Metaphysics
Lecture I February 8, 1945
(The world next door; next octave of the five senses; planks in platform of the School; false imagination; aura.)
The world next door. The last frontier. Experiencing the evidence of a world next door, to take away that fear; to make it part of your normal environment. Are these experiences coincidences? Not, if there are many. Telepathy. Luther Burbank used telepathy practically. (Re: telepathic communication with his sister, in another city, about the condition of their mother who was ill.) Prophecy. Data re Carl Schurz.
One of the good things we will find in the new age is that the world next door will become more familiar to us; it will be accepted. Those working in electronics are on the border line of this world and another. The next world, or the world next door, is complicated. It has the capacity of impacting this world in many ways. One way does not rule out another, as in this world.
This other world is not a simple one. Don’t think of it through one phenomenon alone. By virtue of your sleep state you are on the threshold of the world next door. But ordinarily folk are so involved in their own personal thoughts, attachments, etc. that they don’t get beyond the threshold. But they may have places where they are thin, and something of an impact may come upon them.
The five senses. But there are other senses capable of functioning in the world next door. It is closer than next door. The etheric penetrates.
Touch and taste developed earliest in man. Some sensitivities have been lost in civilization. But they were protective senses at an earlier time. They have been atrophied in their extensions; blunted.
Hearing and seeing belong more to the intelligence side of man. These senses particularly have overtones which are not yet developed. These belong to the kind of functioning of the world next door. Belongs to another octave. The physical body worth ninety-eight cents (the mineral matter was worth that at that time.) You also have an etheric body. It belongs to the functioning in the world next door. All philosophy is based on certain fundamental premises: God, another world, the soul. Usually no attempt is made to give any evidence, or to help the understanding to know by what means you move in another world, or have a soul, or what it is made of, etc. By what means do you move forward, eventually know God. People left their religions to their hearts only. Feeble-minded.
It is possible to move forward intelligently into the study of what lies beyond. Metaphysically, by way of laws; metaphysically re New Thought, etc. As in physics, there must be laws governing the energies and substances of other planes.
Our study is how and what is the next world? What energies govern it? What occurs? No plane is arbitrarily separated from another. Chains, links. The modern physicist is discovering that overlapping. He does not understand the implications.
The etheric body cannot be developed over night. We have spent millions of years on the physical body. Unless you lose the physical body (here MBM probably said you do not ordinarily know about the etheric body). Metaphysics is able to prove that there is no death, but a shift from one suit to another.
The five basic theses (of the school): continuity of individual life. Responsibility for your own stature. Cause and effect operates, and you can learn to operate it to bring about the result you desire. You are what you are because of causes and effects which have been unconsciously permitted to function as they have.
(Third plank) The reality of divine worlds. There is no way of measuring the extent to which that ascent continues. But metaphysics is able to demonstrate that it is.
4) The guidance of more advanced beings in evolution. Where are they? They must be in the world next door. The church speaks of intercession. Shinto. Ancestor worship. Must dwell in another plane. If true (this plane) is capable of being understood. There must be laws that govern them (other planes.) Try to stimulate peoples curiosity. (Again a reference to Carl Schurz but material lacking.)
5) The slow or speedy development toward higher orders of life.
These five are the essence of teachings in wisdom lore regarding life, its continuity, and its logical development. They premise not only a world next door but a series of worlds through which you progress.
What do you know about yourself that would give you the basis for thinking you are more than the physical. Inspiration? Someone may be impressing you good or bad.
This world next door has substance, and varieties of substance. It is not uniform. Also energies. It can bring about transformations, as can energies in this plane. There is also life on that plane — beings. Then why don’t you know it? Our own senses are so adjusted that they function to a very small octave of impressions, sensual, visual, auditory, etc. They are meant to do that.
In regard to light, what is dim to us may be bright to the owl. You have been judging through the five senses, and have established them as a criterion. But it is not true. Infrared plates of a camera are more sensitive. Octaves upon octaves of adjustment for faculties.
It is possible to adjust faculties so that they move on into other wave cycles of functioning. You have been functioning in certain octaves. What could you do to begin functioning beyond them? An example in regard to touch: sensing the atmosphere of a place. Wherever you go this week make opportunities to sense differences in atmosphere. Life in one world is not enough.
There is an area of radiation, or influence around a physical organism.
It is from the etheric body, which keeps the physical body together: makes it an organic unit. Even a plant has it — the living side. A plant has its sense organs. It aids your (etheric) sense of touch. When you nearly touch something physically, blindfolded, and sense the object. Touch, one of the organs by which you become physically conscious on another plane.
The world next door is not the way ether appears to us, vague, invisible, but with the concept that your sense organs are adjusted to special wave octaves. When you are in that wave octave that to which you are adjusted is substantial.
The world next door is more malleable to thought or emotion than this world. An example, suggestibility. Therefore thought or emotion can change it. There are problems with another plane. Feelings and ideas can bring about a rapid change. That does not prove it is good, or desirable, or correct. We have to learn how to protect ourselves from our own erroneous ideas, or false imagination.
The aura lives in an etheric world, subject to influences. That is also true of the etheric world. All kinds of impressions are impacting you, good, bad, and indifferent. If undeveloped, you don’t register. As you learn to clean out your subconscious you learn to take away the effects of superstitions, ideas, anger, all the negative things — all the things that are in your memory. Memory is actually etheric. Or in your aura. There are many wave lengths in your aura. As in radio, they need not conflict.
