, simultaneously and continuously. There is no beginning but rather a combination of states and intensity of Being diversely modulated and invigorated by phenomena operating on the reference plane of existence.

Inside every tiny particle of conceivable matter this process renews itself continuously. The creative energy emits directions and planes with different densities and variables and yet every thing is connected with the All, and every one of its smallest constituent parts contains the infinite.

Time

Just as with space and the things and beings that surround us, time is also the fruit of an illusion of the mind: time itself is part of the great experiential theatre created for the evolutionary goals of Consciousness.

Time is in its own way a manifestation of primordial Energy, of the All. For us it becomes the indispensable instrument through which we express and read our perceptive experiences – which have descended into this manifestation – and therefore through which we give significance to this form of existence: to events to life, to ‘history’.
But if we separate from our material nature, we can emancipate ourselves from our limits in space and time and interact with reality outside of the limits of the cause and effect established by our current mind: we can access a superior level of relationship with reality, with power over illusion and synchronicity. Or, at least, remind ourselves that our reality is nothing more than a theatrical representation and, by going behind the scenes every now and again we can ‘return home’.

On a technical plane, ‘time’ more than anything else is the ‘container of possibilities’: an immense circular sphere of the eternal present. There is no flow; everything is there, to design a complex geography of potential events. It is a multi-dimensional field curved in on itself, just like space. The universe is in itself non-local, or indistinct, contemporaneous and simultaneous: The One.
Nevertheless, within the confines of the universal field, time, expressed and perceived in a chronological sense, is important and indispensable: it serves to measure growth, to give a sense of reading (and therefore a sense of consciousness) to the transformation of events or the material world of Form at every level.

Levels of Reality

To explore ‘reality’ we have to begin from the supposition that what our current senses perceive is nothing more than one of its possible aspects, or a manifestation consistent with our perceptive and elaborative possibilities. We are talking about a kind of meditation (or better still many levels of meditation) and consequently of a meeting point between the Absolute, higher levels of reality, the mind and the biological senses that limit our experience.

Everything that we participate in is ‘just’ our plane of existence, or the current reality:

· Three-dimensional
· Human
· Terrestrial
· Consensual

Our plane of existence is the result of a sensorial circuit of a consensual and conventional kind; therefore, it is all relative. It is the result of the meeting between all that is and that which can be differentiated and perceived through the exercise of our current senses. They in their turn are developing so that a possible level of consciousness can interpret this existence and attribute ever more complex significance to it, transcending and identifying it as an aspect of the Absolute. It is thus transformed from mechanics (field of laws) to awareness (field of choice), or from a precarious and unstable manifestation to an incorruptible presence, from the chaotic illusions of the senses to an aware experience of consciousness.

Our reality is – to all intents and purposes – a bubble of appearances: and we have the task (the challenge?) of making it real and everlasting in the Absolute by means of ourselves.

The thoughts – and the considerations that follow – need to be seen in the context of spiritual, alchemical and magical disciplines and therefore with ‘another’ kind of sensitivity – or perhaps with a more authentic sensitivity that we have yet to reawaken – rather than be investigated with the rational mind. We need to use the breath of the thinking heart, as I like to call it: try to read, understand and absorb these ideas with your body, your heart and not just with your brain.

Use the breath. Feel the correspondence and the call of truth inside yourself. But be careful: we are not talking about expedients. It is necessary to use all your experience to comprehend, so that reading and study becomes a real meditation practice, a kind of yoga-study. Learning to use other parts of yourself to navigate with a new and different logic helps to break away from the ordinary rhythm of the mind. It is necessary to change perspective and comprehend new stimuli on many levels; otherwise there is no point in proceeding. These themes are meditation practices and not just ideas to store in your head.

For example, in the practice of Jnana Yoga (the path of knowledge) the liberation (Moksha) and therefore the union with God can be acquired for half the knowledge of Brahman, recognizing Brahman as your own Self. The liberation from Samsāra (the cycle of birth and death) is achieved thanks to the realization of the identity of the individual soul (Jīva) in the Supreme Soul.

This mainstay of Vedanta philosophy considers metaphysical ignorance (Avidya) the cause of all human suffering and attachment to the material world: it acts like a veil (Maya) preventing Jīva from perceiving her real and divine nature. In its smallness and ignorance the individual soul convinces itself that it is separate and different from Brahman. The knowledge of Brahman (or Brahma Jnana) removes this veil allowing Jīva to re-establish herself in her own essential nature: Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence, Knowledge, Beatitude).

