MBM in discussion with Training Group

answers to questions

March, 1946

Subjects touched upon:                   Evolution

Wisdom lore, nature of.                  Jason story

Heritage                                Stature

self and Self                            Soul

Objects of training                      Archetypal pattern

Aquarian Age                             Destiny

                                        Beyond the subconscious

                                        Incarnation

                                        Communism vs democracy

1. on the nature of Wisdom-lore. Ans. It strikes a chord of response. Often you can uncover the deeper areas in yourself.  It may get into the waking consciousness, too.  And there may have been a contact with that layer in some other life; some memory of it may have been touched in the deeper areas and some reaction of that come through; some interest or rapport; or as something that started a deep reaction in the self.  Or it may be that something in the stages of the individual are in analogous condition to that part of the story which has been read.  In other words, there are many, many reasons for it, its affect.

1. To what extent is heritage likely to come through ordinarily; to how much greater extent in training? Ans. It depends on the degree of training, the intensity in the training, the cooperation in the training. It comes through in a kind of general way in everybody’s life, because the quota of what is actually, or essentially, you is going to be the factor that cooperates or conflicts with inheritance and environment.  Some degree of it will be left in everyone’s life.  It may be a small proportion but it is likely to be there.  It can mean many things.  It can mean trends or tendencies which are already being developed, which have received a certain degree of impetus and are on the way of expressing themselves.

It may also be in terms of negativism, – biases, prejudices.  It is not all on the good side: evasions, bitterness, willfulness of any marked degree — those are in the heritage, too.  Must remain there until they are worked off; the things you have done as well as the things you have not done.

It is, of course, part of the object of training to release the drives that are there, so that the life that is there can come out and fulfill itself as far as it can go in this particular life, or expression.

The further you go in training the more earnest and purposive; according to the amount of cooperation, so is the effectiveness of the release.  So that the evolution goes on in terms of the life of the individual being, not in terms of the personality.

1. How is Wisdom-lore used to aid the evolution? Ans: Each story represents a different facet. For instance, the story of Jonah and the Whale takes up the challenge of initiation.  The story of Adam and Eve, the story of the descent of the soul, that is something else again.  The story of Persephone is related to it but it tells it differently than the Hebraic.  All touch upon different aspects.  The story in reference to the descent may not aid much in the evolution, except widening the understanding.  When it comes to the evolution, then stories are of great significance.  As for instance, the Hymn of the Robe of Glory.  It touches upon four points: descent, forgetting, awakening and return.  It is highly condensed.

The Greek story of the winning of the Golden Fleece.  Includes some of the complexities.

Jason’s father had, strangely, given up the kingdom to a brother, who was to give it to Jason when Jason came of age .  The brother tries to prevent Jason getting the kingdom.  Much is compacted in that introduction to the story.  The brother, on the throne, is the human self — the false, the lower, self.  The true king has had to draw aside because he could not rule.  The higher man comes last: “The first shall be last.”

Therefore Jason has to apply for that kingdom.  He must first get the Golden Fleece.  The story of Jason coming of age as a conscious, evolved, spiritual being — the size of the man who replaces the uncle.

There is encouragement in the way the Pattern is opened up; if he will use it.  There are hardships on the way.  Jason studied.  Little by little, the consciousness of one who studies it is aided.  If you take the story only intellectually and no connection is made between the student and the story, it is lost.  That is having eyes and ears, and hearing not.  The more he applies them the more he gains from the profundities in the story. . . . .Accomplished by experience and deep pondering.

Heritage comes through into consciousness, but operates automatically in the Pattern.  In order to be effective it has to be lifted into consciousness and control; as in anything else; like things used in industrial projects today.  They were all here from the beginning.  Getting back the memories depends on your development, not where you are, as in the etheric body.

The self has many branches that are stripped off, but the ego is like the trunk of the tree; reduced to their essence, what is left.  Not an identity.  Lives add a momentum; it may be good or bad.  May have to be worked off.  You won’t remember, perhaps, until you come to a certain stage.  Momentum does not add to the soul’s stature, but plus quality does.  You gain through it; the real growth, or development.

Heritage and karma are related.  Karma is built on cause and effect; heritage, the quality that is built in.

Use the term monad.  It is technically more correct than soul.  Soul is used often in the sense of some deep emotion.

Technically, the individual, when an integer, or a one, is made of the two sides of the self.  The conscious self is the end of a very long stream of experience, the persona, or conscious self.  Most people know nothing else.  When you have come to know the other side, and linked it with the conscious, you are making the individual.  In consciousness, the two made into one.  There is a long trail behind it, the heritage (or behind him) the fruit of experience, all kinds of experience.

All the heritage has to be transformed, if you progress.  That can be done consciously.  You ascend only by virtue of what you become, or are.

1. What about the part of the soul that does not manifest? Ans. In a sense, the soul never comes down. You cannot really compare it to a seed, for that belongs to this dimension.  Use your mind to fill in the gap.  The soul is an entity, not exactly parallel to the seed but with a life of its own; not, therefore, of this plane.  Therefore it never comes down, but it animates this plane.

     When you have reached a place; i.e., freed an area in your present being, or self, so you could open it and make it clean, then you can have a rapport with your own soul, or those parts of your being which do not come into flesh but which are of a higher nature and are striving to grow up, and make more bean seeds.  (The bean as a symbol of life growing. GB.)

1. re the archetypal Pattern. Ans. The archetypal Pattern refers to the Ideal Pattern, or IDEA Pattern, which was set for evolving life. So there is a pattern for man, who is the divine hermaphrodite.  That is the archetypal pattern for man, the First Adam.  (Not Red Adam.)  It is not known until man evolves very far with his mind.