Lecture II
February 15, 1945
(Linking of planes; dowsing, automatic writing; clairvoyance, thought forms; mysticism; mediums; telepathy.)
Links. Overlapping. Impacts, relationship, and any kind of dynamics possible.
Three illustrations: inspiration, automatic writing, dowsing.
Clairvoyance, clairaudience, mysticism, as examples of the physical world as intruding into the next plane.
The physical sciences are increasingly making a venture from the physical side up into the world next door, which is etheric.
Scientific findings on the borderland. The advance of science into metaphysics, with electronics, radio. Week by week they come out (the ventures). Experiments with infrared rays. Magnetism that floats in the air. Watch these ventures. They deal with the finer stuffs of the physical world. The atomic world fades off into the world next door. That is where the merging takes place.
You share in this because you extend into the etheric world.
Dowsing. It is well authenticated. The discovery of water, oil, mineral finds, without sensual contact. Has appeared in history. Among the Aztecs, in the Far East, in Malaysia where they use bamboo poles. Usually they use a twig at an angle. Often cherry wood. Was used by the Army in the last war. Probably also in this war. (A reference to the Mullins family, well-known for their dowsing. These are finer sensitivities beginning to work.
Automatic Writing. An intrusion into the physical world from the world next door. In inspiration (?) by a thought or an emotion, a concept, poem, something in the field of art, or invention, or industry; or just human behavior. Engrossment in material thoughts, etc., blunts sensitivities. In consciousness. Which will acknowledge an impact received.
Entering the silence. Not as in church, but making silent the physical, emotional and mental. Dialing out of the wave lengths that belong to the physical world.
Automatic writing. Experienced by releasing the attention and the physical tension in the arm and writing hand, so that the hand can be guided by someone else, not in the flesh.
Reverse the picture. See how we may intrude from this plane upward. Clairvoyance. Sometimes seeing at a distance. Not with the physical eye. Use of the etheric sensitivity in such a way that there is the beginning of the seeing of some of the things that belong to the etheric plane. Luminosity around the human body. Degrees of clairvoyance. Magnetic field around the physical body, the aura. The aura is sometimes oval. Etheric eyes are not identical with the physical. When developed normally it is extending your sight into the world next door. That is our real frontier of tomorrow.
The magnetic field and the aura interlace.
Our thought-form exhibit here at the school. Beginnings of clairvoyance. What can be moved in the etheric world, in color and form. That is the connection pushing on up. Thought or emotion causes an effect in the ether. It goes on all the time. That is going on in your aura. Emotions break off and go floating around. In the future folk will be much more conscious of that sort of thing. Like shaking out a dust mop. Contagion.
Clairvoyance, as an extension of faculties, is highly desirable. As with physical frontiers. Something of what I have said about clairvoyance relates also to clairaudience. Your etheric sensitivities, in the first stages of development, are like the physical. The next stage of the world next door is not too different from this particular world. Example of Apollonius. (material lacking.)
Clairvoyance different from telepathy but certain likenesses. In telepathy the event was in the physical world. Seeing something at a distance. But clairaudience also refers to hearing voices and scenes of activity not in this world but in the world next door. Also in clairvoyance.
Mysticism. An obvious example of the extension of consciousness into a higher plane. The world next door, or beyond. The mystic is someone who is developing purposively, or who has a bent that way because of heritage, and begins to be aware of movements of life and qualities that are nothing in their relation to the physical world. May be a vision. Not in the world next door, but still further on. The links that overlap are part of a chain. Many links that continue on upward. The ladder of man’s evolution. Rapport for a little time with a world beyond the world next door. The majority do not know that and think him, the mystic, a false dreamer.
The medium, a channel between two points, one in this plane and one in the world next door. Many types of medium. Capacities for being distorted (the material that comes through). Mediumship, important and valuable, but I do not see people I am training becoming mediums. Indeed, it is verboten. Mediums valuable if authentic, or capable. An important and intelligible connection between this world and the world next door. Important, because there is no such thing as death.
Scientific exploration has worked out theoretically the octaves of wavelengths into an enormous extension of visual length (the visual spectrum). Etheric lengths. The wavelengths of radio may contain any number of other forms of life. Just as the small set of vibrations we can see are not just color. Everything in our life occurs in them. Color is not the measure of this world in which we are so busy. Those (wavelengths) below and above are not measured only by the activity we now know.
Telepathy. Is an activity we are experimenting with, which uses the ether, thought waves, but the communication is from a material being to a material being. It is the so-called sixth sense. Richet has written the classic book on the first discoveries of this sensitivity.
Humanity in the future will use telepathy. Impressions.
The importance of understanding it at this time (probably refers to communication). Giving an opportunity for exchange of thought or greeting. We do not have cables, but people. The human equation.
Simple medium. Clairvoyance and clairaudience. From there on it becomes more complicated, but also more convincing and contributive to life in this plane.
In trance mediumship the body of the medium is yielded to the communicator. But (this type) is still only in the beginnings. … There is duplicity sometimes.
MBM Lecture III
February 22, 1945
Voice mediumship and materialization. The sensitive and the medium are connected. Sensitivity is not mediumship. There is no mediumship in training. It halts (or would halt) your own training.