Sunday, August 5, 2012
The Creation of the Material Worlds

It happened, when this our Great inversion took place, from the essence of all nothingness to finity extended in innumerable categories, that an incalculably vast system was produced. Merely by chance, chance in the truest sense of the term, we are found with gods, men, stars, planets, devils, colours, forces and all the materials of the Cosmos: and with time, space and causality, the conditions limiting and involving them all.

Aleister Crowley[1], BERASHITH – 1902

According to esoteric, kabbalistic and alchemical cosmogenesis – but in many ways, also in terms of modern physics – the material world (energy/mass) is not immediately generated as an effect of the clash between primeval forces (primeval laws), rather its creation, considered from the point of view of the human being, follows a series of passages: the process of creation happens in non-time, however, in order to understand this idea we need to make use of logical sequences in order to describe it.

Our Universe is above all a concept:

· Manifold
· Diversified
· Dynamic

Concepts that are translated into a temporal, dimensional and spatial universe.
At the beginning reality is virtual and not yet translated into matter-life-perception-experience. Its existence is only potential: at the act of creation we are still in the field of inexistent Being, in the World of Ideas.
The inexistent is the field that renders true that which is existent and real, through ‘existential significance’ attributing significance to things, life, emotions and thought.

The Absolute is Nothingness and the All.
Nothingness is the All without Consciousness.
The All is Nothingness full of Consciousness.

The creation processes happen outside of creation itself, therefore outside of time. They generate a field that is already the expression of Being but ‘inexistent’. In that state the universe is inexistent because we cannot perceive it, try it out, or give it significance: to do those things we need relationship, or growth. We need time/space, that is, a filter which is able to distinguish and scan reality and the evolved interaction between diversity.

In order to do this we use the mind. The mind is strictly correlated to the phenomena of time and space: It is the instrument for scanning and fixing. Everything comes down to the mind and eventually we have to act to evade it, in order to travel in or manipulate time and space, but that is another story…

The World of Ideas – or the Macrocosmic Mind – is the chaotic and virtual container of all times and of all manifestations and possible existential directions, without any of them being defined: it is the eternal present, the ‘sphere of Time’ where everything is, but does not exist. It corresponds to the kabbalistic Ain-Soph, the Thelemic[2] body of Nuit, which defines the universal field of the possible and keeps it unified.
Now, we can but try to make an interpretative synthesis of the various cosmogeneses, handed down to us through the images of myth and those of Western and Eastern religions.

In order for material Form to manifest a direction in time is needed, or the possibility of a relationship with multiplicity, space and perception.

In the world of ideas, or in the concept of a universe created by a vibrational wave from Absolute Consciousness, absolute nothingness (a potential but non-existent universe) enters into relationship with absolute time (the container of all ‘existent’ possibilities) emitting an infinitely creative energy, that will orient itself according to a new geometry of laws from which dimensions and existential levels will ensue: the creation.

The Egyptians assigned this role to the Creator God, who was not Ra, in as much as he was absolute Consciousness and all encompassing, but Ptah, the Demiurge God. Today modern science is investigating all of this in mathematical terms, both theoretically and experimentally.

We try to interpret these processes moment by moment, not outside but inside ourselves in relation to reality and its ‘keys of access’. Because it is inside of us, in the depths of our divine essence that all of this is continuously carried out. According to esoteric thought, it is we, who are the representative particles of this same Consciousness and Cosmic Energy: the creators of all-that-is-and-ever-will be.

According to Esoteric Physics, the process of creating worlds, galaxies and all existing things – all that will become life and evolution – passes through what we would traditionally define as the world of numbers: a space-time or ‘vibrational’ sieve. In this case we are not talking about the concept of numbers as we think of them mathematically but as numerical relationships rather than single entities. The ‘world of numbers’ is precisely a dimension in itself, the link between the world of ideas (unitary) and the potential world of the material (manifold). The world of numbers and the pattern of relationships that define the measurements of so called ‘sacred geometry’ is therefore the matrix of the manifest world. The same mechanism that geometrically identifies the material world and its objects, we find reflected in the systems that codify life and its possible evolutionary directions: DNA, is our ‘antenna’ for tuning in on reality.

Human Consciousness – which in fact is not yet ‘human’ until it has truly realized the experience of ‘humanity’ – has to conduct its evolution inside this universal scheme: it reflects itself or better still, it instils itself into the material world of Form to trigger a process of self-awareness, that contemporaneously renders every thing ‘true’ by making it ‘exist’ in absolute terms. With this in mind, it is perhaps useful to re-elaborate the modern myth of ‘ascension’: it is not we who have to ‘ascend’ to the fifth dimension or wherever (if it is, it has always been, here and now and is therefore ‘our home’) but it is the fifth dimension (it is God!) that wants to apply itself to this possible existence: and we are the vehicle! In fact: we are IT.