1. Q. Is heritage also acquired in the etheric and psychic? Yes. In the last analysis, the heritage is, in a sense, predestined.  Nevertheless, you have your volition about it.  In the archetypal is written the ideal design for every one of you.  Whether you work that out — your potentiality into potency, is your own determination.  It is in the ultimate seed from which you came; not the soul seed, which is a lower stage.  It is the potential oak in every acorn.  It is your work that does it: the reverent cultivation of the self.

Heritage never has anything to do with what a man or woman does, or becomes, in a material sense.  It has nothing to do, specially, with aptitudes.  Its primary business is with the evolution of the self toward spiritual stature.  The things that belong to what you or I do on the physical plane are very incidental.  The big stake is the evolution of the soul to the fullest stature.  The aptitudes are not things that really come from the soul or from heritage.  They are earthy.  They belong to the human being.

Karma has to do with the size and quality of your being.  It does not concern you as a human being.  It has nothing to do with aptitudes in the human sense.  The drive of karma may be away from physical values.  Heritage does not work in terms of physical determinants.  It works in terms of qualities of the being; is within the volition and height of the evolving monad.  The monad shows its stage by the way it uses those qualities.

1. re qualities of evolved beings. Ans. There are certain standards set by a college to obtain a piece of parchment, but not all graduates are alike. It is potentially in every monad to become as a god.  It has a potential power, if it will get the experience, evolving through the ages.  All won’t be the same.  The greatest freedom is in completest obedience to Cosmic law.  It is left to the individual whether or not he does it.

The “Foolish Virgins.”  The Bridegroom says: “I know you not.”  There are certain powerful laws that govern the higher evolution.

1. Q. about whether the soul is active in the deeper areas beyond the subconscious. It is dormant, potential. As with things that the last fifty years have brought into man’s physical life.  Research; and now they are made manifest.  So it is with the powers beyond the subconscious.

1. Q. about incarnation; is it gradual and partial? Yes, in a sense as with the redwood tree. Only as far as the form can lend itself can manifestation take place.  If the brain, or nervous system, is injured, or does not develop, the life force, or the monad, which wanted to use that body is handicapped.  Most do not use their potentials.  They go the way of pleasure, the easier way.

1. re Spittler’s “Prometheus and Epimetheus.” Ans. Spittler’s Prometheus and Epimetheus is a mystical variation of the theme of the Two Brothers, foresight and after sight, worldlings and other-worldlings. Spittler is using the original allegory, with his variations.  Some people using old allegories ruin them, as Disney with his “Snow White” picture.  Others, like Spittler, make it radiate, so that the potentials in it are made manifest.

1. Q. re communism and democracy, can they be reconciled? They cannot be reconciled. Extent is what is in the Pattern.  It would stultify growth.  But one will influence the other.

1. Q. re the Aquarian Age. Understanding includes details and synthesis. And a pattern cf insight.  Analysis, understanding, insight, has not been typical of the ages, not in the period of our historicity.  Synthesis, understanding, insight will be able to do what previous ages have not been able to do.  It will occur in many fields.  (this is) why the Teachings take from a previous Teaching.  It is in the character of this age to begin this integration, or synthesis.  Previous ages had their special characteristics.  There will be a motif of integration.  It will gather in the previous ages in terms of love.  Several movements under way to do that. . . . ready for it, but not yet for the mind approach.  For instance, Bahai movement; an all-embracing love motif.  As a dominant motif, it belongs to the previous age.

 

 

MBM with Training Group

Answers to questions continued

April 4, 1946

Subjects touched upon

aptitudes                           Teachers and noumenal worlds

qualities                           young souls

opportunities                        Why God is not known

need for variety of experience        Vaughan’s mountain

safety motif, not good               sketch of cosmogony stages

1. Q. about aptitudes. Ans: If a soul takes on a vehicle purposively that vehicle may be flexible to the needs of the incoming soul. So the body plays a part.  Then, also, there may be opportunities within the life of that human in earth to develop that body.

     Qualities are the result of a distillation.  There must be also latent aptitudes; there must be something to foster the manifestation of that aptitude.  Also a readiness in that soul for an interest in that direction.  It is not simple; many factors contribute.  An overtone goes with that aptitude; it goes with that monad.  There must also be a circumstance to pick it up.

Q ?…..  And.  It is better not to stay in the same situation or attitude too long.  The same opportunities in the seedlets . . . . .

not stimulated.  The seedlets are there from the beginning.  They have a variety of experience, and that challenges you.  To be safe is not good; it is bad for humanity.

1. Q. re Teachers. Do they have places in the noumenal world? The Teachers who have reached that stature are free to travel.  Unless there is an assignment.  But the Homeland is in the noumenal worlds.  Those who belong to the higher worlds do not stay in the higher worlds.  They can move down on any levels.

1. Q. about young souls. Young souls are those who have not yet come to consciousness. They are tossed about by the inheritance of the body, wholly under the influence of fate.  They are young even when they begin to come out of it.

1. Q. about God. God is not a being in terms of anything man possesses. So he cannot know him.

1. Q. re “the mountain that is near, yet far” (Vaughan). Through devotion, it is near (7th rung, ladder of Set); when your polarization changes, it is far away. It is invisible, until you have eyes to see it; not physical eyes.  (it is) “hard and soft; enduring, yet yielding” – by applying ourselves in the right direction.

1. Q. re Justice. It is accurate, strenuous, ruthless — the discipline side of things. What is implicit in justice that man does not know; yields to love and devotion as a tender mother.