Voice mediumship, is the most useful of all types of mediumship. Because the voices of the communicators may speak. It is done metaphysically. A binding link between the world next door and this world. Physicists will see that ether as much too simple. In the production of a voice it is necessary for the laboratory on the other side to cooperate. (Controlling the communicators and the laboratory, in the case of voice mediumship. The laboratory does the chemical work of preparing the ethers in such a way, and mixing them with ethers that belong to this plane, to produce the possibility for a voice.) They form at least a larynx in space. Pictures have been taken of this condensed ether. The laboratory workers have not conquered all the techniques. Some mediums are overcoming the handicap of darkness and making the voices possible in moderate light.
Materialization. A still more significant form of mediumship. The ether condensed so as to be seeable to your eyes. It cancels your three dimensional ideas of productivity. The beginning of a body which the entity can wear, can slip into. Certain wavelengths penetrate physical substance easily. Proves that there is something that can be produced in this world. Overlapping.
Borderland phenomena. Studies of the aura. Dr. Kilner. (English physician) and the auraspecs. Scientists trying to tunnel to the world next door. They often go a long way around.
The error of interpreting the world next door by the fourth dimension. As an extension of this plane. That is incorrect. The next plane is not to be seen as a mathematical extension of this. It has its own unique qualities. Higher space is not an extension. It is something radically different.
Communication will be an accepted part of life in this dimension. Continuity of individual life. An extension of the thing we are doing now, learning to take in a whole globe.
Development of the fourth dimension is taking on likeness. Be careful that the communicator is he who he says he is.
Beware of dogma. Put it aside.
Reference to the book “The Unobstructed Universe.” Interesting, because there is a certain kind of communication coming across from his wife (the wife of the author, Stewart Edward White).
Reporting is a tricky business. She is saying some things that are contributive. (That is Betty, the wife on the other side.) But read half a dozen other kinds of writers, too. They sometimes disagree.
Teachers. On this plane we have teachers of all kinds; of various subjects, sciences, cooking; all grades. Sometimes much ego (probably refers to some who call themselves “teachers” on the other side).
Apports. Materialized in the seance room and are left materialized.
Masters. The expression came in through H.P.Blavatsky. Bringing many things into disrepute. (This may refer to the indiscriminate use of the word “masters.”)
Spiritualists. Have taken a great word and dragged it down, so it cannot be used for anything else. As a whole, they are those who have made a religion of communication. There are about eight leading groups of spiritualists.
Metaphysics
MBM Lecture IV
Time
March 1, 1945
The phenomena going out are more valuable . . . . You are moving and learning.
Reference to J.W.Dunne’s book, “An Experiment in Time.” (Example of) concrete thinking, and reason thinking. Valuable for the critical minded. We will make a study of time.
Most people have a short radius regarding time. The scientist may work with vast cycles. Wisdom-lore too speaks of vast cycles: Golden Age, Silver Age…. Always the attempt to reckon (?) this thing, which apparently has extension. (The) time concept of dimension; and why. Because it has extension. Is divisible into past and future. Divided by the present, the now. A moving point. But it’s not so simple. Different ones may note (?) different instants.
Different points at which you can tell there is another world close to you. Has importance for you. Not to be ignored. Bound up with your present life. This idea of extension, divided into past and future, should be more carefully considered — more challenging. We will study it with the help of Dunne’s “An Experiment in Time”.
Is the thing we call time merely one view of something else, that is actually of the fourth dimension? We see what we have been used to seeing, and what the limitation of three-space permits.
If there is a world next door it can be approached in a hundred different ways. No one way will tell the whole story.
Why the spiritualists are all out of gear. I will open up the subject on many angles.
(Will discuss) four of Dunne’s experiences. Dreams (Dunne’s), with correct details and with refractions.
There are other types of action, that are called “sideways time” in other planes….It is quite possible that some of the things we see or know are just the jutting in of different kinds of objects. Like your finger in an aquarium. How can the fish know what our world is like on the basis of that finger?
What you have to learn, and hear it over and over, is that you must not judge of the Cosmos by the train that is closed. (travel in a closed freight train, as referred to by MBM at another time), in the way you ordinarily live. You are missing the great scenery. As you are coming to wrong conclusions. Things like that jut into our three-space, and are explained by our.rationalists, which are no less absurd than the fish’s idea of this world from the finger.
That is why it is necessary to have both the long range and the short range view to understand anything — not only in time but the beginnings of the realization of the world next door, and how it can upset interpretations.
An illustration (or one of the experiments) of Dunne: The event in this dimension happened the next day. Is our conception of past and future correct? (This must be in regard to Dunne’s dream of large wild horses in a large field, which he actually saw consciously the next day, but with considerable change in detail. See his book.) MBM: There were errors in the size of the field, the kind of fence, and other points, the horses were ordinary size, and other points, but essentially the scene was the same.
Your interpretation is bombarded, challenged. Is it a convenience (our concept of time) by which we have been led to wrong conclusions? What is this extension? What is this thing we call time? Maybe there is no such thing — just something that we three-spacers have developed, to describe our movement in three-space, but is not the thing itself.
(Experiment #7) re Lt. B. As you work with your dreams they continue to develop. When the directional movement goes to something else, this type of dream ceases.
#8: Why dreams. They help you to get out of the absorption in three-space. Here a time displacement of months. (This refers to the dream about the wreck of the Scottish train. Is this connected with prophecy?
Dunne’s conclusion, (not taken down.) All associational thinking is in reference to the past. It is passive thinking. Jung. From one memory image to another. Dunne says that, if you could keep out the images and memory associations that belong to the past, you will have, as it were, a state or condition in which things that are of another category will flow. Is that future? Perhaps. You have been in that (closed) freight train. You have no area in yourself which could be receptive to anything else. Mr. Dunne has made many experiments. You could make them too, – by holding down the continuum of passive thinking. You do it practically all the twenty-four hours.