[1] In the course of the book I will be quoting from Aleister Crowley – just as I will refer to Theosophy, Gurdjieff,
Aurobindo, Krishnamurti, Osho and many others. However, every time Crowley is mentioned there are those who are immediately scandalized. They are undoubtedly ill-prepared on the subject and have been mislead by the amount of nonsense in circulation regarding a figure who, though certainly controversial, willingly and unwillingly, is worth discovering and considering. I would like to reassure readers that despite his audacious experimentation at the height of the Victorian era; his anarchistic and provocative looks and a certain extravagance that could render him strangely unpleasant – Crowley was not the founder of Satanism, even though he was anti-clerical. And he never sacrificed or ate children. That said, I do not think that Crowley needs me to defend him and as for the rest I am not willing to take it on board. However, I do acknowledge the breadth of his work in setting out the theory and practice of a magic–realization of the Self in the light of new existential and spiritual paradigms. He was without doubt among its precursors when the Age of Aquarius or the New Era had yet to be talked about.

[2] With this adjective I am referring to the concepts and experiences that inspire the research themes and magic-mystical practice recovered and brought to life by Aleister Crowley in the early years of the last century. The Thelemic path (from Thelema, which in Greek means Will) better known as Current 93 (the number, according to the Greek Kabbalah that is associated both with the word Will and Love, thus establishing a link between the two principles), has been further developed by successive Initiate Orders which when not deviate or contaminated, form a bridge between esoteric traditions and the avant-garde of esoteric research at the dawn of this New Era. As far as I am concerned the Thelemic path has become the most ‘up to date’ body of doctrine and knowledge and the principle technical reference for those who, always maintaining the necessary caution, wish to approach Magic in its many forms.

Saturday, July 28, 2012
The Breath of Brahma

According to mythical images, Consciousness (or perhaps that aspect of Absolute Consciousness that we might include in the concept of ‘Cosmic-Human Soul’) expresses an act of will and creative love. It emanates, it is a vibration with the ability to generate a wave of existence: to manifest itself from this Cosmos in which laws and significance are progressively discovered. It will assume a shape and consistency that can be perceived and lived by consciousness, infused in the dimensions and bodies that will take on material Form, life, thoughts, entities and gods in the making.

We are all of this. Each one of us is an emanation of the Absolute Consciousness. Even though, paradoxically, we stop being so until we rediscover our primordial and eternal nature. This arrives through an understanding of renewed existential formulas or else through discovering the meaning of our life, the knowledge and experience of which must lead to the re-evolution of Cosmic Consciousness in time.

In Hindu metaphor this process is expressed as the great breath of Brahma which creates and destroys worlds in an incessant cyclical rhythm. God breathes out and the universe proceeds from the appearance of laya, or neutral centre, or else from the primordial meeting point of forces: the field of aggregation. With the intake of breath the universe is called back to the source and ceases to exist, but on the act of breathing out again manifestation begins anew.
Being (Para-Brahman) reveals itself in this field of forces, presented by Cosmic Consciousness in the form of Human Consciousness. Thus Being and Consciousness reveal and show themselves, they fragment and recompose: DISSOLVE and COAGULATE.
In the ultimate analysis, what is the voice of the Self if not the boom of God’s breath in our inner silence? The memory of the primordial Will?

29. For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.
30. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.

Aiwass – Liber AL vel Legis, I

In Islamic tradition it is said: “I was a treasure unknown then I desired to be known so I created a Creation to which I made myself known, then they knew Me”. The question of being and the soul has occupied eminent philosophers and thinkers from Parmenide to Eraclitus, from Socrates to Plato and Plotinus, resurfacing after centuries of ‘darkness’ in the Middle Ages with Cusanus, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Pico of Mirandola and Bacon of the Renaissance: a period in which the great Christian philosophers such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas nevertheless managed to make their mark. And finally with the most recent illuminists – Hume, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte and Nietzsche – to arrive at a peak in the magic and Thelemic-Hermetic renaissance of the early years of last century. I personally like to single them out as a forewarning of scientific, cultural, social and political ferment.

Today all of this can be translated into the language of Physics. Think for example of the concept of the holographic universe (Bohm, Aspect, Pribram) which, in the 1980’s, explained how the known material world is nothing more than the illusory multi-form projection of a single source.