Treasures come out as the unfoldment goes on.

The Absolute

 

 

MBM with Training Group

October 29, 1946

Subjects discussed

whole-seeing, need of man’s spiritual nature

Theseus, Minotaur

Bacchus

Hercules

codes, 3 levels of skill to achieve

involution (descent)

Daedalus

MBM

The need of a science of human relationships.  O’Neill calls for it, too.  The disease cost of strong emotions.  Result of the need for something we do not have at present: whole-seeing — that perspective that takes into account beginnings.  We should know heaven by heaven; also the earth by heaven.  We cannot judge the small, and see it in truth, unless we have the over-all perspective.

Man is first of all a being of spirit.  That spiritual nature, though lost to consciousness, and not functioning in earth, is nevertheless to be remembered.  It carries the major potency.  And is connected with the ultimate purpose of life.  Or rather, the Goal.  Moving toward that which is hidden, or esoteric, teachings.

There is frustration in the mind-hood of all of us.  Being immeasurably below what we sought (?) to be.  But it is still the measurement of what we will be.

First, we are of the earth, earthy, as Paul put it; but the quicker we cognize the other drive which is behind that earthiness. . . . .We have ignored the very things which should have given us clues, because they do not feed (or fit?) our earthy nature.  We are pulled two ways at one time.  A kind of cross in ourselves.  +  We should settle in which direction we give our allegiance.  It should be finally settled.

A story by (of) Apolidorus.  It amplifies the story from Egypt, the norse — a larger perspective of the planting of a seed …. .What the obstacles (?) are and how they came about…Cause and effect, operating everywhere.

Three levels of code (in wisdom-lore.)  1) the literal; 2) the allegorical, or figurative; 3) the hierarchical, or occult, or many other names.  Never accept a Teaching in its surface meaning.

Body, soul, spirit.  Spirit means Mind.  Not the rational mind but the fruit of the whole human evolution

The story of Crete, Minos, Poseidon, the Minotaur, the Labyrinth — an outer garment of some of the wisdom-teaching of ancient Greece.  It is important because it gives something more of that vast whole-seeing that we are needing.

The story begins with the field (Column 2, see chart of the 4 Columns or Pillars.), Crete — a stage in the descent of the seed of spirit.  That state is under the direct jurisdiction of Poseidon.  The ruler is a son of Zeus, Minos.  Beginnings, that were better than that which followed.  The problems of the lower planes do not touch Minos just yet; but Minos II, yes —t he lower spheres of Poseidon.  He, Minos III, begins to feel himself, begins to brag.  All this, a great condensation.

The bull.  The first bull, the great bull, is the perfect archetypal pattern of the lower regions that we, broadly, call earth: a great Plan, Blueprint, – dynamic.  The wife of Minos is like Eve.  If he had . . . . . . ., further descent would be impossible.  The double implication often, of how you should, how you should not.  Because man, in order to become wise as a god must, himself, learn to discern the rightness of things.

The wife, the syzygy, cohabits with the bull — desire, as in Eve.  That begins the being drawn into earth, starts the next octave of descent.  The man-bull is the minotaur.  This strange being is one of most fearful power and energy.

Daedalus, the artificer.  Plays a role similar to that of Loki in the Norse.  He does good and bad.  Mischief-making, and corrects the mischief.  He has the great skill to achieve – in a sense, the builder.  He builds the labyrinth.  The labyrinth (root: House of the Double Ax, the ax which hits two ways.)  That labyrinth is the world you are in now.  And you can head (hit?) down or up: the prison, in which the mystery-figure of the man-bull is hidden.

The man-bull is at once you, the self, and of the gigantic powers that you have to battle with.  And which, eventually, you, like the hero, have to overcome.  The labyrinth is therefore the world, the field.  Once it was Crete; then it became high (higher?) heaven, an intermediate world under Poseidon, and the lower world, Pluto.  Those regions are in all Wisdom-lore.  Now the labyrinth, and in its very center is the source of power which we have to master.

Minos was angry at Daedalus for having aided his wife in copulation with the bull.  So he was imprisoned.  Daedalus is also like a house of a double ax – good and evil.  But never ultimate good.  Only the artificer.  In modern times, the intellectual.  Has reason and skills.

He puts together feathers and makes wings.  You can’t make a wing; it must grow.  It is an organic thing; not eclectic.  The sun melts the wax.  The power of truth and Light cannot tolerate the falseness of the assumptions of the lower man.

The meaning and the warning in this: that the mind, in its facile (?) qualities is to be used for lower things but to be dropped in regard to anything that is Larger.  Indeed, you should measure even the earthy by the heavenly; the smaller can never explain the Larger.

Ariadne is another form of the soul.  The soul has two aspects, like the House of the Double Ax.  The two aspects of Kundry.  That figure will appear and reappear, until the right answer is given.  The soul in man is dependent upon the action of you as a human being.  Perseus, an earlier stage in this story.

Ariadne is waiting now for someone who can slay the Minotaur.  You and I are waiting to see it make its way out of the earth (i.e., the seed.)  To that extent we are Ariadne.  Waiting for the human self to act in such a way that it is manifesting its ability to conquer the Minotaur – whose power must be tapped and transmuted into something else.

There is no loss of energy; only transmutation.  That bull is not killed.  The story is not ended; leads always to the next stage.

The soul which has rapport with the Larger, with those things which are esoteric, mysterious and wonderful, is able to provide the thread by which Theseus makes his way in.  Theseus is a candidate for godhood — a hero-god; the masculine mind going forward and taking the leadership.