Mr. Dunne’s challenge is the challenge of time displacement. And that what we call time, as in these latter examples, is proving to be not the whole picture of the story at all.
To know more of the world next door, and know it experientially, that you must break away the fixations you have that belong to three-space.
If anyone came from a remote plane, and you met somewhere in space, and you tried to describe the earth from the mathematical point of view, it would give one point of view but would not fill out the picture. To get any idea of the world next door you must make at least twelve different approaches. The mathematical approach is wrong, not only because it is one side but because the conclusions on the basis of that alone are bound to be an error.
Different sides of a mountain. The world next door has many sides.
Metaphysics
Lecture V
March 8, 1945
(Grades of etheric worlds; mysticism; Attar and the Seven Valleys; Plotinus on mysticism; Wm. James on mysticism; esoteric training; Knowers.)
One object (of this course) is to get a look through different “holes” into the world next door. The tendency, when there is a new world to see, is to see it first from just one or two views.
Psychometry; magic; subjective exercises; yog; elementals? – all in the brown. Karmic action, etc., in the green; faith, mystical experience, power of love; red. Great self, higher self, illumination, blue.
There are many worlds next door, not only one. Not just the world next door, but much beyond that. Paul’s reference to the “third heaven.” Implies two other planes before that. Many levels of life. We have spoken only of that of the psychic world. (It is) very near to the physical world – they overlap.
Mysticism is our main subject for tonight. The active movement toward the world next door. Therefore an intrusion upward. Not now the plane with which we have been involved in our discussions, but with higher planes.
Etheric: telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, etc. made up of etheric matter. Has its bands of wave frequencies: earth, water, fire, air. Different points of attraction for different souls in different stages of evolution.
The mystic is not specially interested in clairvoyance or clairaudience. He passes through the brown region, because his focus of attention is at a higher wave frequency. He is inevitably involved in metaphysics. He won’t talk about it, because he is interested in results.[1]
There are many grades of mystics; but in every case they are moved to that which is immeasurably larger than themselves, and which they tend to call God. The mystic is seeking for metaphysical experience, but on a higher level. Seeking for union with God; that is, experience of tremendous inflooding of emotional impacts. The transformation in themselves. It is experience. It is metaphysical experience, different from clairaudience, telepathy, etc. because it is of a much higher wave frequency. In a sense idealized, is seeking nothing between themselves and their goal. It is not casual. It requires careful discipline. Anyone can develop clairaudience, clairvoyance, but they belong to the close-up, or earth state of things, like your ears and eyes. The mystics are like the venturer in the field of painting — to catch an idea and portray it. Not interested in the mechanics of things. Knows he has to work to accomplish his end. Driven by a great love. That has tremendous power and voltage.
The mystic has developed another kind of consciousness. Has developed faculties of the higher nature. He is just as right in relying on that as you with your ears.
Seven steps outlined in the mystic tradition of the Persians. Attar; the Seven Steps. Journey through the Seven Valleys. The story of the Seven Valleys:
First Valley: Quest; purgatory; freeing the self from the self with self; in the lower worlds. In your consciousness, and must free yourselves from those things which have adhered to you through the years: fixations, memories, appetites. As you do that certain other things occur. Likenesses to functioning in the physical world. The mystics have laid hold of that (or them). The little twig that rises up when you remove the weight on it. Disencumbering of themselves.
Second Valley: the Valley of Love. Liberation of the driving force between you and your goal. You have to do that if you mean business in anything.
Third Valley: the Valley of Knowledge: The knowledge regarding truth, not facts. The facts of the higher etheric, not the lower.
Fourth Valley: of Detachment. Now he is beginning to detach himself from the things that belong to the lower planes. Not the same as purgation. These are all steps that belong to that Journey. A journey into metaphysics. Deals with the substances and the energies of the planes which the mystic seeks to touch.
Fifth Valley: in the next planes he touches it. The Unitive Valley. Ecstasy. The great delight of having achieved something for which great labors have been performed. The mystic knows it in terms of metaphysics.
Sixth Valley: The Valley of Amazement. A transcendental vision has been opened.
Seventh Valley: Annihilation of the self. Because the desire is so great to become part of the Larger that the separation can’t be borne longer.
Plotinus speaks of these last stages as the flight of the alone to the Alone. The flight of the one to the One. Al-One.
The mystic, who has been freeing himself from being dis-membered in the world, is now integrating himself. He is now an integer. In terms of being, that integer can know the Integer.
William James discussion of mystical experience: Four characteristics – 1) transiency; 2) passivity, – the little human self passive, receptive, its work done before; 3) ineffability — escapes all possible description. The lower etheric can be described, but not the higher. 4) noetic quality – something that belongs to nous, the higher mind; that is, supremely intelligible, but which man’s mind cannot comprehend; an impact on his intelligence of something that is supreme.
Esoteric training. The mystic moves forward primarily through his heart, his passionate yearning, an inexpressible hunger that is driving the mystics of all ages on. Esoteric training moves forward often with that love not yet awakened; but it must be awakened along the way. It starts through the mind seeking; and the mind keeps the leadership. So that in esoteric training understanding is developed. Ultimately Gnosis. Neptune, Uranus, Masterhood. Esoteric training under a leadership. The mind disciplined as well as the heart.