To illustrate this point, below I include several excerpts from the famous article Does Objective reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm? by Michael Talbot – Ref: https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=4807

Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.
[…]
According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than –light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own. . […]. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality. Such particles are not separate ‘parts’ but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity. […] And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these ‘eidolons’, the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.
In addition to its phantom like nature, such a universe would possess rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected. The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats and every star that shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.
In a holographic universe even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, (like the images of the fish on the TV monitors) would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order. At its deeper level reality is a sort of super hologram in which the past, present and future exist simultaneously. […]
If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole. The ‘whole in every part’ nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order.
[…]
Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the super hologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be – every configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of ‘All That Is’.
[…]
Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions.
But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram’s holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm’s theory. For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is ‘there’ is actually a holographic blur of frequencies and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.
We are really ‘receivers’ floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the super hologram
This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram’s views, has come to be called the-holographic-paradigm and although many scientists have greeted it with scepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. […]
In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic level.
[…]
The holographic paradigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain produces consciousness. Rather it is consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain – as well as the body and everything around us we interpret as physical.
Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused researchers to point out that medicine and our under standing of the healing process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is but a holographic projection of consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible for our health than current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in consciousness which in turn effect changes in the hologram of the body.
Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may work so well because in the holographic domain of thought, images are ultimately as real as ‘reality’. […]
What we perceive as reality is only a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it any picture we want. […]
Perhaps we agree on what is ‘there’ or ‘not there’ because what we call consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected.

Sunday, July 22, 2012
Metaphysical and Multi-dimensional Scenarios

Then there was not non-existent nor existent:
there was no realm of air, nor sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter?
was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal:
no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider.
That one thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature
apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness,
this All was indiscriminate chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless;
by the great power of warmth was born that unit.

Thereafter rose desire in the beginning,
Desire after the primal seed and germ of spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart’s thought
discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.

Transversely was their severing line extended:
what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces,
Free action here and energy of yonder.

Who verily knows and who can here declare it,
whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The gods are later than this world’s production.
Who knows, then, whence it first came into being?

He the origin of this creation,
whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven,
He verily knows it, or perhaps he knows it not.

Rig Veda X.129 – The Song of Creation
(circa 3.900 a.C.)
Sanskrit translation: Friedrich Max Müller

The Birth of the World

The world is being born now. It is being born continuously. At this very moment, Consciousness creates its possible expressions: Evolution determines its manifestation. Depending on our level of Consciousness and Evolution we as beings participate in it more or less consciously.

The myths of every epoch and its peoples seem to agree that ‘universes’ are born in a primordial and transcendent nothingness from the dreams of an Absolute Consciousness as anomalous waves in the sea of All.

The Supreme Being can thus know itself and understand itself through the universes, just as our image is reflected in a mirror. Each universe is the expression of a new and different equilibrium: each one becomes, in its own way, a relative manifestation that is temporal and dynamic of the All.

Together the universes comprise an infinite ‘multi-versal’ kaleidoscope. They are reflected in that which the Absolute Being acquires infinite Consciousness of Itself, even though it is immobile, generative, eternally omni-comprehensive and totally complete as such.

The Being nourishes itself. The primordial universes give ‘substance’ to the dreams of God, where every reality can exist. These same universes – each and every part – are generated by primordial energies which, in their turn, become archetypes and cosmic phenomena, laws, geometries and vital processes: the instruments through which Consciousness – in its turn distributed on diverse levels – evolves in every atom, in every cell, in every body and in every thought.

In extreme synthesis, interpreting esoteric tradition, these levels of consciousness are represented as primordial ‘forces’ laws and intelligent entities. They are the Eons, according to Gnostic Christian terminology, the Neteru of Egyptian myth or perhaps we might even call them, the ‘Great Old Ones’, to re-evoke the vertiginous visions of H.P. Lovecraft. They are the existential and conscious Archetypes (or pre-Archetypes) of our mind itself: the Primeval Divinities.

In order to exist, the possible expressions of reality have to expand the territory of their own awareness, with the aim of recognizing themselves and finally reconstructing themselves but above all, of re-evolving in the infinite in which they originate, through endless combinations of the possible.
It is as if – paradoxically – the Absolute is insatiable in renewing Consciousness of itself. And every time such Consciousness is dissolved into Nothingness to then create itself again, it renews itself: such dynamics are at once eternal and yet simultaneous, infinite and pulsating, between manifest and immanifest, noumenon and phenomenon, omniscience and exploration, eternity and becoming, order and chaos.

Our Universe, in its entirety, is none other than one of these systems of reality: an opportunity for renewed awareness. It is the crystal in which Consciousness splinters into fragments, little by little delineating possible geometries, to then reflect itself infinitely, to evolve and in the final analysis, play hide and seek with itself.