That thread is the link with the higher planes — the knowledge I am trying to give you, Ariadne’s thread — these evenings: that you know that it is your work to find the way out of the labyrinth, the immediate field which surrounds you.  If you know what you are intrinsically, as well as apparently in terms of garments, then you have the making of that thread which will take you out of the labyrinth.

Theseus goes down into the very depths of earth: coming to know the major problems of earth — hunger and sex and all the primary roots with their urgency.  And laying hold of them, transmuting them; building the way on out, like the seed out of the ground.  That is the killing of the bull, or the Minotaur.

But Theseus, like humanity, does not fully understand.  He is the imperfect hero.  His is the story of one who does something and then is careless of its significance.  He has no sense of the significance of Ariadne.  He blithely leaves her behind – the consciousness of his own soul.  And if you don’t nurture that consciousness; if you try to travel without it, even though you have done a good work, you are going to be lost again.  We cannot afford to put by consciousness of Ariadne.  Theseus does.

Destiny is the marriage of soul and spirit, or their integration.  And that is what is meant, in the Greek teaching, when Ariadne is found by an immortal lover, Bacchus.  The god of the grape — the god of wine in the ancient Greek and in the myths of Greece.  He was understood by the Greeks in a mystical and occult sense as the Grail is in the medieval legends of King Arthur; but the outer garments of the Bacchic Mysteries have been those things which folk could not understand.

Bacchus is the god of Spirit – joyous.  The wine of Spirit makes men drunken, by the liberation of the lower life to the higher life.  That is the mystic intoxication.

     So Ariadne is sought by the immortal Spirit, Bacchus.  That is the destiny of your soul.  The ultimate Goal.

The outer world trying to make wings out of feathers.  They last a little while, and then we have to do it over.

At the heart of the problem is the self.

We have to do our part.  First lay hold of those things that govern life, the Principles; What it is about.  And then, let that which we have come out; do not put your light under a bushel.  Make the things that you begin to sense and know radiate out, that, like leaven, it begins (?) in the loaf of humanity.

As you speak, so must you do.  Lip service is like feathers of the wing.  Falseness will be repudiated by the sun.

• • • • •

1. What is the fate of the bull? Ans. One of the twelve labors of Hercules was the slaying of the bull —a fuller hero than Theseus.

     Hercules released Prometheus.  Sums up the struggle of man to become a god.

1. Q. about Theseus after ignoring Ariadne. Theseus goes back to Athens.  Athens represents the intellect; we must take it from the viewpoint of that particular mythos, or wisdom-teaching.  Crete represents a higher Spirit plane in the allegory.  Theseus returns to the mental plane, not to Spirit.

     The finest things that belong to the intellectual mind are consumed by worldly procedures; they feed the Minotaur.  And will continue, until the secret of the Minotaur is understood and tapped.  Theseus did it in part.

     Daedalus; an outside force that makes us build things: business, etc.  We have a little of it in ourselves.

 

 

Symposium

Questions answered by MBM

December 3, 1946

Devoted mainly to the four major challenges to be met by the soul in an adult body (Training School of Earth.)

 

Other subjects touched on:

whole-seeing                     the censor

soul vs psyche                   I consciousness

“sins of the fathers”            subconscious content and personality

karma; heritage                  loosening persona holds

subconscious conditioning; fate   problems of the psychological adult

                                the five foolish virgins

Our object is whole-seeing; to understand man in his complete range.  In regard to others also, and to the field (re the 4 columns).  The last four evenings we considered the human being, the close-up, the earth mind.  We are not heir to any of these things, the psychological problems; but because we have been given the great privilege of choice, or volition, we make wrong choices — because it is the easier way; little by little through the struggle, gradually learning, first through the physical body, the problems of the psychological side of the self.

1. re the “sins of the fathers are visited upon the children” from the Ten Commandments. Ans. The emphasis is on hygiene, health. The sins that pass on to the third and fourth generation we still have with us.  We have not learned the lesson: the impacts upon the body through unwise living, – drinking, drugs, sex, all sorts of other physical ailments.  It takes time for those to be worn out of the stock.  A warning that careless living leaves its imprint and passes on to your children and children’s children.  It refers also to certain etheric factors which are an inheritance, but I am leaving that out now.

1. Q. In what way are the psyche and soul related. Man is so constituted that a larger part of him belongs to the intangible. The emotional world is intangible, though the effects are tangible.  The last four lectures referred to the psyche.  Fire comes in in reference to the soul.  The soul bisects: two elements go down; water begins to go upward — seeking, longing – the fire of the water, that is the influence of the soul.  Man is two beings.  The psyche refers to the water side.  Soul belongs to that which is not contacted until later.  You do not know it experientially until certain processes are established.

     The little self, the two lower elements; the upper is not the big self but it is moving toward it.

1. Q. Is each soul responsible for the situations which bring about particular changes of the environment in which it is born? No. But he is responsible for the kind of answer he gives to any challenge.  Every one of us is responsible for ourselves, and no one else.  That is the law.  We can aid in earth and water; but when it comes to fire and air, a soul must make its own solution.

1. Q. Where does the law of karma come in there? Karma refers to the self, not to objective conditions: you are what you have made yourself — the caliber and quality of you. It is that intangible thing, – and that wonderful thing, that no one can lay hand on; but we sense it in reference to others.  Not (in?) a worldly sense, – something of what we mean by culture.  Many experiences partially assimilated: a sum in arithmetic.