On this side there would not be the curious conclusion to which the mystic comes: Union, for instance. Mind develops discrimination; knows what, from time to time, the tremendous impacts which the opening up of consciousness to higher planes, can do to the human self, so that the human self misjudges. As a child magnifies a parent. Contacts in regard to the higher planes are so powerful that these little illustrations I have given fall down in weakness.
The mystic is not in a position to measure or compare. His mind has not been trained to differences. Yet the one who is moving in training must have the powerful voltage of love, or yearning, or overwhelming desiring. The measure of your desire is the measure of what you shall achieve. If you have great desire to anything you are willing to take the handicaps that having it involve. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. He can discriminate, as the mystic cannot. But both have great metaphysical experience. Become informed in the facts of many spheres, or planes, of life. Pass understandingly through the phenomena that belong to the lower planes. Discover that the world next door is a small incident in the vast chain of ascending cycles.
Gautama. Jesus. Esoteric training. The great Teachers in terms of training, as against mysticism. They were primarily Knowers.
There is room for both. Humanity is in many stages of evolution. But as you go up farther the roads grow closer together. The mystic must learn to know, – and undergo other disciplines.
The Sufi; mystic among the Mohammedans.
The love of the mystic or the determination of the seeker of the mind.
Store up, little by little, the knowledge and the discipline and the experiences which belong to the Larger side of things. Man is not the human being. That is merely an incident in his career. Build up your bank account.
Metaphysics
fragmentary notes from a talk by MBM, November 7, 1950, to the Monday Group, all of whom were also Trainees in some degree. This talk was mainly on the subject of the magnetic field surrounding the human organism.
Magnetism. Lodestone, meaning to guide, or lead.
The magnetic field surrounding a belt. The influence which we have discharged into the environment from the time of birth; the discharged impacts in what has occurred to us. Can’t be noticed (by others) if not in their wave frequency; like the wire in the recorder. Memories of all that we have experienced. Those discharges tend to gather in terms of likeness, not of time. Points of interest in your lives. Can sometimes be understood better in the body’s sleep.
Your etheric eyes begin to see your dream pictures. They are what of etheric substance has been drawn together by various magnets. An intense gathering of such material, a complex. It means that the magnet is strong. It is built of desire and repulsion – the two poles of the magnet, the two factors which produce the picture.
Dismemberment If a solution is not found they (people) are torn by many desires. The struggle between the beast and the soul. The philosophical premise is integration, at-one-ment. Metaphysically, the break-up of old magnets, so that they become less in number, and the new magnets replace them. Beginning with understanding and re-valuation. Only the more dynamic magnets can successfully replace the competing magnets. The larger magnet must be something that belongs to the larger patterns, or it will not endure. Will draw materia toward it. This is what takes place in tutoring, from the metaphysical side.
Beyond that, the soul, or crescent — the deeper self is not the higher self, which is otherwise not accessible to knowing. All the vibrations are there at once but unless we have the capacity of knowing them it is impossible to receive them.
Heritage. A different wave frequency than the human self knows, can receive. But when the self, through the varying factors of education and development is capable of recording it, then increasingly there is an impact from it upon the self.
Training Philosophically, training is to awaken the sensitivities and let them gradually come into a functioning of which they have been unaware, so that the wider range of experience also impacts upon the self.
The training which comes naturally with the use of the sleep state is ideal. All the while we have had the means of knowing Immensities, if we would use the powers we have. But what do you use your sleep for? The etheric side of you begins its activities, and you are, quite literally, living in two worlds at one time. There are answers in the other that could help balance the problems of this one. Until you have learned to balance these two worlds. It will add no burden.
Man has the means toward larger realities if he wants to use them. The sleep state for training is still the ideal. It is close, inevitable, one into which we dip whether we want to or not.
Re remembering dreams: Attention is a magnet; desire is a magnet. Write down the dreams, as giving a sign that you think them important.
Tutoring leads to philosophical realities. The analyst will work only with the impacts of the psychological problems, working with the complexity of those. Our object: to dissolve those problems, but for a larger purpose. The work is with the real self, not with the personality. A philosophical education is necessary for that, for it helps to give the human self an understanding of what is taking place.
Prayer: What is a blessing? It has to work etherically. In the same key would be other phenomena, such as prayer. Think about it, metaphysically, for next week.
Geiger counter that records the age of objects.
Attraction, types of. Sex attraction the most common. Indicates where we are in the human evolution. May be experienced outside of common sense or reason. Emotional attraction, especially among women. May be between men and women, but much more common between women.
No phenomena can exist without cause and means of expression (or expressing). Many fall within the field of the etheric.
A still more rare attraction between minds. That is a magnetic attraction, definitely.
Attraction between monads: soul attraction.
We may premise those are of different octaves of wave frequencies. If we are not functioning within an octave of wave frequency we won’t know it. Crowd attraction.
Theremin Electronic instrument for making music. Use of etheric vibration, magnetic condition; drawn out of the ether. Transformer.
In your growth as a being you can move no further than your etheric development permits.
The place of the subconscious. Its stuffs are etheric.
Primary faculties, the Eight Seedlets: The main tools of man to bring about his development. Riddle: 1) What are we? And what is our destiny? And if there is a destiny,.what are the means of accomplishing it?
Urge: that works first in the physical, but later not. Then the five senses. Then the whole gamut of emotions. Then the thoughts and capacity for thinking; for reasoning, searching, and understanding.
Then memory. Then there is image-making.
Consciousness: a means but not the end.
Finally volition, the capacity of choosing. Leads gradually from ignorance and fate to freedom and obedience.