But the time comes when we begin to plan the future, as we are forced to accept the past.  Karma is much the same as heritage.  Karma is the cause and effect that makes heritage.  They are not identical.  Heritage is an end product.

1. Q. Would you explain the selectivity of personality; what determines whether a given wish will come into expression or be repressed? We are all very complex; pre-conditioned in all sorts of ways.  Most of that pre-conditioning we do not understand, because it is in the subconscious.  We are therefore the victims of it, and under the law of fate.  Fate means cause and effect, when you can’t change the effect.  Our fate would be to be cold in winter if we did not learn about heating.  We move out (from fate) in proportion as we control the factors.  To the extent you don’t understand and exert knowledge and understanding upon the circumstances of your life, you are under fate.  In proportion as you exert it you come out of the field of fate.

Because you are conditioned, you react according to the bias that subconscious condition causes.  Your prejudices, your preferences for or against, are all conditioned.  If man would move forward and control these things he must learn the levers that control his life, as an engineer his engines.  There is conditioning due to environment and family, or what we call inheritance.

1. Q. about the “censor”. A Freudian term: the resistance of the conscious to what is in the subconscious. There is in the conscious a whole set of ideas about the self which are functioning, whether you know it or not, and a lot of hopes about the self.  If what is in the subconscious is contrary, it does not come out.  A phenomenon at the threshold between the conscious and subconscious; protective against the relatively frank speaking of the subconscious.  The subconscious, as a whole, has clothing to hide.  It has not so many false ideas about the self as the persona.  At the “door” it stops that utterance. Acts like a sieve.  Good for giving peace (?) but not for man.  If the ego-feeling of the conscious is released, there is virtually no censor.

1. Q. What is consciousness? Consciousness is the light that surrounds a field that is observed, whether an object, a condition or person, objective to the self, upon which the eye is turned — the thing in you which says “I”; a field of awareness, like a searchlight; having all the degrees of variation. Also different stages.  The subconscious used to be unconscious, because it did not have waking consciousness.  Later we discovered the subconscious also has consciousness.  Other types of consciousness: extended consciousness, up to cosmic consciousness.  That knowledge, that in you which says “I”, is able to gaze (?).  To concentrate voluntarily is difficult.  We haven’t brought our machinery far under control.

1. Q. about subconscious content. What is in us we can never throw away. We have, somehow, to bring up, if not now then some other tomorrow, all the things which are not favorable to the growth of the self.  They have to be transformed.  They are in us, and they never can get outside of us.  They are part and parcel of us.  Though we may try to ignore them, or forget them, or not even know they exist, they will come upon us, because that is part of the law of karma.

In highly advanced beings many factors work together, as in a highly complex machine.

1. Q. What is the relation between the self and consciousness. Consciousness is a power that the self has, like thinking, imagination, feeling. . . .

1. Q. What is the relation between the self and the personality? The personality is the outer mask which the self wears. The self has much more: the totality of your being as it is manifesting in earth.

1. Q. Is it possible to construct a mask that really looks like the self? That brings us back to what is the self? Its relation to the individuality?  Do you have many personalities?  The average person has one or two variations on a mask: 1) with his family; 2) in business; 3) when alone and behind a closed door.  A mask is undesirable – a makeshift.  What we want is that there is not a conflict between the subconscious and the conscious.  As long as there is a personality there is a conflict.

     If you have learned to live so richly and wisely that you can be the actor in the repertory theatre, can play any role when the time is for it, that is good.  Then you are not an habitué.  Sometimes you are enamored of your mask, sometimes fearful of losing it.  Personality is not a good thing to have.  Individuality is the integration between the conscious and the subconscious.  But you can get rid of too stiff and unyielding a personality and do things differently….walk differently; go out and do things differently.

1. Q. When the limitations of the personality are broken down, what replaces the personality? The opportunity to respond on more points. The personality doesn’t like this and that — pre-conditioning in the subconscious.  If you can find that which is constructive and respond freely to all sorts of things; you have many more points responsive to the impacts of life.  We should be rich and wide in your reactions.  You begin not to have a personality.

1. Q. re the four questions which an adult must answer. The adult, seen psychologically, is one who faces problems that belong to the worldly environment and gives a constructive response to them.

     The first of these is in reference to family.  Something of that pattern (family ideas, etc.) remains.  When you become an adult you have to decide whether it is something you should break away from, – their point of view, etc.  If they remain, it should be voluntary – because they have looked it in the face, not through habit or coercion.  Some remain children at that time.  There are many cases of it in psychotherapy.

2) the job.  For the sake of your self-respect.  You, and every adult, should contribute his share to the welfare, the daily welfare of the world — making the wheels go around.  They will be neurotic sometimes, restlessness, irritation, if they don’t find it, or try to “inherit” it.  A drive that would have us go on and on.  It is in the human drama.

     These four questions are the preliminary questions that this drive would have us answer.  We should not avoid them.  There is health and soundness in the simplest job in the world that is done well and voluntarily.  Not because environment coerced you to do it (or to it.)  But because you have taken it on.  Not because the job is perfect.  I have the only job that is perfect.  The hardships of any job are normal – part of the healthy discipline of life.  You won’t find the ideal job; but the place you have determined: “All right, I am going to take this.”

     If the whole drive is taken up with the job the drive will stop there.  We must not be halted at this, or have all the energy looking for the ideal job.  Then the soul in us is frustrated.  The soul wants us to get on with these things so we can come to the real questions.

     3) Setting up your own family.  Sex.  Every adult who is an adult has to answer the questions of sex.  The drive of sex belongs to the body; a terrific drive.  Sometimes violent and brittle and cruel to the one who experiences it.  A kind of dragon, that has to be conquered, subdued, put in its place.  For many, it would like to take the whole landscape.  Actually, it is an incident.

     If, at this, as with the job, the drive in you is halted, you are again missing the real impetus of life.  Sex has, markedly, five stages.  Autoeroticism, which is making the body conscious of its role.  It is not an evil, as many other things are not evil, unless it becomes a habit.  Anything is an evil if it becomes a habit.  Narcissism, homosexuality.  Some folk pass through these stages quite rapidly; do not even know that they are there.  They may return to them later.

     Then comes heterosexuality, which is the goal as far as the body is concerned.  The role of sex is to reproduce bodies.  For the payment of that strenuous task it gives pleasure.  The majority are fooled by that pleasure – do not know what life is about, and so they keep wanting that pleasure.  It is only the payment for doing the job nature wants you to do for reproducing bodies.  But everyone does not reproduce bodies.  So what?  That drive not answered; part of the dragon.  There is no single answer.  It needs all the skill you can bring to understand it is important.  You are not your body.  It gives you a turmoil, but you are not your body.

There is a well-being that comes to anyone when he begins to get the right slant on things and put things in their places.  You won’t get to the other till you have laid hold of the mastery of that dragon.  It makes no difference whether you are married or not, or have relations outside of marriage.  The basic fact is that this is a drive implicit in every healthy person.  But you are not your body.  It is something to be put in its place.

Finally, there is the state of freedom from sex.  That is the mastery of it.  He is not an adult till he finds the answer.  We are talking about the adult who is freeing himself from the preliminary factors so he can go on to other things.

4)  Place in the social strata.  No one should stay where he was born.  To stay put is unfortunate; a fixation.  Find those to whom you are akin; not below you but above you.  Move into that sort of a world.  Not on the basis of custom or style but on the basis of fundamentals.  Make your own world and move in it freely.

To fail to answer these four effectively is to develop a sense of inferiority.  Because the drive in you is on to bigger things.  If you halt, and make these as the important things, you have betrayed the higher things in you.  There is a sense of failure.  We should all get about the real business of life, the evolution of the self.  If you do that, your fullest duty is done to everything, and your life is rich — not a sacrifice but a feast of rich living.  They are milestones which an adult should pass, these four.

Find the companions of your heart and mind; not of the objective social structure — yourpeers.  Then you find new pleasures, new satisfactions.  And don’t be afraid about leaving the past behind, old friends.  If you are moving, it will be normal and natural to pass away from many folk with whom you were occupied previously.  If you don’t, it is because you are not moving.  It takes hardihood to move if your friends don’t move.  Don’t be soft, sentimental.  There are so many things we do out of softness, out of no consciousness at all.

Suppose you re-value your old friends.  It is not being careless.  It is giving them a healthy challenge.  It is going about your business with clear eyes and courage, and the beginning of integrity.

The five foolish virgins.  The simply repetitive: looking for a good time.  Waste of energy.  Their senses give them pleasure, and they repeat.  Then, when the showdown comes, they have nothing for it.  They have learned nothing, their lamps are empty, leaving them without thought, without purpose.  The wise virgins (have been) experiencing all things — nothing wrong with that; it is the staying and being caught in it.  There is nothing wrong in any of the drives of the body, but to leave it at that isinsufficient.

The “virgins” gathering oil are those senses which are profiting, which have experiences passed in through the senses to the evolving……..sensitivities, realizations, that are gained from the things that belong: “Gain for yourselves, ye sons of Adam, from those things which are not yours, that which is your own, and passes not away.”  That is, Gain the value of the education of the school of earth but don’t suffer from fixations.  Don’t misread and think brass is gold.

We have to grow, from the seed which we are, all those things which we should be.  Tocome into the possession of our true birthright.  To become wise as a god.  To choose the things which are constructive as against those which are destructive; describing the “good and evi1” idea.

 

 

from Wisdom-Lore Series  Part I

Five classes

MBM  January 1947

 

Subjects discussed

Wisdom and Wisdom-lore

Allegories in the Old Testament

Tabernacle

Soul consciousness

Wisdom and the secret Wisdom-teachings.  Wisdom is that which is distilled in the heart and mind as the result of Wisdom-teachings.  When you become like Wisdom, because you have become truly obedient, you are in a position to know what is false and what is genuine.  Wisdom is accessible to you only as you practice wisdom – a power that is won.  It does not make for somberness, or withdrawal from life, but for a laying hold of the principles of life, and so living more effectively and dynamically.

Much of Wisdom is recorded in allegory.  There are about ten leading allegories in the Old Testament.  They include the story of Creation, of Adam and Eve and the Garden, the leaving of Egypt by the Israelites.  The Promised Land is spiritual mind, a high state of development which is promised.  The erect serpent, the erect Master on the cross, who could make his way to spiritual mind, the Promised Land.

It is necessary for everyone to move away from the attachments to earth, minimizing them.  The little serpents are the duties, etc.

Spiritual mind: the clarity, the strength, the capacity.

Tabernacle; An allegory of a different kind.  Structure.  Contains much secret Wisdom.

If you lay hold of the secret Wisdom you have the solution of the world’s problems; but not in one evening.

The altar of burnt offerings: eliminating the animal nature in himself.

The censer: beginning to inquire, aspire, seeking what is beyond.

It comes and goes; so the censer is not stable.

The laver, symbol of cleansing.  These three must be done before soul consciousness is won.