Freedom means obedience to law. No one can go contrary to that, but most folk are resistant to law. The little personal self does not understand; is rebellious and young.
The real you is not physical.
The eight (faculties) change, and re-condition.
The etheric envelope extends about five inches (beyond the physical body). It is loaded in most cases with physical efluvia. As you grow, the envelopes change to good.
You are living in your etheric envelope when asleep. The physical is largely blotted out.
You can’t know anything beyond what is in your etheric envelope. The life outside of the physical must be digested and assimilated before it is part of your being. How many times we bypass those things that are of primary significance and thereby dull our faculties for perception.
The envelope beyond the subconscious contains what belongs to you as a growing and evolving being. The subconscious refers to your personal self. If it is true that we are more than the personal self, that we began as a tiny spark out in space and only later came to earth, then there must be records of this.
Unusual dreams: that have an immediacy and urgency and potency that ordinary dreams do not carry. (related to these records? GB)
Successive envelopes that are developed as the light spark has developed, and that these are behind, or beyond, the subconscious. You won’t know them unless you are able to puncture, or dissolve, the cloud belt.
What is beyond those areas which connects you with all other areas that are akin? The soul nature is beyond that belt.
The within becomes the without.
We are here to help change and build up these envelopes; re-condition and extend the etheric development; to add to these powers in the self which link us with the ascent beyond the earth.
We must make of our faculties trees, but sound. The lawfulness of progress — progress beyond the physical, in which all are involved. We can’t help it. The science of the evolution of the light spark, which you intrinsically are.
The vantage ground for the new knowledge is not geocentric, nor man-centric.
Man has been scientific in regard to everything but himself. The need for a vantage ground away from the earth.
The cloud belt (man’s) like the magnetic field around the earth.
The moon is always there. Man is both the thinker and the thought; the doer and the act. Two bodies: the within becomes the without. Don’t look for conventional security here.
from Four Columns
4th recording playback
December 18, 1950
By what means does the subconscious self function? We come to the question of form and content. We cannot have energy without some means by which it functions. There can’t be memory or a trauma without something to carry it. The subconscious is etheric.
The etheric self possesses faculties. It has subtle bodies — according to the stage of evolution achieved. We don’t use those names. We may call all the bodies, after the physical, etheric. But they are of immeasurably different degrees. As with physical bodies. They have sense organs. Must have them to function. They often make themselves known in the physical world. We aw not only physical but also of the lower etheric. And there are corresponding faculties in the etheric. Extended faculties.
The physical body has primarily five senses. (Reference to the five wise and the five foolish virgins.) The sensitivities that belong to the etheric body interplay and sometimes shoot out and give an impression which does not come through any of the physical senses. ESP; in the etheric world. It is through their sudden functioning that we experientially may have evidence of another plane of life that is not physical. Most people do not read it that way.
Re what Jung calls the “intuitive type”. More and more folk in the human flesh are reaching a stage where the etheric body is capable of functioning and the dominance of polarization in the physical is not held as exclusive. This type orders his life on this functioning, his hunches. It is merely extended sensitivities but in some it has taken a kind of lead over the physical. All the faculties should serve together. Should point the direction of the evolution. As evolution progresses and man becomes less obsessed with the exclusiveness of the physical world, and practices the thought of something else, little by little this other faculty will come into functioning.
There are systems which undertake to do that, certain types of Yoga. They are developing but there are not many people interested in it. On the other hand, many activities are now forcing attention to it. The work of Dr. Rhine. For the first time, an inquiry in regard to extrasensory perception has been taken into a university. (Reference to the Sherman book Thoughts through Space.
Every land has had its few who have inquired and given report of what they discovered. In the esoteric teaching there has always been the tradition of subtle bodies. The Hindu tradition, which has more than Yoga, has the tradition of five main bodies, corresponding to man’s evolution. The Egyptian has seven main bodies, or grades. Effort made to increase the consciousness of these bodies.
Few are interested. They all want television, the vicarious. It will damage our civilization for the little good it can do. Things that attract people are still the earth. Material on the (subtle bodies?) not written popularly. Nevertheless, it is written.
Column 4. Many purposes. Some (try beyond the physical) just for the adventure. Some are forced into it for pathological reasons or possession. Some for the lure that has drawn them on. There are many degrees of seekers. What is your objective? Answer: More than any single one can tell you where you are on the road. (Any single column? GB) What are you after? We have taken a considerable step in advance in psychoanalysis. One more: a step which psychoanalysis has not taken. That is part of my work. My work begins where Freud halts. In the research beyond the subconscious. You are therefore approaching this realization of the more through the subconscious, and beyond.
Soul. You come to the reality of that as you penetrate through the subconscious. I will begin that today. There is no first-hand experience of the soul in religions. There may be emotional uprushes, and someone, in their ignorance, may call that the soul. The churches have had to do this. Churches have had a role: to lead folk, as well as they could, through a period of sub-mental development. And if there had been no churches, or religions, think what the pages of history would have been like! They have been a grooming influence; a mild degree of harness on the animal man. A certain degree of generosity, of decency, has been developed that could never have developed without religion.
Buddha, who taught of the eight-fold way. Thousands tamed by this, but it has served in the pre-mental period. But now we are coming into an age where, slowly but surely, the demand to know is increasing. The old approaches are going out under the bridge. Therefore the churches’ statements about the soul are going out under the bridge.
How do you know you are a soul? Will you be content to listen, or will you inquire, Is this so? And, if so, why can’t it be known?