The Holy Place.  Again, three objects: the altar of incense, the seven-branched candlestick and the table of showbread.  These pertain to the development of the soul.  …. The old Hebraic records of having received enlightenment, which they rarely follow, but it is there.  ….

The deposits of great Teachers through the ages.

Incense: is right thoughts and acts and words.  That is, the things that become fine and splendid are permanent.

This part includes also a series on the Philosophy of Number filed under Symbolism of Number.

The seven-branched candlestick: the lesson that the soul must learn: that the Seven administer.  Esoterically, the stars around the Pole.  The Seven Lamps.  The Seven in the Wisdom-teachings of every great race.  What part these Seven play in life.

Table of showbread: The bread, faces.  The concept is that you show what you are doing.  In the Greek, the twelve labors of Hercules.  Evidence of what he is doing with what he has.  Action!  Not just eliminating the earlier stages in him — just earlier, not evil.  But the evolving being outgrows much, so these three objects indicate, allegorically, the things that must be borne in mind in this second great stage of development.

The Holy of Holies:  the spiritual mind.  Here, again, three objects, which relate the self at this stage to the Immensities: tablet of stone, rod of Aaron, and manna.  The motif: that underneath and back of all things that belong to the mind and spirit of man is Law.  Not only in the industrial laboratory.  This is illustrated by the tablet of stone.  The spiritual mind knows them.  Manna, the thing that feeds his higher nature; what comes from above, not from below.

Aaron’s rod, which became a serpent.  Life becoming active.  The spiral, or wave-frequency force.

The awakened one: in the outer court.

In the Holy Place, the doer.

In the Holy of Holies: Illumination.

At the death of Jesus the veil of the Temple was torn.

from Wisdom-lore series

Class II

MBM  January 23, 1947

Subjects touched upon

Mythraism                            bread,

Correspondence to Christianity        wine

mediator                             Chariot

evil                                 Wisdom

faith

If there is one great Plan in the Universe we would expect that that which emanated from that Source would be harmonious and not divergent.

Ahura-Mazda, Mithra, competitors of Jesus.  In the secret Wisdom these religions are not rivals.  We will note some of the correspondences between Mithraism and Christianity:

Jesus as the rock, stone; Mithra, rock-born.

The Church Fathers said all these likenesses are the work of the Devil.

Shepherd, a code word.  He leads and guides sheep.  Man-shepherd is the control of all the aspects of the self — guiding the wishes and hopes in the self to where there is good nourishment; good grass.  Only shepherd could hear and see what was taking place.  Unless you are a “shepherd” you could not know of Mithra, nor of the birth of Jesus the Christ.  You would take the next step: to find the child that was born and take offerings to it.  That is wisdom.  That wisdom was taught by Teachers through the ages.

Mediator  Jesus as Mediator, the one in between.  To a genuine Teacher, a sun (?) messenger, that mediation role is inevitable.  Brought the good to the earth, the light, the fructification, teachings, health, harvest.  Also hears the prayers; knows if those prayers are genuine.  Sets (?) prayers.

Both (Mithra and Jesus) were marked as victorious over the earth.  Great symbolical deeds.  Jesus: “Victorious over the world.”

Both offered sacrifice for redemption.  (the word) Means: to gain again something possessed.  Importance of faith in the old age.  In the new age, faith must be replaced with knowledge.  Using faculties so that they grow — insight and other faculties at your service.

Give up attachments.  Modern psychology has begun to see that.

Redemption: the science of th& soul; the way of successfully making the ascent — redeeming the self; for no one can redeem you save yourself.  Jesus and Mithra give examples.

Evil  Both imply the battle against darkness and evil……Basic ideas are necessary.  If you are intrinsically a soul, then the earth is a handicap to you.  If you are intrinsically a bean vine, then the earth to the bean is a handicap.  Evil comes about because the resistance to the earth is not done by man as simply as the plant resists it.  The evil is the thing that holds back the growth that the soul should accomplish.

Flood  The Flood was taught also in the Mithraic lore; and the few who were to be saved.

Agape the final feast before the great Teacher left.  The serving of bread and wine. Bread, the substance side of things; associated with the body of Jesus.  The form side; otherwise the bread does not serve.  You have to make your own bread.  Like the loaves of showbread – give evidence.  The bread is the literal evidence – your acts, your words, your thoughts.  It then nourishes your soul, the evolving self, the pilgrim in you.

Wine, the ancient symbol for nous, spirit.  Mithra is associated with the sun, wine.  The life-side associated with Jesus — blood, Spirit.

Chariot  …..  borne aloft radiantly; the Chariot.  Mithra was drawn in the Chariot by the Four.  The sun as such a chariot.  All the Teachers had such a chariot.  Symbolized as powers of the Four, evolved in them.  Man, when he is through with the physical functions is in another body — not etheric, – the radiant body.

Both preside in judgment over souls.  The Teachers became the criterion, symbol of attainment, measuring rod.

Both Mithraism and Christianity have their esoteric sides.  Both did not teach everything to the multitude.  There were seven degrees in the Mithraic order.  Seven garments in the Christian teaching: part of the universal Pattern.

Great festival on December 25.  Birth of the sun was heralded; victory of the sun — Sol Invictus!  Not the physical sun.

The three Magi expected another Messenger; gave tribute.

Wisdom IS.  It is prior to man.  It is; like the substance of the physical plane.  They would be here whether or not we were here.

No Wisdom can be contradictory to another Wisdom.

 

 

Wisdom-lore Series

Class III

MBM  January 30, 1947

 

 

Subjects touched upon

Mithra, cont’d                       bread and wine

bull                                the Aeon

growth process                       the seven steps of initiation

Mithra, the figure between Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman.  Ahura: the Lord of Life, Light, Goodness, Justice.  Took care of all the produce, literally and symbolically.  Mithra becomes type of the hero.

Mithra gets the message to capture the great bull roaming on the mountainside.

Bull, the fruitfulness of the earth; makes all things to grow.

But all things must go through their transformation.  Nothing is to

remain what it is, but is to die.  “Ecept a seed fall into the ground

and die..    “. Herbs, plants, trees—symbols; that which has

come up in an earlier stage grows: the great changing force.  Even those things which grow do not remain: the cycle of birth, death and re-birth.

Symbol of wheat that comes from tie spinal cord.

The functioning of the human being, culminates in the head.

The symbol of voluntary governance .  All things are governed

through the nervous system. It is through the nervous system that

you may grow wheat and, in turn, make bread—the substance side of

things: what you do.

Blood, wine: the life stream of spirit, or nous.

Out of the sacrifice of the great bull come these two powers in you. I0u will never go up the mountain unless you make your own bread and wine.

The Aeon  Pictured with four wings. A code: the awakening ©f spiritual consciousness.

The seven steps                                 Christian tradition

   1) the Raven: undertaking the message.         Baptism

the killing of the bull.

   2) the Hidden One: active introversion

      withdrawal

   3) the Doer; the soldier                      temptation

                                              passion, suffering

   The first three are early stages; early forms.

   4) the Lion: beginning of the real entrance    Death and birth

      the king of the forest; stays.

   5) the Persian; the coming on home territory.

   6) the Sun Runner; courier.

   7) the Father.  Dominant.

Flood stories  All the great races had stories of a great flood.  In Greece, the story by Apollodorus.  about Deucalion.

     Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, was king.  Prometheus tells Deucalion to build an ark, or a chest; an enclosure . . . partner, Hera.   The flood rain lasted nine days and nine nights.  The ark landed on Mount Parnassus.  The seas started the Flood.  When those in the ark came out they built an altar to Zeus.

The story of a great catastrophe, adapted to tell something in addition.  Belonging to Wisdom.  A story of active introversion. …..

Prometheus, the story of the Pattern – man, the great archetype, the great design for all things to come.  A mystical story recording the beginnings of things.

 

 

Wisdom-lore series

Classes IV and V

MBM  February 6 and 13, 1947

Both these classes were about Flood stories and decoding of the Old Testament Flood story.

In the first of these two evenings MBM referred to stories of a great Flood in many races but GB did not take these down.  She said they were texts of secret Wisdom.  Stories from Egypt, India, Persia, Greece (Deucalion, Mexico, Lithuania.)  In the Persian story, the protagonist is Yima, the archetypal man.  In the Indian story, the fish is the symbol of Wisdom.

What is a Flood?  …. because we are eager to make a clarification, an illumination; discriminating between that which was worthy to be saved and that which was to be eliminated.  That it was to be a radical procedure.

A radical change of that kind gives opportunity for going into an enclosure; in mystical stages, it is incubation.  Not introversion — that is an early stage.  If you let everything be washed away you have a truly new beginning.  Then, if you sacrifice to the gods you are starting a new chapter . . . . a process in man’s being, which corresponds to what took place on the outside.

Some of the content of these old stories attests that the outer, or objective fact of the sinking of a great area of land was merely the physical manifestation of something else; that it was well within the plan of the gods, spelling the working out of the laws which they set in operation.  At such and such a time the pressure under the Atlantic Ocean would be thus and so, and cause a catastrophe.  Actually, that was the lesser cause of the catastrophe.  There was another objective cause, the major cause, which loosened the volcanic area, so that the shift could take place.

Those who seek to know, who really are concerned with the great world beyond the physical, whither we are bound, can find in these old, faded stories matters of great significance.

The enclosure, when the symbol is used correctly, is an enclosure which is sealed.

In the Babylonian record — or rather, the pre-Babylonian, Akkad, or Sumerian, is found the oldest story of the Flood; cir. 2700 years B.C.  The record is from the seventh century B.C.

Man is 3, 4, 12 — according to which view you take of him.

Pitch: at-one-ment.  What is atonement?  It means to cover, so that what has been taken is fully reimbursed; made secure.

There are two stories of the Flood in the Hebraic.  They are contradictory, but each conveys certain ideas.

There is a stage in the evolution of the self which every soul evolving must, or does, go through, when a tremendous experience that they are now ready for, floods out all that is undesirable; that, during that period they are, as it were, enclosed.  You have to be closed with pitch.  With that pitch closing up the Ark there is a period of change going on within.  All that which still belongs to life is to continue.

A difference between the unclean and the clean animals.  The unclean animals are symbols of those tendencies which still go down to earth.  The animals which are clean are trends of the life which go upward.  And at the stage of this great change all must go along in.

That enclosure must be endured.  There are tests in an initiation, no matter where — a measure of what the soul can take, can endure — and are taken alone.  That is the enclosure in the Ark.  There must be a sustaining of it, showing that there is power which can pass on to a higher octave, – to new phases of life.  That belongs to all Wisdom-lore.

As soon as stories are above the simple folklore (level) they begin to carry the imprint of secret teachings.  On objective fact is built secret teachings — realities that belong to the life that is above the physical, but can still be experienced in the physical.

The content is the universal truth for the evolving souls.  The widespread presence of Wisdom  (even in?) the practice of orthodoxy.

When great events take place it is normal that mystical stories be built upon them.  The correspondences become knowable to those who follow the paths of wisdom—have become sensitized…..Bony structure.