As psychoanalysis began to make the first regions of the invisible self knowable, began to chart it, first for health and later for readjustment of the self, – as we have done that and come to know, past any question or statement, the reality of the subconscious self (a reality not measured by the five senses); by the same token, if you are a soul you must be capable of knowing it and must be capable of changing faith into knowledge. This is the role of Tutoring (at the School).
In Tutoring, the gradual familiarity with the conscious self till the other self is conscious also, and there begins to be the union of those two, to the building of the individuality. That individuality has the power to move toward that nucleus that we call the soul.
The soul, like the subconscious, has substance; is a real entity. In the past it has been feminine, represented by symbols. And symbol and allegory are still necessary measures. If you don’t learn how to use symbol and allegory you don’t enrich your image-making power, or add (?) the faculty to the mind. Some symbols of the soul: the boat that sails the seas of life; the symbol of the moon that, as a crescent, traverses the sky. Many reasons why the soul is so described. But the soul is not the moon. The symbol is an aid, a kind of wonderful crutch, not the thing itself. Don’t got lost in the symbol.
The moon is a satellite of the earth. Moon, as soul, is a satellite to the earthly stage — close to the earth. As your life in earth forces the soul of you to be so bound. You see only one side of the moon. And you see only one side of your soul, at best, while you are in earth.
The soul is not the ultimate reality, but an interlude, step in between. The soul, or moon, has its light and all its powers from the sun. Why we do not use the word spiritual. She sun (symbolizing spirit) is very far away. Man can know the moon; see it at night, in the stage of ignorance but can still know something of the soul. He cannot know the sun until he has reached the high stage known philosophically as Day. (Symbols used in old allegories; reference to Egyptian Book of the Coming Forth by Day.)
In terms of the Aquarian Age we see that as sun, moon and human self. Sun, moon, earth (human self) are three names for three stages of the same thing. There is moisture in the atmosphere of this room but you don’t see it. If however we had a mechanism that would condense that moisture we might begin to see a mist or a fog. It might drop as water. It could become ice.
When you approach esoteric teachings you have to be flexible. Until the higher man is liberated to function it (the human self?) can only move by virtue of likenessess. Which are symbols.
For different types of functioning we need those different stages. For the physical body, we need the ice or the water. Clouds in the sky are not enough for rain, for thereservoir. We need the material thing; the material man does. Our attention is so fixed on the physical side but we are capable, while in the flesh, to be not only physical beings but to be that with less opposition and also be an etheric being, capable of functioning through the faculties that belong to the etheric body (bodies).
Not one world at a time. If we are awake we cannot approach life in that key. We need not live in flatland. We have many faculties waiting. As we move up, other faculties will evolve. Because they are the normal possession of other bodies.
Intuition is a faculty of the higher mind, not the human mind. It looks in on the great Realities, not the etheric worlds. If you speak of a hunch, classify what the hunch is about. An intuition is super-personal. It has nothing to do with any person, or even the earth. Hunches, or perceptions, have to do with attuning to various things going on etherically or in the subconscious. They are local, belong to earth and its humanity. For the self or group of selves. Part of the work here (the School) is cleaning up terminology.
Fifth Recording Playback
Today our center of orientation is the soul. It replaces the human self.
The soul has been seen embodied in the Wisdom-traditions. Nothing can function without a form. The soul is a state of being which may be experienced while you are in the physical, but which preeminently has its nucleus, or habitat, on a higher plane. This nucleus is then the center of the being, the other stage to which we aspire when we understand the way of ascent. We ascend from the earth to the soul state.
There is a recognition of five different bodies and stages in the Hindu tradition: 1) the food garment, the way you feed when you eat and drink; 2) prana, the life force; we would call it etheric, – functioning through the etheric sensitivities, – the life-side of the physical; 5) Manomaya Kosha, the psychic plane. They call it the impulsive animal soul.
These are stages of body-ness. As we evolve, we are constantly changing the characteristics of the etheric body, in which you will dwell when your physical body is put aside, by the way you use your emotions, and, on the lower plane, the senses.
4) the rational soul, or mind soul. Before this stage the soul is still the irrational, or turned to earth, like Kundry until Parsifal has released her. But then her role is completed, and she passes out of the picture. This is the vijnanamaya kosha and it gives way to the fifth, the “body of bliss”. (Here MBM refers to the illustration of the cups, five leading upward from the brown at the bottom, one within the other, till the yellow at the top). That which is the form side, now being dropped off, invisibly? changes the content of that which belongs to the lower, as the form on the higher side, too; and this in an ascending scale.
In the physical sciences, too, it has been discovered that matter and energy are interchangeable. The etheric body is the content side of the physical body, but when the physical is laid aside the etheric becomes the form side. As the changing goes on in you as you make your ascent, even now, the readings in Column 1 mark the stages of the ascent, or the way from the horizontal. The multitude are in different stages of development.
Also (Column 2[2], a recognition of the field inside of which all these operations take place. The soul orients itself to quite a different world than does the physical self, which orients itself to the kind of world that has been brought about by civilization on the earth. The soul does not meet the earth circumstances. The self will have to adjust to other conditions. It will have to learn.
We cognize that there are many etheric planes. Each has its peculiarities. There is an etheric belt, or magnetic field, around the earth. Beyond that, however, begin the planes, the seven; and each in turn subdivides into seven zones. Forty-nine zones. A definite fact. Each one of the zones is the external environment in which an evolving soul must orient itself; must learn the same kind of rules of relationship in regard to others, but not as in the physical, and back of the plane in which we live.
Re Column 3. What has been posited in regard to what is beyond the earth. An abundance of teachings, directives, methods. Millions who are discontented with earth and seeking what lies beyond. In divergent ways. Methods of attaining. Many types of mystics. Some are Quietists; others who assault the gates of heaven and press forward. Withdrawal, one way, is neglect of Column 2. From the larger point of view, it is not achieving. You may not judge from the results here and now, but in the long run they will have to get back on the track.
Dancing dervishes (illustrate another way). Others use sequences of intention, as in a mantra, which dulls the physical senses and you are transported into another kind of consciousness. These are ways of dislocating your orientation to the physical. In the use of marijuana is the rapid deterioration of a profundity. The Indians went through a preparation for the use of the drug, refrained from anything that belonged to the physical – sex, hunting, food; cleansed themselves; meditated on the Great Spirit. Conditioned themselves so that they did not touch the lower etheric. Otherwise, the drug saps the vitality of those who take it without preparation.
The dancing dervish also prepares to dislocate the consciousness of the individual to some other rapport.
No one can go beyond a state which he has achieved. He can, for a moment, through the strength, or aid, of some entity who is aiding, be beyond their own reach, as you might lift up a child and let it see something it could not see from its own level. But that is not a permanent thing.
There has been the quest, from far back, for changing conditions while in the flesh. It depends on our capacity to achieve the conditions which will allow for another kind of functioning. In some cases there has been abstaining from eating meat. But if you believe a thing intensively it becomes for you your truth, until you stop worshipping a false truth and inquire, dispassionately, what are the facts. This is true from the physical planes on. The etheric planes are more amenable to re~shaping than the physical — a malleability which imprisons us, or frees us, according to…(our use of it?)GB.
The condition of ourselves in the physical world now conditions us when we are on the other side — our fears, superstitions, religious convictions; and they will lead us to groupings with others who still are imprisoned with their own images, their own ideas and feelings. By the intensity of our ideas we give ourselves as chloroform.
And they are not the fact at all. Example of the woman who came over in a boat; like an anesthetic to herself. The importance of carrying no ideas that are leftovers from an old superstition or fears; but that we begin to inquire what it is like.
That is going over with “isms” – ideas, conditions, not characteristic of that plane at all. Don’t take any of the load from the earth, plus the influences of inheritance that have shaped the persona.
The life of the soul continues on many of these planes, starting with the third plane. And, while you may, by sensitivity, or.exercises, or the right use of some disciplinary method, hear an echo of that — broadly speaking, what you do is get around the etheric surround of the earth. The etheric conditions around the earth are not the measure of reality. The lesson of this is an open mind and a heart freed of all superstitions and isms. Ask, What are the circumstances? and start out freely from that.
The self, as the soul, meets a variety of environments. They are conditioned by what it is. There are groups in the lower regions of the third plane that do things similar to coming over in a boat. They are imprisoned in isms.
Our object at the School is to give you the long-range perspective; that you know, right here in earth, that you are building, orienting yourself to the Immensities — not to the nearby zones, believing they are heaven; that, as a monad of great potentiality, you can go farther.
Conditions change on every zone. But all are etheric. The names of the subtle bodies are names of etheric bodies of different grades. The reference in the Old Testament that “Moses’ face shone”. He had been in an environment so charged that his physical body became charged. Then that wears down. When you leave it there is nothing to wear down to.
We can counterbalance the weight of the earth. In using dreams philosophically you are gradually orienting yourself to another plane of life and counterbalancing the physical. Learning to use weight and counterweight. Augmenting your evolution. You can have no idea how much that profits you from the long-range point of view.
Column 4. Our objectives in reference to the soul may be enormously varied. What do you seek? Happiness? Peace of mind? Mystical experience or Yoga? Some, like the mystics, are seeking the worship of God. Many different stages in that seeking. There must be a change of weight.
The mystics say the great thing to be done is purgation. Purging their attachments to the physical life. Attachment to things was a literal way. And it is. Literal, even if intangible; a separating of the self from the material things. Sometimes by isolation. To deprive themselves of physical things. Many ways and degrees of purgation. Cleansing of the body; and putting too much weight on the physical.
Gautama Buddha tested out some of these ways, and said frankly: they are not it — put them aside. Because they deprive Column one of its own right in the picture. The self, with its equipment of body, is a sacred tool. Therefore, not to be minimized.
Gnostic groups They recognized that there were ways of living in which the body was given its due, but no one could go higher than he had developed as a soul. (With them) it became the clean line again from the older traditions which had gotten off the way. To ascend far, you will always have to take account of others. (contrary to withdrawal or isolation.)
Example of the man who meditated for 107 years. He built up his own world. That is a blind alley. We would call it a mental case. If you remain in these ideas they will become true for you, and you can settle in them as long as you like. Until the conviction is exhausted, or someone arouses you.
The four Components help the correction (?) direction (?) of ourselves with the environment as the environment is. Not as a little group may say it is, or we have built it up to compensate for some of our disappointment.
(evidently in answer to a question) Re entities who used Joan from the other side. That was local, not ultimate; akin to inspiration.
[1] Here MBM said something like this but I omitted it because it was too fragmentary, but I think it fits in after the above paragraph (GB): The artist and the craftsman now examine into their material: colors, etc. The mystic is as the artist used to be.
[2] Column 1 – the self, Column 2 – the field (others), Column 3 – laws, patterns, methods, Column 4 – purposes and Goal.